Political Respect in the Legislature

The legislature is a collective decision-making body in which patterns of interpersonal esteem or mutual respect provide a foundation for purposive action. We map the networks of legislators' choices of respected members among their colleagues, and then we elaborate and test a model of interpersonal respect. The coefficients in the model are estimated from data drawn from interviews in 1965 with Iowa state legislators. We demonstrate that respect rests largely upon performance, achievement, and formal position, that the bases of respect differ from those of political friendship in important ways, that Democrats and Republicans accord colleagues respect on the basis of different criteria, and that freshman and veteran members respond to different forces in nominating respected members. Contemporary accounts often portray collective decisionmaking bodies like legislatures as assemblies of rational actors, atomistically making decisions and calculations about the best avenues to reelection. Legislators are, without a doubt, rational actors, concerned with and often entirely motivated by the goal of reelection, but the emphasis on independent calculations discounts the interpersonal contingencies of legislative life. The legislature is a highly interactive collectivity. Its institutional life gravitates around two poles: one the nexus of the representative and the represented and the other the networks of affect and respect among legislators themselves. The internal ecology of the legislature may be noted for its conflict and cleavage, but coalitions are built not only from calculations of self-interest but also on the bases of trust, affection, and respect. Indeed, social networks and interpersonal bonds constitute crucial elements in the firm foundation of purposive action in legislatures. These ties increase certainty about the actions of others and generally decrease the costs of transactions (see for example Weingast 1979; see also Elster 1990;