Likewise, party-based explanations contend that Democrats and Republicans, competing for majority control of the Senate, will act in ways that accentuate the differences between the two parties to win more seats in the chamber. Preference-based explanations assert that ideologically polarized senators will act to advance their agenda while trying to block their opponent’s priorities. Consequently, both accounts are premised on the same assumption- that senators act in ways that cause gridlock. Nevertheless, both explanations emphasize exogenous forces, like ideology and partisanship, as causing gridlock, instead of senators’ actions inside the institution. Others believe that gridlock is caused by a zero-sum contest between Democrats and Republicans battling for majority control of the Senate. The existing theories, including Krehbiel’s Pivotal Politics model, along with much of the recent work that has examined the Senate empirically, offer two general explanations for “the pervasive problem of legislative gridlock.” Some see the phenomenon as a consequence of the ideological polarization of legislators’ (or voters’) preferences. More than twenty years ago, Keith Krehbiel observed that “no existing theory or school of thought provides a precise explanation for the basic facts concerning gridlock.” Despite the many contributions Krehbiel (and others) have made to our understanding of Congress since then, it remains the case today that no existing theory or school of thought can explain gridlock, especially in the Senate. Political scientists do not fully understand why.
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