title: The rise of partisanship and super-cooperators in the U.S. House of Representatives.
abstract: It is widely reported that partisanship in the United States Congress is at an historic high. Given that individuals are persuaded to follow party lines while having the opportunity and incentives to collaborate with members of the opposite party, our goal is to measure the extent to which legislators tend to form ideological relationships with members of the opposite party. We quantify the level of cooperation, or lack thereof, between Democrat and Republican Party members in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1949-2012. We define a network of over 5 million pairs of representatives, and compare the mutual agreement rates on legislative decisions between two distinct types of pairs: those from the same party and those formed of members from different parties. We find that despite short-term fluctuations, partisanship or non-cooperation in the U.S. Congress has been increasing exponentially for over 60 years with no sign of abating or reversing. Yet, a group of representatives continue to cooperate across party lines despite growing partisanship.
authors.affiliation: Department of Geography, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, United States of America.
authors.forename: Clio
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Andris
authors.affiliation: Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America; Senseable City Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.affiliation: Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States of America; School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, United States of America.
authors.forename: Marcus J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Hamilton
authors.affiliation: IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America.
authors.forename: Mauro
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Martino
authors.affiliation: Department of Entomology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, United States of America.
authors.forename: Christian E
authors.initials: CE
authors.lastname: Gunning
authors.affiliation: United States Senate Budget Committee, Washington, District of Columbia, United States of America.
authors.forename: John Armistead
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Selden
mesh_terms: D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D035082:Federal Government; D006801:Humans; D011057:Politics; D011639:Public Opinion; D014481:United States