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The collective nature of legislating forces legislators to rely on one another for information and support. This collaborative activity requires a choice about partnerships in an environment of uncertainty. The basic size and organization of a legislature amplifies this uncertainty in relational choices. Analysis of collaborative patterns between all the U.S. state legislators in 2007 corroborates this expectation, indicating that large legislatures have highly partisan collaborative networks with generally low density, while larger legislative committees mitigate these effects. Thus, even when the attributes of legislators do not change, the organizational size of the legislature can shape how those legislators interact.

The responsiveness of individual legislators to their constituents creates an indirect electoral connection between the aggregate preferences of citizens and the behavior of legislative parties. In this research, I argue that legislators from moderate districts are the least likely to support their parties and most likely to vote moderately during roll call votes. I also argue that states with low ideological variance among citizens are the most likely to have moderate districts. Thus, states with ideologically heterogeneous populations are more likely to have homogeneous, extreme legislative parties. Using ideal point estimates and measures of party cohesion from state legislative parties, empirical evidence largely supports my expectations.

AbstractScholars of social networks often rely on summary statistics to measure and compare the structures of their networks of interest. However, measuring the uncertainty inherent in these summaries can be challenging, thus making hypothesis testing for network summaries difficult. Computational and nonparametric procedures can overcome these difficulties by allowing researchers to generate reference distributions for comparison directly from their data. In this research, I demonstrate the use of nonparametric hypothesis testing in networks using the popular network summary statistic network modularity. I provide a method based on permutation testing for assessing whether a particular network modularity score is larger than a researcher might expect due to random chance. I then create a simulation study of network modularity and its simulated reference distribution that I propose. Finally, I provide an empirical example of this technique using cosponsorship networks from U.S. state legislatures.

AbstractThis article examines the role of wealth in the redistricting process in state legislative contests. I argue that the decision by state redistricting mapmakers to pursue a "seatswing" or "protection" strategy involves more than just a choice between where to move partisan voters. Redistricting may also allow parties to consider wealth as an additional resource to be concentrated or dispersed across legislative districts. To test this wealth-based hypothesis, I examine state redistricting plans in California and North Carolina. Logistic regression analyses of census block group exchanges between state legislative districts reveal that income plays a significant role in redistricting decisions.

In this article, I demonstrate that multimember districts form a basis for collaboration between two legislators. In order to maximize the limited incumbency advantages they possess, legislators from multimember districts form coalitions in an effort to generate greater credit‐claiming opportunities and policy benefits for their district. In order to test this conception, I utilize a natural experiment and an opportunity to observe institutional change in North Carolina's elimination of multimember districts during the 2000–2002 redistricting cycle. Coupled with cross‐sectional analysis of several states that use both single‐member and multimember districts, empirical evidence strongly corroborates my conception of multimember districts as a basis for collaboration between representatives.

The U.S. House and Senate were designed to have an adversarial relationship. Yet, House members and senators often collaborate on the introduction of "companion" bills. We develop a theory of these cross-chamber collaborations, which asserts that companion bill introductions are driven by legislators' desire to increase the probability of bill passage and the relational difficulties in developing companion bill partnerships. To test the expectations emerging from our theory, we develop a novel data set of every companion bill introduction in the 111th and 112th U.S. Congress. Then, using social networking techniques, we develop an empirical model of partner selection in companion bill introduction. Our results are supportive of our expectations, and suggest that companion bills are more likely to survive chamber deliberation and are typically introduced by senior members with secure electoral margins.

"The Illusion of Accountability: Transparency and Representation in American Legislatures Does open governance strengthen democracy? In The Illusion of Accountability, Justin H. Kirkland and Jeffrey J. Harden contend that it does not. Leveraging a wealth of data from decades of legislative politics in the American states, Kirkland and Harden assess the causes and consequences of "open meetings laws," which require public access to meetings and proceedings in state legislatures. They trace the roots of these laws back to the founding constitutions of some states and analyze the waves of adoptions and legislative exemptions to open meetings that occurred in the latter half of the twentieth century. They explain that these shifting positions on the reforms reflected the tension between legislators' ability to negotiate with one another in the pursuit of policymaking goals and their accountability to constituents as elected representatives. Kirkland and Harden then investigate the effects of these transparency laws on a host of politically consequential outcomes both inside and outside the legislature, such as policy productivity, responsiveness to public opinion, and citizen approval of the legislature. They consistently find that, contrary to what their theory of accountability would expect, open meetings do not influence legislators' behavior or citizens' capacity to alter that behavior. Instead, the authors uncover a link between transparent legislatures and an expanded system of organized interests. Ultimately, Kirkland and Harden conclude that transparency reform only creates the illusion of accountability in state government. It exists in principle with the stated goal of bringing citizens closer to their representatives. But the public does not sufficiently fulfill its democratic obligation to capitalize on this improved access, permitting unrepresentative interests to fill the void"--

Scholars of legislative politics often note the many differences between the British House of Commons and the United States House of Representatives. These include differences in party strength, members' partisan loyalty on votes, and general institutional structure. Because of these differences, scholars have rarely compared these chambers directly. This Element aims to do precisely that. The authors point out the many similar motivations of members in both chambers, and leverage these similar motivations to theorize that member ideology, as well as how party agenda interact to produce party disloyalty. Using data on legislative voting following changes in agenda control, the authors demonstrate that ideological extremists in both the US and UK use party disloyalty to connect with ideologically extreme constituents. The similarities in patterns across these chambers suggest that legislative scholars have much to gain by considering the commonalities across American and British politics, and in general, by thinking more frequently about US legislative politics in a comparative context -- From the publisher

"Why do politicians change positions on legislation, and what are the consequences for democratic politics? A fundamental element of democracy that is embodied in the legislative process is the importance of deliberation over alternatives. Lawmaking provides many opportunities for pro- posed policies to be altered, amended, tabled, or even stopped completely. A natural corollary of this perspective is that the ideal legislator should assess evidence for and against policy ideas over the course of the debate, update his or her beliefs with new information, and be willing to change course in some cases. In practice, however, lawmakers often face criticism from the media, the public, and their colleagues for switching sides, or "flip-flopping," on prior positions. Legislators may also only appear to change positions in some cases as a means of voting strategically. There exists a great deal of scholarship on how legislators make their final decisions on bills, but less work addresses the possibility that they might arrive at those choices after advocating for the other side. This book presents a systematic examination of legislative indecision in American politics. Legislative indecision occurs when legislators switch their official position on a bill. This might occur via "waffling" on legislation--where a legislator cosponsors a bill, then votes against it at roll call. Or it might occur when a legislator votes one way on a bill, then switches her vote to the other side. Jeffrey J. Harden and Justin H. Kirkland develop a theoretical framework to explain indecision itself as well as the public's attitudes toward indecision"--

AbstractGovernments around the world face an apparent tension when considering whether to allow public access to the governing process. In principle, transparent institutions promote accountability and good governance. However, politicians and scholars contend that such reforms also constrain politicians' capacity to negotiate and compromise, producing inefficiency and gridlock. This argument—that transparency inhibits compromise—is widely accepted, but rarely empirically tested. We develop a theoretical framework around the claim and evaluate it in the context of American state legislatures. We leverage temporal variation in state "sunshine law" adoptions and legislative exemptions to identify the effects of transparency on several observable indicators of compromise: legislative productivity, polarization, partisanship, policy change, and budget delay. Our analyses generally do not support the argument; we mostly report precisely estimated negligible effects. Thus, transparency may not be the hindrance to policy making that conventional wisdom suggests. Effective governance appears possible in state legislatures even under public scrutiny.