Congress and the Classroom : From the Cold War to “ No Child Left

ing about parties. Smith notes that studies typically focus on two sources of party influence: direct, positive influence wherein party leaders may offer some type of incentive to entice a member to act on behalf of the party, or, an indirect, negative influence wherein party leaders may use their agenda-setting powers to prevent floor consideration of proposals that would increase their membersʼ electoral peril. Smith argues that this classification is incomplete as it ignores the potential for direct tactics to be used for negative purposes (for example, pressuring members not to sign discharge petitions) or indirect tactics for positive purposes (for example, packaging provisions in omnibus legislation). Moreover, leaders are likely to use multiple tactics simultaneously to influence different factions as necessary to create a majority coalition. Studies rarely account for such subtleties. Smith also devotes considerable attention to critical elements that have been missing from the party wars debate: the Senate, minority parties, and the role of the president as head of a party. His treatment makes clear how limited current party theories and evidence are. For example, he shows that many of the trends in the House that have been explained with “strong party leaders” have also occurred in the Senate, with its much weaker partisan structures. Similarly, by ignoring the minority party, we risk missing the dynamic that the fundamental goal of achieving majority status should create in our theorizing about congressional parties. Party Influence in Congress is an important book and a must-read for congressional scholars because it is likely to reorient and reinvigorate theorizing and empirical research on congressional parties. For scholars who have found the party war debates stale or tiring, Smith provides new ways to evaluate the old debate and new questions for research—regardless of the camp one calls home.