In the House Party gov't is more streamlined and efficient, but many members are shut out of the process—which means you're going to (1) not worry about policy, but more importantly (2) make the other party look bad, and attack the institution!!
The underlying condition in conditional party government is how unified the parties are internally—polarization—to what extent are the parties really distinct camps? Polarization is high until the early 1900s, and then dips to a low in the late 1930s, and then rises again to the same levels as at the beginning of the century. This has then created the condition for party government. Majority party members have incentives to empower their leaders. We see changes in organization to make parties more powerful.
When parties are more divided, party members have incentives to delegate less authority to party leaders, because you're afraid that party leaders will use power to push policies with which they disagree. Under those conditions, you're more likely to get committee government than party government.
The same theory can apply to the Senate with an important twist. It's generally the case that when parties are polarized in the House, they're also polarized in the Senate. They come from similar constituencies. But there's a critical difference between the chambers that impacts the meaning of polarization. In the Senate, party leadership has always been weaker. This is rooted in the Constitution, which says that the House will select its own Speaker. For the Senate, the presiding officer is the Vice President, but Senators aren't eager to give that figure much power because they can't control him. They were able to get away with this because of the smaller size of the Senate. In the House, if each member had latitude to talk whenever they wanted to, to propose amendments whenever, you'd never get anything done. But in the Senate, each member gets that latitude. Because of the filibuster, polarization actually makes life harder in the Senate, while the House has become more of a party machine, pumping out legislation whenever the majority party agrees.
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