Majority Status and Variation in Informational Organization

Abstract

To maintain its policy cartel, the majority party requires information to recognize good policy and sufficient votes to realize it. There is ample research demonstrating the majority’s ability to mobilize votes, but no empirical research examining its ability to facilitate efficient information transmission. Here, I investigate differences between the majority and minority in maintaining an informational organization (representative committee delegations that share their information with copartisans) and examine the effects of this organization on expressed legislative uncertainty. By analyzing comprehensive new data, I find that the majority is most often able to maintain representative committee contingents, but the minority is not. Further, the majority is able to induce its nonrepresentative delegations to be informative; however, certain types of outlying contingents significantly increase the minority’s policy uncertainty. Finally, I conclude that the majority’s informational organization is superior to that of the minority and speculate that this may have electoral implications.