Congressional Network of the House Populist Caucus as of March 11 2009

A Congressional Network of ties between members of the newly formed Populist Caucus in the 111th Congress, using data current as of March 11, 2009. The blue blocks you see represent the members of the Populist Caucus. A network tie between a pair of members is defined as the number of bills before the current session of the House that both members support, either as a principal sponsor or cosponsor. Through the course of the video, the threshold for the appearance of a tie increases. At first, when the threshold is the existence of ANY jointly supported bill, all members of the Populist Caucus are tied. But as the threshold of tie strength increases (see box on the right), signifying stronger cooperative behavior in the Congress, fewer ties appear. Interestingly, when it comes to this network of bill support, caucus founder Bruce Braley is peripheral. Also peripheral are caucus vice chairs Peter DeFazio and Michael Arcuri. The only formal caucus leader who is a member of the network's core is Vice Chair Betty Sutton. Does the marginal status of most caucus leaders suggest a future leadership struggle within the Populist Caucus? Or will caucus leadership and network centrality come to overlap more as the Populist Caucus gets more organized? Stay tuned! This video and network analysis brought to you by Irregular Times, on the web at http://irregulartimes.com and in the air, everywhere.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• social network
• politics
• congress
• congressional
• house
• bill
• support
• caucus
• populist caucus
• joint support
• bruce braley