Beyond Cheap Talk and Free Lunch: The Social and Political Power of Legislative Member Organizations

Filling the Void: The Social and Informational Power of Legislative Member OrganizationsProf. Jennifer Nicoll VictorUniversity of PittsburghJune 2011Political Networks ConferenceAnn Arbor, MI

Nils Ringe, University of Wisconsin, MadisonChristopher J. Carman, University of Strathclyde

Place project in context with broader research agenda and interests regarding congress, interest groups, and social networksService as an APSA Congressional FellowBriefly describe the larger book project. Mention co-authors. Describe the basic set up of the book.How our interests overlap and the project was conceived.1Motivating QuestionsDo legislators have sufficient access to information to be good lawmakers?

Do lawmakers have unresolved collective action problems?

Much of the (strong) empirical literature on Congress is based on assumptions about the independence of actors and events. Reason to believe these assumptions are unreasonable.Evidence that MCs are affected by social relationships, cue-taking, strategic behavior, signaling, etc.If these things matter, how can we account for them in our empirical understanding of legislatures, policy making, and the behavior of individual legislators?This is sort of a strawman argument.Evidence is mixed for whether caucuses are cheap signals that MCs use to show their constituents that they care about something, or if the caucuses serve a consequential purpose in lawmaking.Preview of conclusion: YES they can be cheap talk, and YES they matter. Much of their influence is indirect.

2Relationships MatterAs an organization, Congress functions in large part because of the regular and personal interactions among Members as they work to build consensus on issues ranging from procedural matters to the budget and appropriations legislation.- U.S. Congressman David Dreier (R-CA).

Personal relationships, face-to-face negotiations, building of trust and reciprocity in human behavior on the Hill necessitates being together in one room.- James Thurber, Director, Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies, American University.

Much anecdotal evidence exists that suggests MCs benefit from personal relationships.Theoretical and methodologically, the idea that individual actors base their behavior, in part, on the behavior of others is intuitive, rational, and not inconsistent with the dominant paradigms in political science; yet, we have few theories and empirical methods that account for this.Methodolgical individualism has spawned 30 years of productive research that treats individuals at atomistic actors.How can we account for the effect of social relationships on lawmaking?This research focuses on the role that caucuses (or LMOs) play in facilitating social relationships between lawmakersand the consequences thereof.3Why Caucuses?Legislatures have collective action problems.Formal Institutions may not be sufficient.LMOs are voluntary and unlimited.LMOs have proliferated and exist cross-nationally.Institutional mechanisms for dissemination of information, productivity, division of labor, etc. may be insufficient. Congress has a well established committee system, party leadership structure, agenda setting procedures, etc., but do these institutions provide the opportunities for MCs to build and maintain the relationships that seem to be vital to the process?For most LMOs any MC can join, and membership is unlimited. Caucuses have no official authority over anythingso how can they matter?The presence of LMOs in other legislatures, and the proliferation of them in recent years in the U.S. Congress, suggests their utility.Of 45 countries (G-20, EU, OECD and must be a Democracy according to Polity IV, so no Russia or China) 25 have LMOs (56%). Of these 14 are formal and instutionalized somehow.When do LMOs exist:If you have lots of partiesIf you have a large legislatureBasically, LMOs arise when there is an increasing need for coordination in the legislature.4Existing LiteratureCaucuses counterbalance the committee system (Ainsworth and Aiken 1997)Information and Communication Networks (Fiellin 1962; Stevens, et al. 1974)Caucuses can affect voting behavior and facilitate information exchange (Hammond, et al. 1995; Hammond 1991; 1998).Caucuses and networks (Victor and Ringe 2009)Thrux: Legislators use caucuses to send cheap signals to colleagues and constituents about policy preferences and priorities.Mention other relevant literatures, such as networks in CongressFowler, Fowler and Chocosponsorship networksMasketseating networksKoger, et al., party networks

5Theory: Caucuses Create NetworksLMOs solve an institutional collective action problem not already addressed by existing legislative institutions (i.e., committees and parties).LMOs connect legislators who would not otherwise be connected.LMOs allow for the exchange of information not otherwise accessible. Our argument: LMOs give lawmakers the opportunity to build utilitarian social networks both within the legislature and with outside actors.MCs who join caucuses are connected, but weakly so.There is considerable variance in the quality of caucuses. Take the cheap talk argument at face value.Meet regularly or rarely; have frequent contact or infrequent; events or no events.At best: caucuses are a way for members to develop meaningful relationships with one anotherAt worst: the group exists in name only and members can only be assumed to have some tacit common interest.Granovetter (1973, 1974) shows that networks comprised of weak ties (heterophilous) allow information to flow more efficiently through the network than networks comprised of strong ties (homophily).We therefore infer that MCs connected through caucuses have weak social connections with one another, and they do so to purposefully expand their network of contacts and create more diversity (heterophily) in their information networks.Caucuses may grant privileged access to certain outside organizations, providing a symbiotic flow of information between the group and a congressional office.Groups provide high quality information.The networks created by caucuses are:Uniquein that they are not duplicative of the formal institutions of CongressInformal, and therefore much more flexible (utilitarian) than formal institutions.Potentially consequential in the policy process because of their ability to exchange information quickly and get access to high quality information.LMOs may not directly influence floor votes, or specific policies (except in a few somewhat rare circumstances), but this doesnt mean theyre not significant in the legislative process.By way of analogy: we dont believe campaign contributions buy votes or policy, but there is near universal agreement that the system of campaign contributions and the system of lobbying in the Congress affect the policy making process.LMO influence is therefore likely to be primarily indirectthrough the spread of information, the creation and maintenance of relationships.

6How Do LMOs Differ from Committees?LMOs are voluntary.(-) Less expertise than committees. (-) Poor voting coalitions.(+) Low transaction costs for dissemination of information.(+) Exogenous sources of information; specialized.ExpectationsCompared to LMOs, Committees are designed to produce credible information.Compared to Committees, LMOs exhibit ties that cut across existing institutional barriers.LMOs provide legislators with resources that increase productivity.DataCaucus membership data for the 109th -111th Congresses (2005-2010)Source: Congressional Yellow BookLegislative AttributesParty, committee, leadership, race, genderLegislative productivityWhat type of data is necessary to show evidence for our theory? Proving a counterfactual would be impossible. If caucuses didnt exist, how would policy making be different. Nearly impossible to know, but some longitudinal analysis can help.Solution: use a mixed-methods approach to confirm expectations in different forms.The Yellow Book includes self-reports of caucus memberships. Its published quarterly. We used one book from each congress and hand coded the data. There is surely measurement error in this, but it is more complete than other methods or sources.The House Committee on Administration officially registers caucuses, but there are few costs if groups dont register. Hundreds of caucuses exist, but are not registered.Interviews were with congressional staffers and outside orgs. Conducted in 2009 and 2010.9Descriptive DataMove very quickly through this section of data descriptions.10Caucus Proliferation

Despite the GOP trying to kill caucuses in the 104th, the rule changes may have inadvertently helped to spawn their proliferation.The growth and popularity of caucuses does not prove that they arent cheap talkthey still may be. But the rapid growth begs questions such as why now? And what purpose do they serve?If MCs create, join, and maintain these groups, they must serve some purpose that the formal institutions of Congress do not.11Predicting Caucus Membership

Regression Results.This is descriptive data that doesnt yet evaluate theoretical expectations.But it is consistent with previous findings (Victor/Ringe 2009)Dems are joiners.12

13Most Central MCs 111th CongressMemberNormalized Freeman Degree CentralityWaxman, H. (D-30th CA)30.8McIntyre, M. (D-7th NC)29.3McDermott, J. (D-7th WA)28.7Payne, D. (D-10th NJ)28.3Smith, A. (D-9th WA)27.0Wilson, J. (R-2nd SC)26.9Moore, D. (D-3rd KS)26.914111th CongressCaucus Membership

Density =0.75Entire membership of the 111th Congress.Ties are indicated by being members of the same caucuses.Nodes placed closer together indicate more caucus connections.Blue=Dem, Red=Repub.Size of node indicates how many terms the MC has served.Caucus network has a strong partisan split, despite most caucuses indicating their interest in being bi-partisan.Density=proportion of all possible ties that are actually present.15111th Committee Membership

Density =0.22Committee and Caucus Membership111th CongressCommittee networkCaucus network

Testing Expectations18MeasurementTheoryMeasureExpectationCommittees ->CredibilityNetwork Closure (ERGM, shared partner distribution)Committees exhibit more triadic closure than LMOsLMOs->Cross-cutting tiesBrokerage and BetweennessBetweenness: LMO>CommitteesProductivityEigenvector CentralityMore central MCs -> more productiveTesting Network Closure: ERGMCursory glance, committee network appears to have less closure.Density Committee: 0.23, 0.24, 0.22Density LMO: 0.36, 0.77, 0.75Use triadic closure terms in two models:Predict the LMO network with common covariates and GWDSP.Predict the committee network with common covariates and GWESP.The Caucus network is much more dense. Therefore, we cannot just compare densities or look at t-tests to test our expectations.20

NOTICE: the GWDSP term, which measures triadic closure, is negative and significant across all models in the Caucus data.21

NOTICE: the GWESP term, for triadic closure, is POSITIVE and significant across all models. There is more closure in the committee networks than the caucus networks.22Testing Brokerage Two glancesCalculate Burts (2002) structural holes measures at ego-level.Use ERGMs

Only one of these comes out as expected. But lets use an ERGM so we can control for the overall number of connections in the data.24

NOTICE: the positive and significant values for Betweenness Centrality. The values are large.25

NOTICE: the positive and significant values for betweenness centrality. The values are much smaller. There is much more betweenness in the caucus networkas expected.26Testing Legislative ProductivityCalculate legislative passage rates for individual MCs.Does an MCs centrality in the caucus network predict their legislative success?Use eigenvector centrality (normalized) of the LMO network.Legislative Productivity

Legislative Productivity

Centrality (normalized eigenvector)

Notice the positive and significant coefficients for eigenvector centrality. MCs who are more central in the LMO network are more productive legislators. !!!!31InterpretationCaveats2-mode data converted to 1-mode.Limits to inference because of exogenous forces on network structure.Test for fit and degeneracy.Use edgewise betweenness (not nodal).

Do Caucuses Matter?Caucus impact is largely indirect.Transmission of information.Getting/keeping items on the agenda.Keeping contacts within and outside Congress.

When are Caucuses influential?When theyre active.When theyre supported by outside groups.When the co-chairs take an active interest.Armenian Genocide Resolution[25] [caucus] was successful in changing some attitudes and getting that on the agenda that normally wouldnt be on the agenda.Fire program was advocated by a caucus and influenced its passage [04][14] Congo Basin Forest Partnership was really an initiative started by the Conversation caucus, and without the push from the co-chairs [of the caucus], I dont think the legislation would have been passed.We do not (cannot) reject the cheap talk hypothesis. Clearly some caucuses are purely symbolic.BUT, as a part of a larger network of caucuses they provide great benefits to members that aid in policy making by: connecting members and facilitation information spread.When are caucuses influential?When theyre active: Frequent meetings, contact.Supported by outside groups.Co-chairs who take an active interest.

34ConclusionsLegislating is an inherently social process.Legislatures have collective action problems.Caucuses fill gaps in formal solutions.Mixed method and cross-national research design helps to discern indirect influence.

We know that lawmakers are not atomistic actors and lawmaking does not occur in a vacuum. Difficult to discern the ways in which interdependencies affect policy formation. But, its difficult to discern how anything (other than party) affects policy formation.Caucuses are a good case because:Their voluntary, unlimited nature (nearly ad hoc, informal) means they unrestricted by formal institutions. MCs can use them to connect to whomever they want.Yes, some are cheap talk. Some are major players. But all together they form networks.Networks have emergent properties: the whole is worth more than the sum of its individual parts.Weak ties are better for information flowOpportunities for members to gain expertise, reputations, leadershipCaucuses can weakly proxy social interaction between MCs and therefore provide information about how lawmakers relationships affect lawmaking.35EXTRA SLIDES36Most Central MCs 109th CongressMemberNormalized Freeman Degree CentralityMcNulty, M. (D-21st NY)15.3McDermot, J. (D-7th WA)11.8Lobiondo , D(R-2nd NJ)10.3Langevin, J. (D-2nd RI)10.2Moore, D. (D-3rd KS)10.0Smith, A. (D-9th WA)9.5Rothman, S. (D-9th NJ)9.1King, P. (R-3rd NY)9.137109th CongressCaucus Membership

Density =0.36Entire membership of the 109th Congress.Ties are indicated by being members of the same caucuses.Nodes placed closer together indicate more caucus connections.Blue=Dem, Red=Repub.Size of node indicates how many terms the MC has served.Caucus network has a strong partisan split, despite most caucuses indicating their interest in being bi-partisan.Density=proportion of all possible ties that are actually present.38109th Committee Membership

Most Central MCs 110th CongressMemberNormalized Freeman Degree CentralityWaxman, H. (D-30th CA)29.4Van Hollen, C. (D-8th MD)29.1McNulty, M. (D-21st NY)28.9Doggett, L. (D-25th TX)27.8McIntyre, M. (D-7th NC)27.5McDermott, J. (D-7th WA)27.5Hinchey, M. (D-22nd NY)27.4Larsen, R (D-2nd WA)26.8English, P. (R-3rd PA)26.240110th CongressCaucus Membership

Density =0.77Much denser than the previous Congress.Fewer isolates than the 109th, perhaps more partisan division.

41110th Committee Membership

109th CongressCaucus by Caucus NetworkDensity =6.54

Density =0.2943

110th CongressCaucus by Caucus NetworkDensity =0.544

111th CongressCaucus by Caucus NetworkDensity =0.4945

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