Influence in State Legislatures

• In Event: Poster Session: Comparative Politics II & State Politics and Policy
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: State Politics and Policy

Abstract

Which state legislators are influential in attracting their colleagues’ support on bills? Under what conditions do influential legislators operate and what qualities do they share across states? Actors whose support or opposition to legislation attracts or deters their colleagues, so-called influential legislators, are key figures in American state legislatures, as they help alleviate the widespread information problems present in most lawmaking bodies by signaling to their colleagues how to vote. Thus, accurately identifying these influential legislators is important for understanding the operation of state legislatures.

Legislative influence is a well-studied topic in American political institutions, however extant research has failed to adequately address these questions due to the methodological limitations. This paper uses NetInf, a recently developed algorithm from computer science (Gomez-Rodriguez et al., 2010), to identify influential legislators and their cue-takers in cosponsorship networks by isolating actors whose support of a bill motivates subsequent support from other legislators. Using data from the OpenStates cosponsorship repository, I hope to explore legislative influence across lower houses in several American states.

Author

• Hannah Wilson, University of Notre Dame