The Social and Political Utility of Congressional Caucus Networks

Jennifer Nicoll VictorUniversity of Pittsburgh

From a book manuscript, Bridging the Information Gap: The Social and Political Power of Legislative Member Organizations By Nils Ringe and Jennifer N. Victor, with Christopher Carman

APSA 2011Seattle, Washington

ArgumentDo parties and committees

satisfy legislators informational needs?◦No. Legislators have an insatiable

need for information.◦Parties and Committees are

institutionally constrained.Legislative caucuses fill this void.

◦Caucuses provide weak-tie relationships and high utility information, at little cost.

Theoretical PerspectiveLegislators need information.

Sources:◦Committees, parties, CRS, CBO,

lobbyists.

Parties and committees are constrained:◦Membership is obligatory (parties &

comtes)◦Homogenous ideology (parties)◦Narrow issue space (committees)

Caucuses are voluntary and unrestricted.

How Do Caucuses Connect and Benefit Legislators?Caucuses provide a network of

weak ties between MCs.

Caucuses facilitate the flow of high utility information between legislative enterprises.

Caucuses Build (Weak) RelationshipsWeak ties (Granovetter 1973)

◦Bridge structural holes (Feld 1981; Burt 2000)

◦Inexpensive to create and maintain

A voluntary institution that creates weak, inexpensive relationships and information in Congress is highly valuable to MCs.

ExpectationsCaucuses help (weak)

relationships develop.Caucuses are inexpensive to

create and maintain.Caucuses provide valuable

information to its members.Caucuses make it likely for

legislative “brokers” to arise.

What we already know about CaucusesCaucuses are sources of information

(Fiellin 1962; Stevens, et al. 1974, 1981; Hammond 1998; Hammon, et al. 1985)

Caucuses help coordinate legislative activity (Loomis 1981; Hammond, et al 1983; Miller 1990; Vega 1993; Ainsworth and Akins 1997; Victor and Ringe 2009).

Caucuses develop relationships with outside groups (Ainsworth and Akins 1997; McCormick and Mitchell 2007).

DataCaucus memberships (109th-111th

Congresses, 2005-2010)◦Source: Congressional Yellowbook

Usual suspects:◦NOMINATE, state, cd, committee

assignments, gender, terms served, electoral percentage, leadership, ethniticy

◦Legislative productivty44 Interviews (May 2009 -

June2010)

Descriptive Data: who joins?

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

Pred

icte

d N

umbe

r of C

aucu

ses J

oine

d

Predicted Number of Caucuses Joined, 109th-111th(other variables held at means)

Repu

blica

nsDe

moc

rats

Part

y/Co

mte

. Lea

ders

Non

-Lea

ders

Won

Elec

tion

by 4

9%

Serv

ed 1

Term

Fem

ale

Mal

e

Won

Elec

tion

by 5

4%W

onEl

ectio

n by

59%

Won

Elec

tion

by 6

6%W

onEl

ectio

n by

73%

Serv

ed 3

Term

sSe

rved

5 Te

rms

Serv

ed 8

Term

sSe

rved

12 Te

rms

Min

ority

Cauc

asia

n

Won

Elec

tion

by 8

9%W

onEl

ectio

n by

100

%

110t

h Co

ngre

ss11

1th

Cong

ress

Member-by-Member Caucus Networks

Congress Members of Congress

Average number of caucuses joined

Density of Network

109 433 8.6 0.36110 437 19.3 0.77111 433 25.2 0.75

Caucus-by-Caucus Networks

Congress Number of Caucuses

Average number of Members per caucus

Density of Network

109 303 12 0.29110 379 22 0.42111 419 26 0.49

Caucuses 1994-2010

18

9 9 10

14 13 12

22

26

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

050

100150200250300350400450

103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111

Aver

age

Cauc

us Si

ze

Num

ber o

f Cau

cuse

s

Congress

Congressional Caucus Trends103rd-111th (1994-2010)

Caucuses with members from 1993-2010Albanian Issues Caucus Congressional Coalition on

Population and DevelopmentCongressional Task Force on Tobacco and Health

Biomedical Research Caucus Congressional Competitiveness Caucus

Congressional Urban Caucus

Congressional Arts Caucus Congressional Fire Services Caucus

Conservative Opportunity Society

Congressional Automotive Caucus

Congressional Hispanic Caucus Friends of Ireland

Congressional Black Caucus Congressional Human Rights Caucus

House Military Depot and Industrial Facilities Caucus

Congressional Boating Caucus Congressional Long Island Sound Caucus

Long Island Congressional Caucus

Congressional Border Caucus Congressional Mining Caucus Northeast Agriculture Caucus

Congressional Caucus for Women's Issues

Congressional Progressive Caucus

Older Americans Caucus

Congressional Caucus on Ethiopian Jewry

Congressional Sportsmen's Caucus

Rural Health Care Coalition

Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans

Congressional Steel Caucus Tennessee Valley Authority Caucus

Congressional Coalition on Adoption

Congressional Task Force on International HIV/AIDS

Largest Caucuses, 111th Congress

Name Number of Members

Congressional Fire Services Caucus 203

Congressional Diabetes Caucus 195

Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucus 180

National Guard and Reserve Components Caucus, The 169

Congressional Sportsmen's Caucus 166

Bipartisan Congressional Task Force on Alzheimer's Disease 156

Congressional Historic Preservation Caucus 150

Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans 144

Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission 141

Congressional Arts Caucus 136

TESTING EXPECTATIONS

The caucus network will be “tighter” than the committee network.

Caucuses vs. Committees, 111th Congress

Caucus Network Committee Network

LEGENDDemocrats

Republicans(Node size indicates seniority)

Density = 0.75 Density = 0.21

Caucuses vs. Committees

Caucuses Committees

Cong. Den.Avg. Geo. Distance

Compactness

% reached in one step

% reached in two steps

109th 0.36 1.56 0.58 0.44 0.99

110th 0.77 1.18 0.85 0.83 1.00

111th 0.75 1.23 0.87 0.77 0.99

Cong. Den. Avg. Geo. Distance

Compactness

% reached in one step

% reached in two steps

109th 0.21 1.97 0.58 0.21 0.82

110th 0.22 1.8 0.59 0.23 0.94

111th 0.21 1.9 0.58 0.21 0.91

TESTING EXPECTATIONS

Caucuses create weak and bridging ties.

Weak & Bridging TiesCaucus meetings and events are irregular

(interview data); committees meet often.Burt’s “constraint” (1992). Expect:

◦ the constraint scores of caucus members will be statistically significantly lower than for legislators who are not members of any caucus.

◦Compare the constraint scores of caucus members to what their constraint scores would be if they were not members of any caucus; again, the expectation is that caucus membership decreases individual legislators’ constraint scores.

Bridging Ties EvidenceCount all “institutional ties” between

every pair in our sample for all Congresses in which they served (going back to 89th Congress 1965).

Only 5 MCs who join no caucuses, therefore no statistical difference in the constraint score between these 5 and all others.

Caucus members do have lower constraint scores than they would if they were not in any caucuses (p=0.01).

TESTING EXPECTATIONS

Caucuses provide opportunity for “brokerage.”

ERGM AnalysisExponential Random Graph Models

◦Explicitly model interdependence in the networks.

◦1-mode projection of data, NxN affiliation matrices of caucus membership, and committee membership; dichotomized.

◦Expect a term for “betweenness centrality” to be positive and significant and greater in the caucus network than the committee network.

◦Controls: party, state, gender, leadership, NOMINATE, Black, seniority, electoral %.

Testable Implications: Legislative ProductivityIf our network theory of caucuses

is correct, we should observe a positive relationship between a legislator’s structural position in the caucus network and her legislative productivity.

Data: # bills sponsored, # sponsored that pass House, # sponsored that become law.

ConclusionsCaucus play an important, but

indirect, role in lawmaking.Caucuses provide a venue for

building relationships and passing along information.

These voluntary institutions solve an information-based collective action problem that committees and parties cannot.

ConclusionsCaucuses are cheap, and

therefore flexible. Not constrained by institutional rules.

Caucus ties are cross-cutting and allow for social bridges between legislators.

[Not shown here] caucuses help connect legislator to outsiders who feed the groups with highly useful information.