Lower-Stakes Legislative Collaborations, Ethnicity, and Gender

• Published date: 01 December 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129241258728
• Author: William O’Brochta
• Date: 01 December 2024

Article

Political Research Quarterly

2024, Vol. 77(4) 1081–1095

© The Author(s) 2024

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129241258728

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Lower-Stakes Legislative Collaborations,

Ethnicity, and Gender

William O’Brochta

Abstract

How do legislators decide with whom to collaborate? I argue that legislative collaborations are shaped by ethnicity

and gender, with legislators from dominant ethnic groups and men legislators having more opportunities to

collaborate than non-dominant legislators. These dynamics are likely present even when the nature of the

collaboration is not particularly electorally salient. I test this hypothesis using newly collected data on question-

asking from local legislators in Delhi. Dominant caste men legislators tend to dominate question-asking collab-

orations as expected, with men legislators consistently having more collaboration opportunities. The results

suggest that legislative power dynamics are present even in lower-stakes interactions and may mean that simply

encouraging additional legislator collaborations does not address underlying discriminatory patterns in how

dominant legislators select their collaborators.

Keywords

representation, complaint resolution, grievances, India

Industrial business license regulations rarely make the

news.

1

Yet two legislators in Delhi asked the local

government bureaucracy to change their license regu-

lation policies so “that no industrial unit…should be

sealed without an advance notice of 15 days”(Question

12405). Why did these legislators collaborate to ask this

question? Electoral incentives help to guide many as-

pects of legislator behavior. Thus, when electoral in-

centives are high, legislators make decisions based on

what they think is electorally popular. In contexts where

ethnicity and gender are salient identities, the result is

that legislators may be reluctant to collaborate with one

another, especially across ethnic or gender lines. Other

actions that legislators take—like this example of

asking questions to bureaucrats—provide an opportu-

nity for lower-stakes collaboration due primarily to

their reduced electoral salience. When faced with these

lower-stakes opportunities, do legislators overcome

gender and ethnic differences and collaborate across

groups?

Legislators make decisions that help them maintain

power and win re-election, and collaboration can help to

support this objective. I def‌ine a legislative collaboration

as a legislative job duty that two or more legislators

perform jointly. Legislative job duties are off‌icial actions

that legislators can take. This includes sponsoring

legislation, speaking in the legislature, holding committee

seats, and—in this context—asking questions to bu-

reaucrats. Importantly, legislators must engage in the duty

jointly. As such, two legislators who happen to be in the

same place at the same time are not collaborating because

they do not engage in the job duty together. Further, a

collaboration like co-planning a campaign event is not

included because such an event is not a legislative job

duty. These events are excluded because it is diff‌icult to

capture the universe of cases of non-legislative

collaborations.

Co-sponsorship is a common legislative collaboration

used to achieve legislative goals, and legislators tend to

use weak ties with other legislators as a mechanism for

encouraging them to co-sponsor legislation (Crisp,

Kanthak, and Leijonhufvud 2004;Kirkland 2011;

Skigin 2019). Characteristics like party membership

(Alem´

an and Calvo 2013) and electoral system (Clark and

Caro 2013) set boundaries around the group of legislators

Texas Lutheran University, Seguin, TX, USA

Corresponding Author:

William O’Brochta, Texas Lutheran University, 1000 West Court

Street, Seguin, TX 78155, USA.

Email: wobrochta@tlu.edu