ABSTRACT

While cosponsorship is a useful tool for cosponsors, what is its impact on the bill? Adapting the mathematical concept of directed transportation networks for the American Congressional context, we suggest cosponsorship’s impact on a bill comes in the form of an ideological signal. We offer a model of policymaking where ideological “weight” is added to bills each time legislators sign on as cosponsors. In addition to policy substance, the bill’s final position in ideological space may also be considered as a function of all collaborators (i.e., initial sponsor and cosponsors). We conclude by extending and applying our model to two bills from the 115th U.S. House. Results comport with our model’s expectations, suggesting we are capturing ideological signals from cosponsorship.

摘要

虽然共同赞助对于共同赞助者来说是一个有用的工具，但它对法案的影响是什么？根据美国国会背景调整定向交通网络的数学概念，我们建议共同提案对法案的影响以意识形态信号的形式出现。我们提供了一个决策模型，每次立法者签署共同提案国时，意识形态“权重”都会被添加到法案中。除了政策实质，该法案在意识形态空间中的最终地位也可以被视为所有合作者（即最初发起人和共同发起人）的功能。最后，我们将我们的模型扩展并应用于美国第 115 众议院的两项法案。结果符合我们模型的预期，表明我们正在从共同赞助中捕捉意识形态信号。