For this occasion, I decided to tackle a topic of, I hope, some historical and theoretical interest, of current policy importance and one that might have interested James Madison. 1 That topic is supermajority rule in the U.S. Senate—that is, the need to win more than a simple majority of senators to pass laws. Great checker and balancer though Madison was, this feature of American institutional life would probably have surprised him and might have distressed him.
Footnotes
1 I would like to thank Alan Gerber and Eric Schickler for their help on this work. A useful clarifying point came from Morris Fiorina. Matthew Glassman helped with the references.
