Abstentions and Social Networks in Congress

Marco Battaglini, Valerio Leone Sciabolazza and Eleonora Patacchini

No 27822, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We study the extent to which personal connections among legislators influence abstentions in the U.S. Congress. Our analysis is conducted by observing representatives' abstention for the universe of roll call votes held on bills in the 109th-113th Congresses. Our results show that a legislator's propensity to abstain increases when the majority of his or her alumni connections abstains, even after controlling for other well-known predictors of abstention choices and a vast set of fixed effects. We further reveal that a legislator is more prone to abstain than to take sides when the demands from personal connections conflict with those of the legislator's party.

JEL-codes: D72 D74 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-net, nep-pol and nep-soc
Note: POL
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published as Marco Battaglini & Valerio Leone Sciabolazza & Eleonora Patacchini, 2023. "Abstentions and Social Networks in Congress," The Journal of Politics, vol 85(2), pages 581-592.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w27822.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Abstentions and Social Networks in Congress (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:27822

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w27822

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().