The Influence of Personality on Issue Specialization in Congress

• In Event: Decision Making Among Political Elites

Abstract

Some legislators choose to actively focus time, resources, and effort to specialize in a single issue area, while others do not. To date, this distinction is not fully understood. I offer a theory explaining legislators’ choices regarding decisions to pursue specialization in specific issue areas. Through a variety of statistical techniques and an original measure of issue specialization over the 104th–113th Congresses, I demonstrate that legislators decide whether issue specialization is worth pursuing as a function of their unique personality traits. Results hold even after account- ing for traditional institutional explanatory factors and district compositions. Ultimately, while party leaders control access to opportunities to specialize via committee assignments, legislators vary widely in deciding whether to adapt to their unique committee contexts and actively specialize in the related issue area.

Author

• Philip D. Waggoner, University of Chicago