Filibustering: A Political History of Obstructionism in the House and Senate (review)

For political scientists, journalists, and the public, Greg Koger's Filibustering is a most timely book. Congressional scholars have emphasized the growth of Senate filibusters for the past twenty years; journalists, such as the Washington Post's Ezra Klein, have given it substantial and sophisticated attention; and the public has grown increasingly aware of the Senate's pivotal role in policy-making, especially in light of the 60 votes needed to pass major legislation like health care.

Greg Koger has written a book that will not end debates over the filibuster, but it will allow anyone who reads it to enter the debate with the best possible background on the use of delay as a tactic in congressional politics. For most legislative scholars there are few big surprises in this book; its value for them is Koger's careful, systematic approach to filibustering (defined as the purposeful use of delaying tactics) over the course of congressional history. Building on the work of Steven Smith, Sarah Binder, Greg Wawro, and Eric Schickler, Koger constructs a meticulous database of delaying tactics across both chambers and the entire 220 years of congressional politics.

Future scholars will certainly use Koger's database and will contest some of his conclusions, which generally paint delay as part of the fabric of Capitol Hill politics and perhaps not quite as anti-democratic as many contemporary critics would conclude.

For historians and other students of American politics, Filibustering will constitute a standard reference into the use of legislative delay. Koger notes that through the 19th century the most serious instances of filibustering came in the House, and only with the Speakership of Thomas Reed (circa 1890) is the problem addressed. Within a few years, both parties have agreed that the House will become a majority-driven institution.

In the 20th century, the politics of delay become centered in the Senate. For most Americans, including most sophisticated journalists and laypersons, the idea of filibustering is shaped by Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and the momentous civil rights filibusters of the 1950s and 1960s. This means exhausted senators, cots in the anteroom, and endless speeches that often drift toward irrelevant topics. While there are more than a few grains of truth in these images, Koger systematically paints a far more detailed and nuanced picture.

Using a painstakingly created data set of all filibusters in the Senate, Koger develops a broad argument that emphasizes how Senate rules and the growth of the chamber's workload combine to explain much of the patterns of delaying activity, including the rise of filibusters and cloture votes in recent years. Embedded in this analysis is his conclusion that delay is a systematic element of legislative politics, manifested especially in the Senate over the past century.

Koger develops a basic, and reasonably straightforward, theoretical model of delay and applies it across the full scope of American legislative history. Using a cost-benefit model, he assesses the actions of both those who want to pass legislation and those who would obstruct it. Although he does some reasonably sophisticated data analysis, this is a book that can be read by anyone interested in filibustering. American studies scholars should take a book like this to heart, in that it demonstrates both the strengths of institutional analysis, as well as the limitations. Koger makes no direct, wholesale points about the normative elements of delay in American politics. But he does provide a combination of first-rate social science and historical analyses that should make scholars from many disciplines reexamine the role of filibusters in American politics, and more generally, the impact of institutional design and change.

In short, although the topic seems one of limited interest, it actually should be read closely by all those who are interested in how Americans govern themselves.