Birds of a feather: legislative caucuses bring together like-minded lawmakers and help create ways to work across the political divide.

• Author: Weiss, Suzanne
• Position: LEGISLATURES

Following a tradition thought to be as old as state legislatures themselves, a handful of Texas House freshmen in 2013 created a mechanism to work together, across party lines, to advance a shared agenda.

The members of the Young Texans Legislative Caucus, all of whom were under age 40, were focused on issues important to their generation and the next, from college affordability to entrepreneurship to natural resources management.

Today, with just two sessions under its belt, the 32-member caucus has put together a string of modest but notable successes. Among them are bills that expand the use of crowdfunding for small businesses, create incentives to use alternative fuels and encourage financial institutions to establish branches in parts of Texas that are "banking deserts." The caucus also pushed successfully for a bill mandating that public universities strengthen policies on campus sexual assaults, and another requiring hospitals to give parents of newborns safety information that includes a warning against leaving children in hot cars.

"Nearly six in 10 Texans are 40 years of age or younger, and that demographic definitely deserves to have a stronger voice in our legislative deliberations," says Representative Eric Johnson (D), who co-founded the caucus. "When I looked at the makeup of the House, I realized we had a solid core of younger members on both sides of the aisle that we could organize around to get some things done."

Always on the Scene

Affiliations of like-minded lawmakers are nothing new, says Peverill Squire, a University of Missouri political science professor and an expert on American legislatures. "Caucuses have probably always been part of the legislative scene," he says, and they have endured for a simple reason: "Their members see value in them."

Squire cited a couple of ways in which caucuses benefit individual legislators and invigorate the policymaking process.

First, they provide a mechanism to "circulate information and collectively develop ideas, including ideas that, for one reason or another, committees won't take up," Squire says. "They provide a chance for things to gain traction." In this way, caucuses "serve as alternative routes, as a challenge to existing structures and as a competing source of power to established leadership."

Membership in a caucus also helps legislators "send a signal to their constituents that an issue is important to them," he says. And because they are generally bipartisan, caucuses can serve as a countervailing force to the polarization that increasingly afflicts legislative deliberations.

James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, agrees. "Caucuses allow legislators to sidestep partisan conflicts and coalesce around issue areas," he says.

Consider, for example, the experience of two members of the Louisiana Legislature's Acadiana Caucus--Senator Dan "Blade"...