Sizing Up the Senate

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Sizing Up the Senate: The Unequal Consequences of Equal Representation, by Frances E. Lee and Bruce I. Oppenheimer, is a book that analyzes the behavior of United States Senators based on the size of the states they represent.

Sizing Up the Senate demonstrates that small-state Senators are much more likely to engage in pork barrel politics than large-state Senators and are much more likely to have leadership positions. Sizing Up the Senate also empirically demonstrates that small states receive more money per capita from the U.S. federal government due to the spending formula for block grants.

Sizing Up the Senate is a political science book, but its first chapter deals with the history of the creation of the Senate, arguing that the Senate was not created by federalist theory, but out of the simple refusal of small states to go along with any U.S. Constitution that did not grant them equal suffrage in one body of the national legislature.

[edit] See also

• One state, one vote

[edit] Publication data

• Sizing Up the Senate: The Unequal Consequences of Equal Representation (1999). Frances E. Lee and Bruce I. Oppenheimer, University of Chicago Press, ISBN 0-226-47006-7