About this Event
Parties build electorally-beneficial brands through legislative cohesion. But getting to "yes" often produces divisive intra-party debates as illustrated by the cliches "Democrats in Disarray" and "Republican Civil War." We argue that institutional power undermines message discipline---the ability of co-partisans to say the same things about the same issues. Congressional majorities may agree on broad goals, but individuals must compromise and promote specific legislation. Presidents place issues on the agenda co-partisans must defend. Dis-empowered parties, by contrast, can simply oppose. To test our theory, we develop a novel, text-based measure of message discipline in House and Senate floor speeches (1973--2016) using topic models and contextual embeddings. We find that non-presidential minorities exercise stronger message discipline than presidential majorities, and on-message lawmakers are less effective legislators. However, the House majority's procedural power offsets these disadvantages. Our results deepen our understanding of congressional message politics, with implications for perceived polarization and thermostatic backlash. (co-authored with Gechun Lin, WUSTL)
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Price School, 308 Lewis Hall, 650 Childs Way, Los Angeles, United States
USD 0.00