The Conditional Lawmaking Benefits of Party Faction Membership in Congress

• Published date: 01 March 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129231196566
• Author: Andrew J. Clarke,Craig Volden,Alan E. Wiseman
• Date: 01 March 2024
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Political Research Quarterly

2024, Vol. 77(1) 121–136

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129231196566

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The Conditional Lawmaking Benef‌its of

Party Faction Membership in Congress

Andrew J. Clarke

1

, Craig Volden

2

, and Alan E. Wiseman

3



Abstract

Does joining a party faction in Congress enhance or undermine a member’s lawmaking effectiveness? Prior research

suggests that factions can help members electorally in signaling their distinct ideological positions to potential political

supporters. By contrast, we examine the nine largest ideological caucuses over the past quarter century to test three

hypotheses about the conditional lawmaking benef‌its of faction membership: (1) that benef‌its from faction membership

are limited to those in the minority party; (2) that members of ideologically centrist factions gain the greatest benef‌its; and

(3) that sizable factions exploit their pivotal positions to help their members achieve legislative victories. We f‌ind support

for only the f‌irst of these three conjectures, consistent with the argument that factions offer valua ble resources to those

in the minority party and that majority-party leaders counter the proposals arising from their own party’s factions. The

fact that faction membership offers no signif‌icant lawmaking benef‌it to majority-party legislators challenges convent ional

wisdom.

Keywords

Congress, factions, caucuses, legislative effectiveness

For more than 200 years, nearly all elected representatives

in the U.S. Congress have aff‌iliated with at least one

political party. Yet parties and their brands do not serve all

members of Congress equally well. Seeking to differen-

tiate themselves from the party line, or even to shift their

party’s positions, some lawmakers have developed or

joined organized party factions (i.e., Thomsen 2017).

Similar to the parties within which they are housed, these

factions (formally referred to as intraparty caucuses) have

become a common feature of the contemporary Congress,

and their leaders have become increasingly visible and

vocal. These factions collectively map onto a sizable share

of seats in the U.S. House. In the 115th Congress (2017–

18), for example, 81% of the voting Representatives were

members of one of nine intraparty factions. The sheer

number of Members of Congress who voluntarily choose

to associate with these factions suggests that membership

must be valuable; but in what ways?

Some have argued that factions primarily provide

electoral advantages to their members. Faction-aff‌iliated

lawmakers may be able to signal their partisan type, which

might be valuable to constituents and donors. When a

newly-elected Representative joins the Blue Dog Coali-

tion, for example, she can credibly communicate her

views on budgetary politics to potential supporters, even

before she cast any votes. Joining a faction can also

provide access to tailor-made networks of political do-

nors, connections to inf‌luential political activist organi-

zations, and custom-curated advice on how to run

reelection campaigns. In other words, Representatives

might be drawn to legislative factions because they fa-

cilitate access to electorally valuable resources beyond the

halls of Congress.

By contrast, factions are often described as being

important because of the plausible legislative benef‌its they

can offer to prospective members. At the collective level,

factions might serve their members’needs by helping to

set the legislative agenda and/or by ensuring that certain

bills pass (or fail to pass) the chamber. At the individual

level, faction membership might provide legislators with

1

Department of Government & Law, Lafayette College, Easton, PA, USA

2

Frank Batten School, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA

3

Department of Political Science, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN,

USA

Corresponding Author:

Alan E. Wiseman, Department of Political Science, Vanderbilt

University, PMB 0505, 230 Appleton Place, Nashville, TN 37203-5721,

USA.

Email: alan.wiseman@vanderbilt.edu

access to additional legislative staff resources and policy

expertise, to help them advance their bills through the

lawmaking process. While scholars have explored the

evolution of particular party factions (e.g., Bloch Rubin

2017;Green 2019), and party factions more generally

(e.g., Koger, Masket, and Noel 2009), to analyze their

roles in the legislative process, much of this literature has

focused on the scope of the collective organizational

benef‌its and individual electoral benef‌its that follow from

faction aff‌iliation, rather than whether there are any

individual-level lawmaking benef‌its that accompany

faction aff‌iliation.

Bluntly stated, it is not clear whether joining an in-

traparty faction contributes to, or detracts from, the

lawmaking success of those members who seek to ad-

vance their own (individual) legislative agendas; and (in

contrast) there are many reasons to suspect that any

individual-level benef‌its are largely electoral in nature. To

understand whether there is, indeed, any lawmaking

impact associated with faction membership, we begin by

considering the potential for factions—at the aggregate

level—to advance or obstruct the progress of bills. This

initial approach helps us to motivate three testable hy-

potheses regarding policy advancement that are rooted in

conventional wisdom, journalistic accounts, and aca-

demic insights about congressional lawmaking. First, we

consider the power and resources of factions relative to the

parties in which they are embedded; specif‌ically, we

evaluate whether faction members experience legislative

advantages only when their party is relegated to minority-

party status. Second, we explore whether faction members

benef‌it if their faction is well-positioned ideologically.

Third, we raise the possibility that faction inf‌luence is

conditional on faction size.

For each of these three hypotheses, factionmembership

offers lawmaking benef‌its only whencertain conditions are

met. By examining the members of the nine largest ideo-

logical caucusesin the U.S. House of Representatives over

24 years (1995–2018), we are able to isolate each of these

conditions, and to determine when caucus members gain

greater or lesser lawmaking success through their caucus

membership. Our method of analysis employs a f‌ixed ef-

fects estimation strategy, and yields support for the f‌irst

hypothesis. Specif‌ically, we f‌ind that aff‌iliation with a

minority-party faction tends to increase legislators’law-

making effectiveness relative to comparable, unaff‌iliated

legislators; but such a boost does not emerge for majority-

party factionmembers. We f‌ind no evidence for our second

or third hypotheses, which runs counter to the alternative

theoreticalarguments suggestingthat individuallawmaking

benef‌its of faction membership should be correlated with

their ideological positions or their sizes.

Contrary to the extensive media attention given to

factions and their proposals, the overall null effect we

uncover for faction members (and particularly those in the

majority party) is quite surprising and suggests that the

electoral role of factions—especially among majority

party members—may be more important than prior re-

search suggests. The size and ideological positions of

party factions do not matter for their members’legislative

effectiveness, per se. Rather, factions are most likely to be

inf‌luential in advancing their members’lawmaking goals

when the parties in which they reside are most disad-

vantaged in the legislative process, due to their minority

status. These f‌indings have important implications for our

understanding of party organizations in Congress, and

they are also of practical value to members of Congress,

who might question the value of joining a faction to

advance their own lawmaking goals.

Factions in the American Political System

As alluded to above, a small but important literature has

emerged that analyzes party sub-groups in Congress.

Much of this research has considered how factions have

worked to reshape their parties and reform the political

institutions in which they operate (e.g., Baer 2017,2023;

Bloch Rubin 2013;DiSalvo 2012); Sin (2015) provides a

comprehensive overview of the scope of intra-party di-

visions across the history of the U.S. Congress; and

several scholars (e.g., Jenkins and Monroe 2014;Lucas

and Deutchman 2007;Medvic 2007;Seo and Theriault

2012) have studied how ideologically centrist groups of

legislators inf‌luence policy outcomes. At the individual

faction level, the Tea Party Republicans have attracted the

greatest scholarly attention (e.g., Bailey, Mummolo, and

Noel 2012;Blum 2020;Ragusa and Gaspar 2016;

Skocpol and Williamson 2012).

Taken together, this literature has suggested that

American party factions closely mirror the structure and

practices of conventional political parties in government.

Factions are hierarchical organizations, featuring elected

leadership positions, whip systems, task forces, and

communication directors. Faction leaders direct full-time

staffers and coordinate the faction’s procedural and rhe-

torical strategies. As such, modern ideological factions

have evolved to garner inf‌luence outside of the constraints

imposed by a two-party electoral system.

Indeed, in certain cases, factions appear to actually

impose greater constraints on their rank-and-f‌ile members

than do their parent party organizations. Factions screen

candidates on a number of criteria—particularly

ideology—before a thorough vetting and sponsorship

process can be completed. Some groups employ osten-

sibly binding rules to improve faction unity; and indi-

viduals who frequently defy these supermajoritarian

requirements (e.g., the Freedom Caucus’s“80% rule”)

may be removed from the faction.

1

Hence, unlike political

122 Political Research Quarterly 77(1)