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  Political alliance Formation and cooperation networks in the Utah state legislature

Davis, C. A., Redhead, D., & Macfarlan, S. J. (2022). Political alliance Formation and cooperation networks in the Utah state legislature. Human Nature, 33, 1-21. doi:10.1007/s12110-021-09420-w.

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Davis, Connor A., Author
Redhead, Daniel1, Author                 
Macfarlan, Shane J., Author
Affiliations:
1Department of Human Behavior Ecology and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Max Planck Society, ou_2173689              

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Free keywords: Cooperation · Homophily · Legislatures · Political alliances · Reciprocity · Social networks
 Abstract: Social network analysis has become an increasingly important tool among political scientists for understanding legislative cooperation in modern, democratic nation-states. Recent research has demonstrated the influence that group affinity (homophily) and mutual exchanges (reciprocity) have in structuring political relationships. However, this literature has typically focused on political cooperation where costs are low, relationships are not exclusive, and/or partisan competition is high. Patterns of legislative behavior in alternative contexts are less clear and remain largely unexamined. Here, we compare theoretical expectations of cooperation in these contexts from the political and biosocial sciences and implement the first assessment of political alliance formation in a novel legislative environment where costs to cooperation are high and party salience low. We implement a stochastic actor-oriented model (SAOM) to examine bill floor sponsorship, a process in which a “floor sponsor” becomes the exclusive advocate for a colleague’s piece of legislation, in the Utah state legislature from 2005 to 2008—a context in which gender (male) and political party (Republican) supermajorities exist. We find that (1) party and gender homophily predict who legislators recruit as floor sponsors, whereas seniority does not, and (2) legislators frequently engage in reciprocal exchanges of floor sponsorship. In addition, whereas gender homophily increases the likelihood of reciprocity, party homophily decreases it. Our findings suggest that when the cost of cooperation is high, political actors use in-group characteristics for initiating alliances, but once a cooperative relationship is established with an out-group political member, it is reinforced through repeated exchanges. These findings may be useful for understanding the rise of political polarization and gridlock in democracies internationally.

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Language(s): eng - English
 Dates: 2022-02-172022
 Publication Status: Issued
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 Rev. Type: Peer
 Identifiers: DOI: 10.1007/s12110-021-09420-w
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Title: Human Nature
Source Genre: Journal
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Pages: - Volume / Issue: 33 Sequence Number: - Start / End Page: 1 - 21 Identifier: ISSN: 1045-6767
ISSN: 1936-4776