Community Structure in the United States House of Representatives

We investigate the networks of committee and subcommittee assignments in the United States House of Representatives from the 101st--108th Congresses, with the committees connected by ``interlocks'' or common membership. We examine the community structure in these networks using several methods, revealing strong links between certain committees as well as an intrinsic hierarchical structure in the House as a whole. We identify structural changes, including additional hierarchical levels and higher modularity, resulting from the 1994 election, in which the Republican party earned majority status in the House for the first time in more than forty years. We also combine our network approach with analysis of roll call votes using singular value decomposition to uncover correlations between the political and organizational structure of House committees.Comment: 44 pages, 13 figures (some with multiple parts and most in color), 9 tables, to appear in Physica A; new figures and revised discussion (including extra introductory material) for this versio

Community Structure in Congressional Cosponsorship Networks

We study the United States Congress by constructing networks between Members of Congress based on the legislation that they cosponsor. Using the concept of modularity, we identify the community structure of Congressmen, as connected via sponsorship/cosponsorship of the same legislation, to investigate the collaborative communities of legislators in both chambers of Congress. This analysis yields an explicit and conceptually clear measure of political polarization, demonstrating a sharp increase in partisan polarization which preceded and then culminated in the 104th Congress (1995-1996), when Republicans took control of both chambers. Although polarization has since waned in the U.S. Senate, it remains at historically high levels in the House of Representatives.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures (some with multiple parts), to appear in Physica A; additional background info and explanations added from last versio

Mining and Analyzing the Italian Parliament: Party Structure and Evolution

The roll calls of the Italian Parliament in the XVI legislature are studied by employing multidimensional scaling, hierarchical clustering, and network analysis. In order to detect changes in voting behavior, the roll calls have been divided in seven periods of six months each. All the methods employed pointed out an increasing fragmentation of the political parties endorsing the previous government that culminated in its downfall. By using the concept of modularity at different resolution levels, we identify the community structure of Parliament and its evolution in each of the considered time periods. The analysis performed revealed as a valuable tool in detecting trends and drifts of Parliamentarians. It showed its effectiveness at identifying political parties and at providing insights on the temporal evolution of groups and their cohesiveness, without having at disposal any knowledge about political membership of Representatives.Comment: 27 pages, 14 figure

Communities in Networks

We survey some of the concepts, methods, and applications of community detection, which has become an increasingly important area of network science. To help ease newcomers into the field, we provide a guide to available methodology and open problems, and discuss why scientists from diverse backgrounds are interested in these problems. As a running theme, we emphasize the connections of community detection to problems in statistical physics and computational optimization.Comment: survey/review article on community structure in networks; published version is available at http://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/~porterm/papers/comnotices.pd

Rep. Roy Blunt: Unfit to Lead

Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), who is vying to be House majority leader, is unfit for leadership because he represents more of the same corrupting, big-money politics that the American public has become disgusted with and that many reformers in Congress are trying to clean up, this Public Citizen report shows.The report details how much money Blunt has collected from lobbyists and corporate political action committees (PACs), the favors he has done for contributors, the trips he or candidates he has paid expenses for have taken on corporate jets, and how members of his staff have gone to work for major corporations that later donated thousands of dollars to Blunt's political committees. The report also delves into the unsettling nature of Blunts' ties to the fundraising apparatus of indicted former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and admitted felon and former super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff

The Vermonter\u27s Guide to the Farm Bill

The Farm Bill is a comprehensive set of laws and programs that dictates United States policies across the food system. While it may seem that a farm bill is only related to agriculture, this legislation, in reality, includes a broad set of policies on food production, nutrition assistance, rural community development, research, the environment, international trade, and more. Often known as a farm and food bill, the legislation impacts food systems stakeholders, including those who farm, live in a rural community, and even those who eat food—so that is everyone. Considering the widespread impacts of the Farm Bill, it is important for citizens to share their voice and opinions as our congressional representatives redraft the next version of food and agricultural policy. Congress creates a new Farm Bill approximately every five years. Before the bill is signed into law, Congress looks to the communities whom they represent across the country to express their thoughts on the current state of the food system. Federal policy has implications for every state. The federal Farm Bill has vast impacts in Vermont. Funding for various programs ranging from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (known in state as 3Squares Vermont), rural broadband support, farm to school grants, sustainable agriculture research and extension, beginning farmer programs, and the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP)—to name a few. The purpose of this guide is to help Vermonters understand the Farm Bill, what Farm Bill advocacy looks like in Vermont, and a synopsis of ways that Vermonters can get involved in the policy development process and have their voices heard. This guide is politically neutral, and does not seek to advise readers on specific issues for which they should advocate. With the input of various Vermont stakeholder organizations from across the state in addition to congressional staff members, this guide serves to support individuals throughout Vermont to get involved in Farm Bill policy discussions

Representation of women in Australian parliaments 2014

This updated paper draws on recent data and research to discuss trends and issues relating to women in Australian parliaments within an international context. It includes data on women in leadership and ministry positions, on committees and as candidates in Commonwealth elections. Executive summary Across Australia women continue to be significantly under-represented in parliament and executive government, comprising less than one-third of all parliamentarians and one-fifth of all ministers. Internationally, Australia’s ranking for women in national government continues to decline when compared with other countries. The representation of women in Australia’s parliaments hovers around the ‘critical mass’ of 30 per cent regarded by the United Nations as the minimum level necessary for women to influence decision-making in parliament. There is no consensus amongst researchers in the field as to why women continue to be under-represented in Australia’s system of parliamentary democracy, although a number of factors contribute to the gender imbalance. This paper includes discussion of some of the structural, social and cultural factors influencing women’s representation including the type of electoral system, the culture of political parties, and the nature of politics and the parliamentary environment in Australia. This updated paper draws on recent data and research to discuss trends and issues relating to women in Australian parliaments within an international context. It includes data on women in leadership and ministry positions, on committees and as candidates in Commonwealth elections. Whilst the focus is on the Commonwealth Parliament, the paper includes comparative information about women in state and territory parliaments.  The issue of gender diversity is also discussed within the broader context of women in leadership and executive decision-making roles in Australia including local government, government boards and in the corporate sector

Congress' Wicked Problem: Seeking Knowledge Inside the Information Tsunami

The lack of shared expert knowledge capacity in the U.S. Congress has created a critical weakness in our democratic process. Along with bipartisan cooperation, many contemporary and urgent questions before our legislators require nuance, genuine deliberation and expert judgment. Congress, however, is missing adequate means for this purpose and depends on outdated and in some cases antiquated systems of information referral, sorting, communicating, and convening. Congress is held in record low esteem by the public today. Its failings have been widely analyzed and a multitude of root causes have been identified. This paper does not put forward a simple recipe to fix these ailments, but argues that the absence of basic knowledge management in our legislature is a critical weakness. Congress struggles to make policy on complex issues while it equally lacks the wherewithal to effectively compete on substance in today's 24 hour news cycle.This paper points out that Congress is not so much venal and corrupt as it is incapacitated and obsolete. And, in its present state, it cannot serve the needs of American democracy in the 21st Century.The audience for this paper is those who are working in the open government, civic technology and transparency movements as well as other foundations, think tanks and academic entities. It is also for individuals inside and outside of government who desire background about Congress' current institutional dilemmas, including lack of expertise

Statement of Samuel Estreicher Before the Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations

Includes correspondence between the author and Senate Labor Committee counsel on topic of testimony.Testimony_Estreicher_011994.pdf: 344 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020