The Role of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Congressional Cosponsorship Network

Previous research indicates that race, ethnicity, and gender influence legislative behavior in important ways. The bulk of this research, however, focuses on the way these characteristics shape an individual legislator’s behavior, making it less clear how they account for relationships between legislators. We study the cosponsorship process in order to understand the race and gender based dynamics underlying the relational component of representation. Using a temporal exponential random graph model, we examine the U.S. House cosponsorship network from 1981 through 2004. We find that Black and Latino members of Congress are at a comparative disadvantage as a result of race-based assortative mixing in the cosponsorship process, yet this disadvantage is mitigated by the electoral pressures that all members face. Members representing districts with significant racial and ethnic minority populations are more likely to support their minority colleagues. We also find that women members do not appear to face a similar disadvantage as a result of their minority status. We argue that these race and gender dynamics in the cosponsorship network are the result of both the inherent tendency towards intra-group homophily in social networks and the electoral connection, which is manifested here as members supporting minority colleagues to broaden their own electoral base of support among minority constituencies. ∗[email protected] †[email protected] ‡[email protected] §[email protected] ¶[email protected] 1 ar X iv :1 51 2. 06 14 1v 1 [ st at .A P] 1 8 D ec 2 01 5 The 114th Congress was heralded as the most diverse Congress in history, yet it remains disproportionately white and male when compared to the population of the United States. Of the 535 members of Congress who took office in 2015, 104 were women and 96 were racial or ethnic minorities. The disproportionately white and male membership of the United States Congress has important implications for how women and minorities are represented, as has been described by a multitude of scholars (e.g. Baker and Cook 2005; Canon 1999; Hero and Tolbert 1995; Mansbridge 1999; ?). However, in addition to being a problem for descriptive representation, this underrepresentation of minorities in Congress has potential implications for how effective they can be as legislators. For a legislator to be effective, collaboration and coalition-building are key. Members of Congress must rely on others to advance their agendas, from gathering cosponsors to ensuring a bill has enough votes to pass. Building a broad coalition usually means reaching across the aisle in the search for collaborators (Fenno 1989). However, Congress is a close-knit and social human institution. As such, we expect to observe tendencies toward intra-group homophily, in which members of a group display a preference for associating with other members of the same group. This tendency, often described as “birds of a feather flock together,” is prevalent across social networks in a variety of contexts, from friendship groups to schools and businesses (Goodreau, Kitts and Morris 2008; Mollica, Gray and Trevino 2003; Ruef, Aldrich and Carter 2003) and most commonly manifests as association with others of the same race or ethnicity (McPherson, Smith-Lovin and Cook 2001). Intra-group homophily has the potential to pose a particular problem in the legislative arena as it may negatively affect the ability of minority members to build support for their legislation. If members of Congress draw support predominantly from colleagues of the same race, ethnicity, or gender, then minority members are disadvantaged first by their While this is a marked increase from the 56 who were women and 68 who were racial or ethnic minorities twenty years ago, women and minorities remain significantly underrepresented in the United States Congress. Blacks comprise 13% of the US population, but only 8.5% of Congress. Latinos comprise 17% of the population, but only 7% of Congress. The disparity is largest for women, who make up 51% of the population, but only 20% of the representatives in Congress.