External Factors In Congress

Such result is inevitable when there are both external and internal factors wrestling and, at the same time, supporting each other in every political match happening in Congress. External factors created the necessary condition in which internal changes could be and were discussed in the House and Senate. However, internal changes, in turn, have shaped and amplified the impacts that external factors created. Together, these intertwined factors have brought about their own changes to how Congress makes law.
In Sinclair’s analysis, voters, political activists, and politicians all play significant roles in creating and enforcing the ideological gap between the two major parties in Congress. This trend of polarization is rooted in the electorate

Special rules and new floor procedures have been institutionalized. Although the external political environment of the House is as electrifying as that of the Senate, it is based on a very different body of basic rules. The individualist Senate, a body in which senators aggressively exploited the great Congressional privileges these rules gave them, as she argues, to further their own individual ends. In fact, nowadays, the process of lawmaking in a chamber with non-majoritarian rules and with members so accustomed to exploiting those rules fully is reasonably expected to drag on for months, if not

These desires interact with one another in different ways, giving rise to the need for different strategies employed by members of House and Senate. When members' reelection needs and personal policy preferences are similar within the party and differ substantially between parties, as we see in a highly polarized Congress, it makes sense for them to organize their parties and endow their leaders with the resources necessary to facilitate the achievement of their goals. Scholars have argued that the contemporary parties are elaborately organized so as to facilitate joint action toward collective goals, while also providing members with much-prized opportunities to participate in the legislative process. An increased reliance over the past three decades on special rules in the House to achieve legislative goals rather than compromise and negotiation has become the norm, rather than the