IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/osf/socarx/efnrq_v1.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Role of Connections in Congressional Lawmaking

Author

Listed:
  • Garro, Haritz

Abstract

Understanding what makes legislators effective is a central problem in the congressional literature. However, estimating how connections impact legislative effectiveness is challenging, as unobserved factors influence lawmakers’ effectiveness and connections. I investigate the role of connections in congressional lawmaking by studying how legislators’ deaths impact their peers’ capacity to sponsor and advance bills in the U.S. House of Representatives. I focus on legislators who represent the same states as deceased legislators: these lawmakers collaborated with the deceased more closely, but otherwise they are comparable to all other lawmakers. Following the death of a legislator from the same state, lawmakers suffer a 16% decrease in their effectiveness. The impacts are concentrated in the initial stages of lawmaking when the support of key lawmakers is crucial to ensure a bill is considered in committee. Moreover, same-state legislators experience a larger decrease in effectiveness after the death of a committee chair.

Suggested Citation

  • Garro, Haritz, 2020. "The Role of Connections in Congressional Lawmaking," SocArXiv efnrq_v1, Center for Open Science.
  • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:efnrq_v1
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/efnrq_v1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://osf.io/download/5f602890b9173402580a6883/
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.31219/osf.io/efnrq_v1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:efnrq_v1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: OSF (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://arabixiv.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.