TY - JOUR
T1 - The rise of partisanship and super-cooperators in the U.S. House of Representatives
AU - Andris, Clio
AU - Lee, David
AU - Hamilton, Marcus J.
AU - Martino, Mauro
AU - Gunning, Christian E.
AU - Selden, John Armistead
N1 - Funding Information:
The data reported in this paper are from Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, via Thomas Online Library of Congress as accessed through Govtrak. We thank the John Templeton Foundation, MIT Senseable City Lab, National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship, and the Rockefeller Institute. Authors acknowledge our four helpful reviewers and two academic editors, especially Dr. Rodrigo Huerta-Quintanilla. We would like to thank Thomas Ding and Wei Luo for assistance with data collection; Brian King, Luis M.A. Bettencourt and Chris Wood for discussions; and Nathan Frey, Leon Andris, and Deryck Holdsworth for advisory assistance with content editing.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Andris et al.
PY - 2015/4/21
Y1 - 2015/4/21
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
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U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0123507
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0123507
M3 - Article
C2 - 25897956
AN - SCOPUS:84928242564
VL - 10
JO - PLoS One
JF - PLoS One
SN - 1932-6203
IS - 4
M1 - e0123507
ER -