Author: Alison W. Craig

Publisher:

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 154

ISBN-13:

Is there a benefit to working well with others in Congress? Many of the bills introduced are written not only by the single member listed as its sponsor, but by a coalition of representatives who have worked together to author mutually agreeable language. Similarly, members frequently collaborate with colleagues in writing policy letters, running caucuses, and hosting events. Yet there is very little understanding of the nature of these relationships, or how members of Congress benefit from them, as data availability has limited the ability of legislative politics scholars to estimate their impact. Using a unique dataset of Dear Colleague letters, which are an essential communication tool in the modern Congress, I identify the members who collaborate on policy initiatives in a substantive manner. I use these data to map the policy collaboration network of the House of Representatives to answer three key questions that will greatly improve our understanding of congressional behavior and the legislative process: 1) How do members of Congress choose their collaborative partners? 2) What are the legislative benefits of collaboration? 3) What are the electoral benefits of collaboration? The first question is addressed using a temporal exponential random graph model (TERGM) that allows me to consider the policy collaboration network for each Congress in its entirety and examine the endogenous and exogenous factors that lead members to working with each other. I find evidence of several distinctive patterns, including a strong tendency towards bipartisan collaboration in a highly polarized Congress, an overall inclination towards collaboration where there are shared constituencies, and a network where personal relationships and reputations are key. The second essay examines the legislative benefits of collaboration, specifically whether more collaborative members are more effective legislators. I create several new measures of propensity towards collaboration and use them in a series of temporal network autocorrelation models that examine whether the relationship between collaboration and legislative effectiveness is the result of members putting in effort to advance their agenda, working with other successful colleagues, or using collaboration to send informative signals. I find that members who are strategic in their collaborative decisions find the most success, particularly those who moderate their usage of collaboration. Finally, I consider the electoral benefits of collaboration, again using the temporal network autocorrelation model and my measures of propensity towards collaboration. I find that for electorally vulnerable members of Congress, there is a significant benefit to collaborating with members of the other party as it allows them to build a reputation for bipartisanship with their constituents. Taken together, these three essays provide us with a greater understanding of the role that policy collaboration plays in the modern Congress. Members use collaboration with their colleagues to find common ground in a polarized Congress, to advance their legislative agenda, and as a form of symbolic representation that allows them to distance themselves from the "dysfunctional" Congress.