Co-Sponsorship Networks of Minority-Supported Legislation in the House

Works that measure the substantive representation of minority interests based solely on roll call data have been criticized for ignoring more behind-the-scenes activities that legislators might perform on behalf of their constituents. We thus focus in this paper on cosponsorship as a proxy for the degree to which members maneuver to create coalitions that will advance the substantive policy goals of the minority community. We find, consistent with previous work, that minority legislators tend to provide more of these types of activities than do other types of legislators, but maximizing cosponsorship benefits for bills that pass Congress involves creating districts of about 45% black voting age population.