Sizing Up the Senate

Sizing Up the Senate: The Unequal Consequences of Equal Representation, by Frances E. Lee and Bruce I. Oppenheimer, is a book that analyzes the behavior of US senators based on the size of the states that they represent.

It demonstrates that small-state senators are much more likely to engage in pork barrel politics than large-state senators and are much more likely to have leadership positions. Sizing Up the Senate also empirically demonstrates that small states receive more money per capita from the federal government by the spending formula for block grants.

It is a political science book, but its first chapter deals with the history of the creation of the Senate and argues that the Senate was created not by federalist theory but out of the refusal of small states to go along with the US Constitution unless they were granted equal suffrage in one body of the national legislature.

Publication data

Sizing Up the Senate: The Unequal Consequences of Equal Representation (1999). Frances E. Lee and Bruce I. Oppenheimer, University of Chicago Press, ISBN 0-226-47006-7

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