WASHINGTON -- As Democrats tell it, last week's compromise on judges was about much more than the federal courts. If President Bush and congressional allies had prevailed, they say, the balance of power would have been altered forever.

Yet amid the partisan rhetoric, a little-noticed fact about modern politics has been lost: Republicans have already changed how the business of government gets done, in ways both profound and lasting.

The campaign to prevent the Senate filibuster of the president's judicial nominations was simply the latest and most public example of similar transformations in Congress and the executive branch stretching back a decade. The common theme is to consolidate influence in a small circle of Republicans and to marginalize dissenting voices that would try to impede a conservative agenda.

House Republicans, for instance, discarded the seniority system and limited the independence and prerogatives of committee chairmen. The result is a chamber effectively run by a handful of GOP leaders.

At the White House, Bush has tightened the reins on Cabinet members, centralizing the most important decisions among a tight group of West Wing loyalists. With the strong encouragement of Vice President Dick Cheney, he has also moved to expand the amount of executive branch information that can be shielded from Congress, the courts and the public.

Now, the White House and Congress are setting their sights on how to make the judiciary more deferential to the conservative cause -- as illustrated by the filibuster debate and recent threats by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, and others to oversee the courts more vigorously.

The transformation started in the House in the 1990s and intensified with Bush's 2000 election. The result has been a stronger president working with a compliant and streamlined Congress to push the country and the courts in a more conservative direction, according to historians, government scholars and current and former federal officials.

Some of the changes -- such as a more powerful executive branch, less powerful rank-and-file members of Congress and more pro-Republican courts -- are likely to outlast the current president and GOP majority, they say. The Republican bid to ban the filibustering of judges will make it easier for Bush to appoint conservatives to the Supreme Court and holds open the threat of future attempts to erode the most powerful tool available to the minority party in Congress.

When Republicans won control of the House in 1994, conservatives turned an institution run by Democrats and veteran chairmen into a top-down organization that looked in some ways like the flow chart of a Fortune 500 business. The idea was to put power in the hands of few leaders and place conservative loyalists in the most important lower-level jobs to move legislation as quickly as possible through Congress, according to current and former lawmakers.

Those who cross party leaders often pay a price, usually by losing positions of influence. Most recently, Rep. Christopher Smith, R-N.J., lost the Veterans Affairs Committee chairmanship after clashing with party leaders over spending and other issues.

At the same time, loyalists are rewarded. The result, writes American University's James A. Thurber in a forthcoming book, is less powerful representatives facing increased pressure to carry out their leadership's wishes.

The GOP unity has led to speedy passage this year of legislation to make it harder for consumers to file for bankruptcy and a budget plan that makes way for more tax cuts and oil-drilling in the Alaska wilderness.

With control over the House Rules Committee, which determines which bills make it the floor, how they will be debated and whether they can be amended, Republicans have made it much harder for Democrats to offer alternatives -- for example, a smaller tax cut than the one that Republicans advocate. Democrats also are increasingly shut out of the final legislative negotiations between the House and the Senate before bills are sent to Bush for his signature.

Bush created a top-down system in the White House much like his colleagues have in Congress.