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Solving Congressional Partisan Polarization One Caucus at a Time
Jennifer N. VictorGeorge Mason
Nils RingeUniversity of
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Project MotivationsO Follow-up from forthcoming book
O Bridging the Information Gap: Legislative Member Organizations as Social Networks in the United States and European Union, U. Michigan Press, 2013.
O Is the proliferation of caucuses in Congress a response to increased partisan polarization?
O If so, do caucuses alleviate the effects of partisan polarization?
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Congress is Polarized
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Caucuses are Growing
89119
163 178
227269
303
379419
18
9 9 10
14 13 12
22
26
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
450
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)
# of caucuses
avg membership
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Caucus Growth and Polarization Correlation
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Caucuses are Bipartisan
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A modest
Research QuestionO Are opposite-party legislators who
share caucus memberships more likely to vote together than those who don’t share caucus memberships?
O Today: 103rd-111th Congresses (2004-2010)
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Co-votingO The frequency with which any pair of
legislators casts the same vote.O DescriptiveO Similar to NOMINATE, but dyadicO Raw roll-call inputsO 864,879 dyads O Mean = 0.68, (Stand. Dev. = 0.21)
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Co-votingby co-partisans
02
46
8
0 .5 1 0 .5 1
Opposite Party Same Party
Den
sity
Rate of Co-VotingGraphs by MCs from Same Party
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ArgumentO MCs have strong incentives to maintain
communication and relationships with cross-partisans (Huckfeldt and Sprague 1987; Mutz 2006; Ringe, Victor, and Gross 2013)
O Caucuses are voluntary, non-voting groups.O When Congress is more polarized, MCs have
stronger incentives to join bipartisan groups.O As partisanship increases, the bi-partisan
caucus system will grow.O The increased participation in bi-partisan
caucuses reduces overall partisan polarization.
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Argument
Increased Partisan
Polarization (in roll calls)
Seek Bipartisan Relationships via
Caucuses
Bi-partisan Caucuses GrowPartisan
Polarization Declines(in ??)
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Today’s InferenceO If the argument is true, the we
should observe increased co-voting among caucus-connected opposite-partisans.
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0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111
Covo
ting
Rate
Congress
Covoting Rate for House Members 1994-2010, by Co-partisans
Same Party CovoteRate
Opposite Party CovoteRate
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Control for other known covariates
O Joint Committee MembershipO From the same stateO Ideological distanceO Same genderO In leadership (party leader,
committee chair)
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Dyadic Regression for Opposite-Party Pairs
Coeff. SE T Pr(t)Caucuses 0.0012 0.00005 22.0 0.0Committees 0.0016 0.0002 6.57 0.0State - - - -NOMINATE Dist. -0.236 0.0019 -121.95 0.0
Female 0.0022 0.0043 0.52 0.605Leaders 0.0009 0.0007 1.24 0.213
N= 430,943; R-Squared= 0.75; Pr(F) = 0.00; fixed effects for time included, errors clustered on dyad
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InterpretationsO There is an association between opposite-
party voting and caucus participation.O BUT…
O Autocorrelation in the errors (how to build a better statistical model)?
O How to test that caucuses are a result of increased partisanship?
O If MCs join caucuses to overcome partisanship, should we observe it in the roll calls? Causal feedback.
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Can Both be True?O Can it be that partisan polarization
remains in the face of increased cross-party voting by caucus members?
O If so, how many MCs would have to participate in the caucus “inoculation” before we would see an effect in roll calls?
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Moving ForwardO Treat caucus membership as an
experimental “treatment” effect. Measure the voting behavior of co-members before and after joining the group.
O Include cosponsorship as a covariate.
O Better control for regional covariation.
O Aggregate ties between MCs?