The rise of partisanship and super-cooperators in the U.S. House of Representatives

It is widely reported that partisanship in the United States Congress is at an historic high. Given that individuals are persuaded to follow party lines while having the opportunity and incentives to collaborate with members of the opposite party, our goal is to measure the extent to which legislato...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2015-04, Vol.10 (4), p.e0123507-e0123507
Main Authors: Andris, Clio, Lee, David, Hamilton, Marcus J, Martino, Mauro, Gunning, Christian E, Selden, John Armistead
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bills
Congressional elections
Cooperation
Cooperative Behavior
Election results
Federal Government
Geography
Humans
Ideology
Incentives
Legislation
Methods
Partisanship
Political parties
Political representation
Politics
Public Opinion
United States
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Summary:It is widely reported that partisanship in the United States Congress is at an historic high. Given that individuals are persuaded to follow party lines while having the opportunity and incentives to collaborate with members of the opposite party, our goal is to measure the extent to which legislators tend to form ideological relationships with members of the opposite party. We quantify the level of cooperation, or lack thereof, between Democrat and Republican Party members in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1949-2012. We define a network of over 5 million pairs of representatives, and compare the mutual agreement rates on legislative decisions between two distinct types of pairs: those from the same party and those formed of members from different parties. We find that despite short-term fluctuations, partisanship or non-cooperation in the U.S. Congress has been increasing exponentially for over 60 years with no sign of abating or reversing. Yet, a group of representatives continue to cooperate across party lines despite growing partisanship.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0123507