Congressional Party Leaders essays

Congressional Party Leaders essays In the evolution of the American political system and its Congress, the role party leaders have played has been important and at the same time relatively inconsistent. There have been several events that have come about since the creation of the United States Congress that have led to the inability of party leaders to maintain and utilize their political powers effectively. I will start by examining several events through the course of history that helped set up this these shifts in power over the last half century. We will also need to understand the roles that Congressional committees played in the evolution of this power and their effect on party leaders. Next, an explanation of why political parties became weak for time period in the middle of the 20th century will set up the basis of reasoning for the question why political party leaders in Congress became increasingly strong in the 1990s? Finally, breaking down the party leadership structure and analyzing two congressional leadership theories will ultimately help present a normative assessment of the amount power that should be invested in party leaders. When discussing the reasons for change in the powers of party leaders over the past half century, in order to fully understand the reasons for these changes it is important to be aware of a few historic events that led to this complicated up and down shift of power given to party leaders. As the Constitution of the United States of America was originally written, they vested absolutely no powers in party leaders. The reasoning for this is simply because their were no political parties, the founding fathers believed the development of political parties would be bad for the United States democracy. As the development of political parties came about in the United States, so did a beauracracy in Congress. The first notable shift in power came in 1910 when a revolt was sparked amongst the Republican party aga...