Colleagues and Neighbors? Geographic Patterns of Collaboration and Legislative Effectiveness

Tuesday, August 11, 2026

Geography plays a role in shaping American legislatures, but while there is often a focus on the importance of constituency representation, its role as a source of division does not always receive as much attention. Legislative politics scholarship increasingly recognizes the importance of social relationships and networks in shaping outcomes, and within this literature, one important observation is that collaboration across difference can be especially impactful. In state legislatures, within-state regional divisions are often common knowledge but fewer multi-state academic studies have incorporated such information or analyzed geography’s impact in comprehensive studies of collaboration and lawmaking outcomes. In this new CEL working paper, Professor Todd Makse of Florida International University (and a CEL Faculty Affiliate) makes three contributions to the study of political geography in state legislatures. First, he analyzes state legislative cosponsorship patterns to assess whether in-state regional divisions serve as important predictors of collaboration in legislatures, considering three conceptions of geography: (1) urbanity (2) regionalism; and (3) continuous distance. Second, he describes the aggregate geographic patterns of collaboration in each legislature, characterizing each state in terms of the divisions that promote and deter collaboration. Finally, he analyzes whether legislators who have a more geographically diverse set of collaborators have higher levels of legislative effectiveness. For all three conceptions of geography, Professor Makse finds that having a more geo-diverse set of collaborators is associated with greater effectiveness.

Read the full paper here.

Photo: “US state abbrev map” is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.