The quantitative analysis in Chapter 5 demonstrates a number of important differences in the factors most strongly influencing a senator’s decision to form a reputation as a disadvantaged-group advocate relative to a member of the House. Chief among these distinctions is the diminished impact of the size of a disadvantaged group within the state. Senators are not likely to choose to build a reputation as a group advocate for any but the groups considered to be the most highly deserving of government assistance. This chapter also introduces and tests three additional hypotheses reflecting the unique institutional characteristics of the Senate, finding that the larger the number of group advocates present within a given Congress, the more likely it is that another senator will also be willing to incorporate advocacy on behalf of that group into their own reputation.

I focus on why the competition for power among senatorial, imperial, and military elites that had stimulated the recovery of the city of Rome in the face of multiple civic and military crises no longer was effective in the later sixth and early seventh centuries. The end of Rome’s political senatorial aristocracy and its political body, the Senate, is the final “fall” of Rome. In its place, a papal-focused city dependent on Byzantine military might would emerge in the seventh century.

This focus on the senators and the clergy is important because, in my view, too much of the discussion of Rome in late antiquity has focused on either the catastrophic impact of barbarian invasions or the baleful influence of weak emperors and strident generals. Although I am not the first to recognize the vital role played by senatorial aristocrats nor to show the limited influence of the bishops in Rome, new information about the city in late antiquity, new scholarly work on its history, and a new appreciation of the role of the bishops of the city require a new perspective on the very old topic of the “Fall of Rome.”

The crossing of the Rubicon was not the decisive moment it is typically held to be. The Senate had already issued what was in effect a declaration of war, yet Caesar paused after his entry into Italy and initiated discussion of a settlement which even Cicero thought would take effect. Even after Caesar resumed his march it remained unclear until Pompey’s actual embarkation at Brundisium whether there really was a war on. Despite a long scholarly tradition accepting the tendentious claims of Pompey’s side to represent "the Republic," prosopographical analysis shows that the Senate and the Roman nobility who held such authority therein were both deeply divided, while our sources are unanimous that the ordinary citizens of Rome and Italy, including many equites and local officials, were favorable to Caesar, or at least not disposed to cooperate with the Senate's Final Decree. Cicero himself had not tried very hard to join Pompey in his dash to Brundisium, misled (he said) by his belief that a settlement would come about. Even after Pompey's departure from Italy he was far from resolved upon taking his side, not because of innate indecision but the deep ambiguities of the political situation.

Casualties affect elections in two ways. First, wartime variables affected position formation, where higher state casualties increased the likelihood that challengers openly opposed the war. Second, casualties influence Senate elections directly. Incumbents are held responsible for the conduct of the war, and their vote share is adversely affected by higher casualty rates in their states. Although both incumbents and challengers face constraints, our findings suggest that incumbents face the greatest constraints while challenger behavior is endogenous to casualties. Candidates react strategically to the information provided to them by their state-level casualties, suggesting strategy is not reserved to the battlefield. Candidates behave strategically when formulating wartime positions, rightly perceiving that electorates respond to candidate position differences when voting. Analyses of elections during the Iraq and of Senator positions are taken during the Vietnam Wars. Even when national issues dominate headlines, advertisements, and campaigning, all politics remain local – especially wartime politics.

Elections represent group contestations over political power. The rise of Latino candidates for public office and campaigns that emphasize anti-Latino immigration appeals have created an environment where animus toward Latinos is a dominant consideration in the minds of many White Americans. This chapter shows the pervasiveness of White animus toward Latinos across a range of federal and state elections, including its role in the election of Donald J. Trump as president in 2016. It then shows that candidates are often motivated to take a “hard-line” stance on issues like immigration when their constituents harbor resentment toward Latinos.

Chapter three tracks the geographical expansion of the legal reform, exploring the debates and negotiations around its implementation in Crimea and Kazan. In order to better contextualize this implementation, it first discusses the changing political climate after the Great Reforms and the limited politicization of the emerging public sphere, which also affected provincial cities such as Kazan. Pragmatic concerns over resources and infrastructure came to play as important a role as political and ideological concerns over power and authority. The chapter shows that the reform had to be negotiated carefully at the provincial and local levels, with occasional clashes disrupting the process, as a range of individuals and institutions advanced their positions and defended specific interests. In charting these negotiations and controversies, the chapter also paints a detailed ethnographic portrait of communication and administrative interaction in post-reform Russia.

Chapter 3 looks at how the Southern minority used the three-fifths clause, the Electoral College, and parity in the Senate to protect itself from “tyranny” of the Northern majority. Even with the three-fifths clause, the South could not overcome the North’s increasing population advantage. Nonetheless, the three-fifths clause’s “slave bonus” did limit the South’s losses in the House. While the South’s determination to have the number of slave states equal the number of free states ensured that the North would not have a majority. Both parity in the Senate and the three-fifths clause inflated the South’s representation in the Electoral College. Of these two proslavery constitutional provisions, parity in the Senate provided greater protection to the South. Northerners understood only too well the political benefits the three-fifths clause and parity in the Senate conferred upon the South. Antislavery advocates bristled at this, while conservatives believed it was the result of the Founders’ grand plan. Both Northerners and Southerners realized that the three-fifths clause and parity in the Senate added to the difficulty of securing congressional approval of an antislavery amendment. In 1850, the South lost parity in the Senate, never to regain it.

How politically powerful is business in American politics? Does the political power of business distort the quality of democratic representation? This chapter reviews the literature on these vital questions, discussing selected studies in political science, sociology, history, and other fields. It finds that assessments of business influence in American politics have varied considerably over time, but it also observes there has been a broad turn in recent scholarship toward the notion that business is “more equal” than other groups in the American political system. A small but growing number of studies—especially studies focusing on politics in our time—has begun to provide credible evidence of business influence. We have also seen the introduction of some exciting new ideas about the ways that business influence, economic inequality, and political representation may be theoretically connected. But definitive conclusions remain elusive. We do not really know whether business is disproportionately powerful and how business influence affects the performance of American democracy. The chapter concludes with some suggestions about the kind of studies that are needed going forward.

Opinion polling suggests heightened public concern about the role of money in politics.  Yet within the academic literature, there is little evidence that campaign contributions influence congressional roll call voting.  This chapter makes use of the 1988–1992 Senate Study of the American National Election Studies and recent waves of the Cooperative Congressional Election Study to investigate the possibility of change over time in the relationship between individual donors’ preferences and senators’ votes on a set of recurring issues. The analyses reveal a significant association between donor opinion and roll call voting over the past decade but not in earlier years. Additionally, the findings suggest that the impact of donor opinion is greater as the electoral environment becomes more favorable to a senator’s reelection. The 1988–1992 electoral environments were typically competitive, however, contributing to the negligible overall effect of donor opinion in these years. This evidence of a conditional impact suggests that policy reforms could affect the relationship between contributions and policymaking.