General Theory of Senate Rules: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Nuclear Option

The United States Senate cannot function in its current state. Procedural tactics are used by Senators to hinder or halt the business of the institution rendering it largely ineffective in managing its increasingly complex agenda. There are two possible solutions: restore the norms of the Senate that govern the use of procedural tactics, or transform the chamber into a majoritarian institution through eliminating the procedural powers of the minority. This thesis finds that restoring norms is highly unlikely given the current forces acting upon the Senate. The majority will erode the procedural powers of the minority until only a token amount of power is left available. A majoritarian Senate will fundamentally alter the nature of the institution, but it will once again be functional.;The majority's ability to restrict the powers of the minority is derived from the concentration of power within the leadership for each caucus. Given these relatively strong internal alignments, it is possible to model and extrapolate Senate behavior based on two single entities. The derived "New Dam" model demonstrates that the equilibrium state of the Senate is for a majority to act unilaterally to achieve its own interests.;This model holds so long as each caucus remains a cohesive entity as opposed to a loose grouping of individual Senators. Cohesion as a concept within politics can encompass a variety of qualities, many of which are hidden from direct observation: affinity between individuals, the feelings of loyalty or obligation towards another, or even a shared preference for policy. Whatever the motivations behind the scenes, cohesion can be well approximated quantitatively through examining how often members vote with their party during roll call votes. This measurement is called a party unity score. This score has steadily increased over the past fifty years. The party unity score for the Senate majority in the 113th Congress reached a historic high. As majority party cohesion increased, dissent within the party fell away as a barrier to restricting minority procedural powers.;The majority may have the will to restrict minority procedural powers, but other forces acting upon the Senate must be taken into account when determine when a restriction of minority procedural power is likely to occur during a session of Congress. These forces can be distilled into factors both internal and external to the Senate and used to develop the "Restriction/Decay" model. This model demonstrates that all factors must be in alignment for the restriction to have a non-zero probability of occurring. Once a restriction occurs, the minority power is exceedingly difficult to recover. Given the probability of restrictions versus restorations of minority floor powers, the procedural powers of the minority will eventually decay to none of consequence.;This thesis then applies the New Dam model and the Restriction/Decay model to explain the demise of the filibuster on nominees not including those to the Supreme Court that culminated with Majority Leader Reid's use of the nuclear option on November 21, 2013.