National or federal: The United States Senate and the American political system, 1789--1809

This dissertation challenges contemporary wisdom regarding the necessity of extra-constitutional rules to induce policy preferences of legislators in the United States Congress. I demonstrate that the differences in the constitutional design of the House and the Senate would lead to two long-term policy goals held by the framers of the US Constitution. First, as a result of the constitutional differences between the two chambers, the framers believed that domestic public policy would reflect the preferences of a more nationally oriented, moderate Senate. Second, these differences would minimize replacement effects to ensure policy continuity over time. I argue that the framers believed that success of the US Constitution in neutralizing the consequences of parochial interests which plagued the Congress under the Articles of Confederation would depend on the addition of a second legislative chamber whose members would have preferences different from the first. I suggest that the framers expected that the rules governing the tenure, selection, and constituencies of Senators and Representatives would create senatorial preferences that lag behind the preferences of Representatives, and that these lagged preferences would aid in the nationalization of the preferences of the Senate and minimize replacement effects in both chambers.; Using empirical and quantitative analysis to test this argument, I examine the levels of support for national legislation and the predictors of such support from congressional members serving in the seven congresses meeting from 1789–1809. I select this time period to control for the presence of extra-constitutional institutions that contemporary congressional scholars claim induce legislative behavior. I then turn to an analysis of the continuity of the preferences of the early members of Congress.; On all accounts, the data indicate that the framers underestimated the ability of the Constitution to induce legislative preferences. First, there are few differences in the preferences of Senators and Representatives in their levels of support for national legislation. This finding calls into question advantages of bicameralism beyond its deliberative qualities. Second, constitutional electoral laws were insufficient mechanisms to provide structure for the roll call behavior of legislators. This finding demonstrates that extra-constitutional institutions such as political parties are instrumental in organizing legislative preferences.