Some of My Best Friends Were MCs: Social Ties of Ex-members of Congress

• In Event: Competition among Political Elites from a Network Perspective

Abstract

Scholars of elite political behavior rarely have access to the sorts of data they would most like to collect. Those fortunate enough to have direct access to legislators may have the chance to interview a handful at best. For research questions involving relationships among elected officials such as members of Congress, we must typically settle for secondary variables as proxies for fundamental relationships of interest such as trust, respect, time spent together, or propensity to collaborate. For example, a substantial literature on cosponsorship emerged less out of a conviction that bill cosponsorship was a deeply meaningful official act and more out of an appreciation that records of cosponsored bills might be among the most reliable sources of relational data connecting members of Congress to one another. While research on legislative institutions has in recent years largely steered clear of examining individual-level and social behavior or of legislators themselves (aside from political communication where data are more abundant than ever), this is surely due more to the dearth of primary source data on MC social relations than a conviction that personal relationships don’t matter.

In the groundbreaking 2023 Former Members of Congress (FMC) Survey, we have collected responses and reflections from nearly 300 respondents who previously served in the U.S. House, Senate, or both chambers at various points between the 1960s and 2022. Among various items in the survey, respondents were asked to name other members of Congress to whom they felt closest during their terms. Around 250 listed the names of colleagues, from as few as one to as many as twenty-two, offering an opportunity for us to draw unparalleled insights into their social networks as members themselves recall them.

Our sample includes about 20 percent of living former Members of Congress, but all former members of Congress who served with our respondents—including those no longer alive—have the potential to be named as “alters” to whom a respondent reports having felt “close” while serving. Thus we place special emphasis on questions involving predictors of whether someone is named by a former colleague. For example, do those in positions of power (committee leaders and party leaders) have a higher rate of being selected, conditioning on other relevant covariates? Who are central nodes in terms of in-degree? Who are bridgers, selected across party lines, classes, and geographic regions? Despite incomplete information on dyads (whom the non-respondents would have selected), we are able to examine the tendency to reciprocate among named alters who are themselves respondents. We analyze whether the relationships that remain top of mind are reflective of documented working relationships (e.g high cosponsorship rates, shared caucuses, and committee membership). To what degree do other prominent attributes such as entering class and state delegation, play a role? And has the ideological diversity of those deemed closest to MCs decreased over time? Is nostalgia for lost bipartisanship reflected in one’s own reported network ties?

This thorough exploration of a unique data set will serve as a precursor to future examination of the relational sources of legislative decision-making and effectiveness.

Authors

• Justin H. Gross, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

• Jennifer Nicoll Victor, George Mason University

• David Karol, University of Maryland

• Alexander George Theodoridis, University of Massachusetts Amherst