Spreading Influence Through Weak Ties: Cosponsorship, Legislative Networks, and Bill Success in Fragmented Congresses

• Author: Natán Skigin
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12224
• Published date: 01 May 2019
• Date: 01 May 2019

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LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, 44, 2, May 2019

DOI: 10.1111/lsq.12224

NATÁN SKIGI N

University of Notre Dame

Spreading Influence Through Weak

Ties: Cosponsorship, Legislative

Networks, and Bill Success in

Fragmented Congresses

Literature on legislative success tends to focus on independent variables

of which lawmakers have scarce control. This article analyzes instead how leg-

islators’ strategies affect their success in Congress. I posit that while weak ties

between congresspeople are the most useful in increasing success in the cham-

ber of origin under majoritarian settings, they do not raise the likelihood of bill

approval in the second chamber or in plurality-led legislatures. Building on a data

set that contains all bills proposed to the Argentine Congress between 1983 and

2007, results support these context-dependence hypotheses. I then use data from

the Uruguayan Congress (1995–2010) to explore how the argument plays out in

a Latin American legislature with weaker gatekeeping rules (i.e., an “open sky”

legislature). Findings help gain insight into the strategies used in environments

different from that of the widely studied U.S. Congress.

Introduc tion

How do legislators collaborate with one another to increase

legislative success? Interacting in a socially constructed environ-

ment (the Congress) with their fellows, legislators are strategic

actors who pursue three main goals: realize political ambitions,

enhance pre stige, and approve their favorite public policies (Fenno

1973). However, most studies that attempt to explain legislative

success concentrate on variables members of Congress (MCs)

have little—if any—control of, such as the institutional rules, the

share of seats their bloc controls, the number of governors their

party controls, the ideological proximity with the median voter

of the majority party, and the public image they or the president

have. Instead, little attention has been paid to strategies designed

© 2018 Washing ton University in St. Louis

240 Natán Skigin

by legislators to advance their own bills in multiparty contexts

with disparate gatekeeping institutions wherein the largest party

may lose the majority.

In this art icle, I expand on the research on legislators’ st rate-

gies to push thei r own proposals through fragmented C ongresses.

I amend and draw upon the theory of influence diffusion, which

points out that by building a weak tie with a colleague who has

many strong connections, a lawmaker can gain ac cess to a clique

of new supporters, probabilistically increasing his or her chances

of legislative success (Kirkland 2011). Only tested in the U.S.

Congress and state l egislatures, the theory lac ks enough variation

to specify the circumstances under which weak ties—defined as

infrequent collaborations—among congresspeople may improve

their success. By looking beyond the United States, I first argue

that the usefulness of weak ties is contextdependent: Such con-

nections demonstrate t heir comparative advantage only when the

largest party controls the majority of seats. Nevertheless, in plu-

rality-led Congre sses—a recur rent setting in multiparty pre siden-

tial systems—their utility disappears because legislators connect

with peers who are in turn less powerful than in majority-con-

trolled environments. Second, weak linkages are powerful tools

that MCs can employ to pass legislation in committee and on the

plenary f loor of their own chamber, though not in the other one,

since congresspeople hardly have influence over the other cham-

ber’s decisions. As strongly tied legislators often hold authority

positions, I also contend that weak connections with them pro-

vide greater levera ge in Congresses with strong gatekeepi ng insti-

tutions. In contrast, thei r benefits falter in unreg ulated legislative

environments, where senior party members of the largest party

lack the prerogatives to regulate the flow of legislation in com-

mittee and on the plenary floor.

Taking advantage of recently developed statistical tools and

using cosponsorsh ip data from the Argentine and the Uruguayan

Congresses, I build legislative networks that show how often law-

makers collaborate with each other by cosigning different initia-

tives. In doing so, it is possible to ac count not only for the number

of strong and weak ties each legislator establishes, but also for

the secondary connections that derive from such ties. It is then

feasible to estimate the ties’ inf luence on legislative success both

at committee and plenary levels.

These and derived hypotheses are initially tested through a

large-N statistical analysis of all the bills initiated between 1983