alison b. alter and
leslie moscow mcgranahan
Reexamining the Filibuster and
Proposal Powers
in the Senate
Legislative Studies Quarterly, XXV:259-84
Conventional wisdom views the Senate filibuster as a
protection of minority rights. In this paper we challenge this intuition by
showing that this common belief always holds true only for specific assumptions
about Senate procedures. We show that under an open rule, while the filibuster
option may advantage the minority, it is also true that the filibuster option
may benefit the proposer at the expense of the minority. Whether the filibuster
under an open rule advantages or disadvantages the minority, the majority, or
the proposer, is a function of the proposer’s preferred policy, the status
quo, and the costs faced by potential filibusterers.
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