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6. There’s No Such Thing as Too Much Information (in Legislative Politics)
- University of Michigan Press
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146 chapter 6 There’s No Such Thing as Too Much Information (in Legislative Politics) Caucuses are generally headed up and they’re actually driven by whoever are the chairs and the cochairs, and they’re the people that you can count on to go to for information, for contacts, to pull briefings together on these kinds of issues , to know where some of the best resources on these pieces of information are. And that’s I think why [a member of Congress] enjoys being a member of a lot of caucuses. Because it just kind of helps us maximize our resources when you have such a limited number of staff. I mean, House members have excruciatingly small staffs. (Respondent 31) Our analyses of the legislative member organization (LMO) networks in the European Parliament (EP) and the U.S. Congress confirm that LMO ties are bridging ties that connect legislators who, in the absence of LMOs, would be less connected to each other. Such networks facilitate the flow of policy-relevant information in legislative politics. Showing that LMO networks are structured in such a way that they should facilitate the flow of information does not, however, demonstrate that they indeed fulfill this function in legislative politics. This chapter, therefore, investigates the informational role of LMOs. We begin by examining information flow inside the legislature—that is, between legislators themselves and between their offices. Our interview data offer evidence for the exchange of both policy and political information . This exchange of information relates to policy proposals on which legislators are actively working as well as attempts either to help set the legislative agenda or to keep an issue or cause on lawmakers’ radar. LMOs thus serve as educators on both current issues and potential future concerns. Our respondents again see the relative informality of LMOs—compared to legislative committees, for example—as an asset, highlighting this characteristic when they discuss LMOs’ relational benefits (see chapter 5). LMOs, There's No Such Thing as Too Much Information 147 they maintain, provide arenas where honest discussions between members of different parties and committees may take place and where participants can exchange ideas in the absence of party competition or predetermined ideological battle lines. Some differences exist in terms of internal information exchange, however—for example, there is greater reliance on LMO meetings for the distribution of information in the EP, whereas Congress prefers written materials disseminated via email. We also find that the exchange of political information, as opposed to policy information, is more prevalent in the EP than in Congress, a finding that makes sense in a political setting where cross-party coalitions are needed to pass legislation. Information exchange in LMOs extends beyond the legislative arena itself because many LMOs maintain privileged relationships with specific outside organizations that are institutionalized in joint LMO activities and regular interaction between key staff both inside and outside the chamber. Outside advocates play two critical roles in the LMO systems in both Brussels and Washington: They provide legislative subsidies to LMOs and their members and supply them with political and policy information. We consider the relationships between LMOs and outside advocates in the second part of this chapter, focusing on both the legislative subsidies outsiders provide and the exchange of policy-relevant information. We focus in particular on incentives for outside advocates to provide high-utility information. These incentives revolve around legislators’ ability to triangulate and thus double-check information they receive from the outside; the high levels of internal social embeddedness in single-LMO networks; and outsiders’ fear that legislators might take away their privileged access should they provide redundant or even misleading information. In sum, LMOs increase the likelihood that high-utility information enters the legislative realm and is then efficiently diffused through internal information networks. We begin this chapter by examining the exchange of information through LMO networks inside the EP and Congress. Next, we discuss how the personal commitment of LMO leaders and the involvement of outside actors in LMOs help keep the costs of LMOs low from the point of view of individual participants. The inclusion of outside advocates and the privileged , institutionalized access LMOs provide are also important from an informational point of view, so we examine patterns of information flow between insiders and outsiders. We close this chapter by investigating in more detail our propositions about the flow of high-utility information from the outside in. [44.220.43.170] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 11:05 GMT...