Abstract
This innovative book examines a contemporary question using historical data. For several decades, a small movement has coalesced around the cause of repealing the Seventeenth Amendment to the US Constitution and return indirect elections to the US Senate. The Seventeenth Amendment is accused of leading to the decline of federalism in the American political system (p. 13). There also is concern that the Seventeenth Amendment failed to decrease the role of wealthy elites in Senate elections. Schiller and Stewart analyse the electoral environment before direct election seeking to better understand how indirect election worked. The authors create a unique database to mine for the answers to this research question. They examine 752 Senate elections held in each American state between 1871 and the first direct elections to the Senate in 1913.
After presenting an introduction to their research, the authors develop a theory of indirect elections. The theory identifies the primary actors in indirect elections. They then turn to an assessment of the economic value of Senate seats to the states in this era. This discussion includes cases studies from Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Nebraska and Wisconsin. Chapter 4 examines the role of political parties in the nomination and candidate identification process during the era of indirect elections. The authors analyse the amount of conflict involved in Senate elections in state legislatures in Chapter 5. They also consider how electoral conflict affected the Senator’s activities as a member of the US Senate.
Chapter 6 is the most challenging part of the book. The authors develop some theories about politics in the United States had the Senate always been directly elected in the states. They also consider what Senate elections would look like if the Seventeenth Amendment had not been proposed and ratified. The summary presented in Chapter 7 reviews the authors’ work and provides insights on the nature of representation under both indirect and direct Senate elections. The authors consider the possibility that the Seventeenth Amendment might be repealed and how such action would change contemporary Senate elections as well as the relationship between the federal government and the states.
This book successfully reviews the history of indirect elections to the US Senate. While this book is a masterful examination of Senate elections, the authors are humble in their research. They end the book with this call: ‘We consider this book to be the beginning of an effort to more thoroughly understand Senate elections when they happened in the state legislatures …’ (p. 217). Other researchers should build upon the findings presented in this book to create the most complete understanding of Senate elections.