Fixing the Filibuster
Why It's Easier Said Than Done
Article Summary and Author Biography
There is less consensus than many realize about the damage caused by increased use of the filibuster in the U.S. Senate. Ambiguity over what constitutes a bona fide filibuster has allowed both Democrats and Republicans to demagogue the problem over time, usually in order to suit their short-term partisan interests. Don't hold your breath waiting for effective reform.
LAUREN C. BELL is a professor of political science at Randolph-Macon College, where she is associate dean. She is the author of Filibustering in the U.S. Senate.
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Postscript
Congress' recent filibuster reforms are trivial. Most of the changes will expire in two years. And those that were permanent simply codify what was already possible -- moving forward with legislation when there is consensus about doing so.
Senators prepare for all-night filibuster, 2005. (Courtesy Reuters)
By many measures, 2012 was the U.S. Senate's least productive year in two decades. Republicans blame the Congressional Democrats. Democrats blame the filibuster.
Obstructionism is not unique to the United States. Most parliamentary democracies, including Great Britain's and Japan's, have also faced gridlock. In 1992, the Japanese opposition tried to stall a vote on whether Japanese self-defense forces should assist UN peacekeeping missions by introducing five motions that had to be brought to a vote first. They then resorted to ushi aruki (cow-walking), or taking as long as humanly possible to make one's way from one's seat to the ballot box 20 feet away. For some legislators, the pace was less than one foot per minute. Some votes took over 11 hours. The opposition, nevertheless, lost.
Although procrastination holds up all legislatures from time to-time, few parliamentary democracies seem to face it as often as the U.S. Senate does. Perhaps that is because, as studies including those by the Association of Secretaries General of Parliaments, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, and Harvard University's Kenneth Shepsle have shown, individual senators in the United States have fewer reasons not to filibuster than those in other countries; Senate leaders, moreover, have fewer means than their parliamentary counterparts to prevent sluggishness from bringing government to a standstill.
A QUICK HISTORY OF SLOW POLITICS
Counter to popular perceptions, for most of U.S. history, the filibuster was a rare event. The word "filibuster" does not appear anywhere in the U.S. Constitution or in the Standing Rules of the Senate. The word (historians trace it to the Dutch vrijbuiter and the Spanish filibustero, both of which mean "pirate") was not used in reference to Senate behavior until the late nineteenth century.
