Majority Status and Variation in Informational Organization

Abstract

In order to maintain its policy cartel, the majority party requires information to recognize good policy and sufficient votes to realize it. There is ample research demonstrating the majority's ability to mobilize votes, but no empirical research examining its ability to facilitate efficient information transmission. Here, I investigate differences between the majority and minority in maintaining an informational organization (representative committee delegations that share their information with their co-partisans) and examine the effects of this organization on expressed legislative uncertainty. By analyzing comprehensive new data on the legislative behavior of over 2,500 representatives in 14 jurisdictions from the 84th-108th Houses, I find that the majority is most often able to maintain representative committee contingents, but the minority is not. Further, the majority is able to induce its non-representative delegations to be informative, however, certain types of outlying contingents in the minority significantly increase the policy uncertainty of their co-partisans. Finally, I conclude that, in the aggregate, the majority's informational organization is far superior to that of the minority and this may have electoral implications.