Bridging the Information Gap: Legislative Member Organizations as Social Networks in the United States and the European Union

1. Bridging the Information Gap: The Social and Political Power of Legislative Member Organizations

chapter 1 Bridging the Information Gap: The Social and Political Power of Legislative Member Organizations In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, a number of lawmakers and commentators put forward a short-lived and ultimately unsuccessful proposal that the U.S. Congress have the option to do its work remotely—a “virtual Congress,” they called it (R. Cohen 2002). The proposal was fueled in part by widespread speculation that the target of one of the hijacked airplanes might have been the White House or the U.S. Capitol; however, a number of members of Congress raised immediate and strong opposition to the suggestion, objecting to the loss of human interaction. Congressman David Dreier (R-CA), then chair of the House Rules Committee, wrote, As an organization, Congress functions in large part because of the regular and personal interactions among Members as they work to build consensus on issues ranging from procedural matters to the budget and appropriations legislation. (2001, 8) Dreier and others recognized the great value in the personal relationships among lawmakers. However, lawmaking has changed dramatically over the past 50 years. Across different legislatures and parliaments, lawmakers find they have fewer opportunities to interact personally with their colleagues because of busy travel schedules and because face-to-face discussions are being replaced by electronic exchanges using smart phones and Internetbased communication. In the United States, for example, many members of Congress are part of the “Tuesday to Thursday” club—that is, they tend to be in Washington for only a few days midweek and to spend the remainder 2 bridging the information gap of their time in their districts (Mann and Ornstein 2006, 169). Such developments have raised concerns about a decline in civil interaction in legislative politics (Uslaner 1993) because “personal relationships, face-to-face negotiations, building of trust and reciprocity in human behavior on the Hill necessitates being together in one room” (James Thurber quoted in Keller 2001, A1). While personal connections and contacts are often significant in determining the outcome of political events, the creation and maintenance of such relationships and social networks and the specific benefits they provide are not well understood. Lawmakers are notoriously busy people who are always pressed for time and whose attention is constantly sought. They also face countless collective action and coordination problems in their pursuit of policy, power, and electoral victories. What mechanisms do lawmakers have to help overcome these collective action and coordination problems and develop useful networks with fellow lawmakers and relevant outside actors? The obvious answers discussed in the literature are institutional leadership, party organizations, legislative committees, and the seniority system, among other institutions (for overviews, see Shepsle and Bonchek 1997; Stewart 2001). But do these institutions sufficiently satisfy lawmakers’ need to build and maintain the relationships that are imperative to the lawmaking process? In this volume, we argue that legislative member organizations (LMOs) are often-overlooked institutions that help to connect lawmakers in a loose web of relationships that enable vital information to flow efficiently through lawmaking bodies. These LMOs serve a utilitarian purpose, are common throughout the world, and are woefully understudied. What Is a Legislative Member Organization? All decision-making bodies face a variety of coordination dilemmas. Scholars have written extensively about the formal institutions that legislatures have developed to help decision makers solve their coordination and collective action dilemmas. Legislative parties help large governing groups coordinate strategies and votes (Cox and McCubbins 1993, 2005). Committee systems promote division of labor and help legislators and parliamentarians develop policy expertise (Krehbiel 1991).1 However, numerous parliaments Bridging the Information Gap 3 and legislatures have created LMOs, an additional infrastructure that appears to provide a mechanism for overcoming collective action problems. In the U.S. Congress, for example, the number of LMOs has proliferated in recent years. Examples of LMOs (known in the United States as congressional member organizations or simply caucuses) include the Congressional Black Caucus, the Biomedical Research Caucus, the Congressional Arts Caucus, the Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues, the Older Americans Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and the Rural Health Care Coalition. LMOs in the European Parliament (EP), where they are called intergroups, have become a regular feature of internal politics and are used by parliamentary assistants and members of the European Parliament (MEPs) who seek to share information and shepherd legislation. Examples are the Sky and Space Intergroup, the Intergroup...