Are networked legislators better at their jobs?

The United States Congress has been on a steady path of deepening partisan polarization for several decades, and many have questioned Congress’s ability to perform its basic functions with integrity, such as lawmaking, budgeting, and approving presidential nominations. Some observers have questioned whether some gridlock can be overcome on Capitol Hill by deepening relationships among legislators, encouraging norms of civil behavior, and helping members to make connections with cross-partisans. In this paper I examine the extent to which voluntary legislative organizations, or House caucuses, perform that function. I conceptualize participation in voluntary legislative organizations as way for members to access a network of bipartisan legislators and examine whether those connections affect legislators’ individual effectiveness as lawmakers. Using congressional data from 1993 – 2016 (103rd to 114th Congresses), I find that eigenvector centrality in the House caucus network positively predicts individual legislative effectiveness.