Open Reuning Diss Final.Pdf

The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of the Liberal Arts PARTY COALITIONS, PARTY IDEOLOGY, AND PARTY ACTION: EXTENDED PARTY NETWORKS IN THE UNITED STATES A Dissertation in Political Science by Kevin Reuning © 2018 Kevin Reuning Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2018 The dissertation of Kevin Reuning was reviewed and approved∗ by the following: Lee Ann Banaszak Professor of Political Science Dissertation Advisor, Chair of Committee Michael Berkman Professor of Political Science Bruce Desmarais Associate Professor of Political Science Michael Nelson Associate Professor of Political Science John McCarthy Professor of Sociology Glenn Palmer Professor of Political Science Director of Graduate Studies ∗Signatures are on file in the Graduate School. ii Abstract American political parties are not singular entities, but webs of interests that come together to gain power and implement policy. This has been noted by recent work, but there has been little theoretical focus on the implications of this parties as networks approach. My dissertation unpacks what it means for political parties to be networks and what the implications of this view are. I argue that because political parties are networks, the relationships that exist between groups within the network are critical in explaining variation in party ideology across the state parties. In addition, I argue that fracturing of a party network outside the legislature leads to a similar fracturing of the party caucus inside the legislature. To test these theories I use state legislative donation data from 2000 to 2016 to develop state donation networks. Using these networks I first show that relationships help to explain party ideology even when controlling for resources. I then use Exponential Random Graph Models to measure the degree of cohesion/fracturing within a party network. I find that this is an important predictor of legislative cohesion for Democrats and not for Republicans. My findings have important ramifications for democracy in the United States. In particular it demonstrates that solutions over unequal representation cannot just focus on the role of money in politics, as relationships are just as important, and are not solely a function of resources. In addition it helps to explain how parties in the United States often have unsteady paths forward, moving quickly to change policy positions after a long time of stasis. iii Table of Contents List of Figures vii List of Tables ix Acknowledgmentsx Chapter 1 Introduction1 1.1 Why Parties Matter ............................... 2 1.2 What Are Parties? ................................ 5 1.2.1 Parties in the States ........................... 9 1.3 The Organization of Party Coalitions...................... 11 1.4 Outline of the Dissertation............................ 12 Chapter 2 What are Political Parties? 14 2.1 Parties as Networks................................ 15 2.1.1 Demands for Policy............................ 16 2.1.2 Coming to Agreement .......................... 18 2.2 Party Networks and Ideology .......................... 22 2.2.1 What Ideology Achieves ......................... 23 2.2.2 What is the Party Ideology Going to be?................ 24 2.3 Parties In and Outside the Legislature ..................... 27 2.3.1 From Outside In ............................. 28 2.3.2 Party Role Inside the Legislature .................... 32 2.4 Conclusion..................................... 33 Chapter 3 Identifying the Party 35 3.1 Identifying the Party Network.......................... 36 iv 3.2 State Level Donation Data............................ 39 3.2.1 Inferring Relationships.......................... 43 3.3 Validation..................................... 51 3.3.1 Republican and Democratic Networks.................. 51 3.3.2 Groups with Similar Interests ...................... 54 3.4 Conclusion..................................... 57 Chapter 4 Party Ideology 59 4.1 Introduction.................................... 59 4.2 Party Coalitions and Ideology.......................... 61 4.2.1 Differences Between Republicans and Democrats............ 63 4.3 Testing the Effects of Network Position..................... 65 4.3.1 Policy Demander Relationships and Resources............. 65 4.3.2 Party Position............................... 69 4.3.3 Modeling Relationship Between Party Networks and Ideology . 71 4.4 Results....................................... 73 4.4.1 Predictive Accuracy............................ 77 4.5 Discussion and Conclusion............................ 80 Chapter 5 Party Cohesion 83 5.1 Introduction.................................... 83 5.2 Division in Kansas ................................ 84 5.3 Where Does Cohesion Come From?....................... 86 5.3.1 How Cohesion Matters.......................... 89 5.4 Testing the Effects of Cohesion ......................... 94 5.4.1 Measuring Cohesion Outside the Legislature.............. 94 5.4.2 Measuring Cohesion Inside the Legislature............... 97 5.4.3 Controls and Modeling Assumptions .................. 98 5.5 Results and Discussion.............................. 101 5.6 Conclusion..................................... 104 Chapter 6 Conclusion 107 6.1 Summary ..................................... 107 6.2 Broader Implications............................... 109 6.2.1 Representation and Democracy ..................... 109 6.2.2 Connecting Parties............................ 112 6.3 Limitations .................................... 113 v 6.3.1 What Contributions Miss ........................ 114 6.3.2 Party Networks: Cause or Effect?.................... 115 6.4 Future Work.................................... 116 6.4.1 The Creation and Destruction of Party Networks . 117 6.4.2 Activist Networks Versus Party Networks . 118 Appendices 120 A Technical Details ................................. 121 B Controlling for Donation Limits......................... 127 C Exponential Random Graph Models....................... 130 C.1 Nodal Terms ............................... 131 C.2 Geometrically Edgewise Shared Partners and Extensions . 132 C.3 Maximally Weighted Edgewise Shared Partner . 134 C.4 Estimation................................. 136 Bibliography 138 vi List of Figures 3.1 Number of Candidates vs Groups in Each State-House-Full-Cycle . 42 3.2 Percentage of Non-Zero Donor-Candidate Pairs ................ 42 3.3 Median Donation in Each Dataset........................ 43 3.4 Examples of Full Donation Networks ...................... 47 3.5 Examples of Democratic Donation Networks.................. 49 3.6 Examples of Republican Donation Networks.................. 50 3.7 Assortative Mixing by Party........................... 53 3.9 Measures of Homophily.............................. 56 4.1 Network Relationship Strength Scores...................... 68 4.2 Distribution of Party Ideology.......................... 70 4.3 Predicted Ideology ................................ 79 4.4 Repeated 10-Fold Predicted RMSE....................... 80 5.1 Subset of Kansas Lower House Donation Network (2013-2014) . 96 5.2 Density of Party Network Cohesion....................... 98 vii 5.3 Density of Legislative Cohesion ......................... 99 5.4 Predicted Legislative Cohesion.......................... 105 A.1 Real Donations from a Sample of States .................... 123 A.2 Estimated Coefficients for Sample Models ................... 124 A.3 Predicted versus Real Donations from a Sample of States . 125 A.4 Number of Edges Pre and Post Backboning .................. 126 B.1 Repeated 10-Fold Predicted RMSE with Donation Limits . 129 C.1 Examples of Edgewise Shared Partners..................... 134 C.2 MWESP Examples................................ 135 viii List of Tables 2.1 Collaboration Game for Intense Policy Demanders............... 21 2.2 Collaboration Game with Ideology ....................... 24 4.1 Analysis Party Caucus Ideology......................... 76 4.2 Effects Conditioned on Party........................... 78 5.1 Analysis of Party Cohesion............................ 102 5.2 Model for Party Cohesion Conditioned on Party . 103 B.1 Analysis Party Caucus Ideology with Donation Limits . 128 ix Acknowledgments Dissertations are group projects with a single name attached. This project would not have been successful without the work of so many. I want to first thank my committee for reading many drafts, guiding me through a complicated process, and helping me better understand how to fit my research into the academic world. A special thank you to Michael Nelson for reading a lot of versions of the content here and for rapidly providing comments, along with always allowing me to walk into his office and ask random questions. A thank you as well to Lee Ann Banaszak for always pushing me to think more about the theory and pulling my head out of the data when it needed to be pulled out (and for allowing me to spend a lot of time with the data). And finally, thank you to John McCarthy for bringing me onto his projects when I still did not really understand research and showing me the sociology side of social movements. The dissertation is the capstone of graduate school which is itself a team event. I owe a debt of gratitude to many of my fellow travelers through graduate school: Ted Chen, Nick Dietrich, Mike Kenwick, Sarah Liu, Dan Mallinson and Wonjun Song to name only a few. They listened to me complain, while helping to work through both the academic and non-academic problems that graduate school

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