Cosponsorship Network Data

Developed by
James H. Fowler and Andrew S. Waugh

This page contains links to data on Cosponsorships in the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives for the 93rd to 108th Congresses. I have spent a lot of time developing this data so if you want to use it please cite the following two papers:

  1. Connecting the Congress: A Study of Cosponsorship Networks
    James H. Fowler
    Political Analysis 14 (4): 456-487 (Fall 2006)

  2. Legislative Cosponsorship Networks in the U.S. House and Senate
    James H. Fowler
    Social Networks 28 (4): 454-465 (October 2006)

These papers describe basic features of the data and how it was retrieved and processed. Because it is a very large data set there will inevitably be some mistakes in it. I do my best to continue improving the data--if you find mistakes please let me know and I will fix them.

Another extremely useful site for bill data is the Congressional Bills Project by E. Scott Adler and John Wilkerson.

UPDATED DATA FILES

Andrew S. Waugh recently updated the cosponsorship data to include improvements from the Thomas database and data from the 109th Congress. A zipped copy of all new files is available here.

  • The house_bills.zip and senate_bills.zip archives contain 4 column, comma-separated text files, with each row representing a bill, and columns containing the Congress number, bill type, bill number, and a dummy indicating if the bill was a private bill.

  • The house_committees.zip and senate_committees.zip archives contain text files of identical length to house_bills.txt and senate_bills.txt. Each row contains a comma-separate vector of committee referrals for the corresponding bill.

  • The house_matrices.zip and senate_matrices.zip archives contain comma-separated sponsorship/cosponsorship matrices for the 93rd-109th Congresses. Each row represents a Congressman, each column represents a bill. A value of 1 represents a sponsorship, while 2 represents a cosponsorship, and 5 represents a withdrawn cosponsorship.

  • The house_datematrices.zip and senate_datematrices.zip archives contain comma-separated matrices of cosponsorship dates for the 93rd-109th Congresses. If Congressman i cosponsored bill j, then datematrix[i,j] contains the date of that cosponsorship in a string.

  • The house_members.zip and senate_members.zip archives contain 3 column, comma-separated, lists of Congressmen who served in the 93rd-109th Congresses corresponding to the rows in the cosponsorship matrices. The columns indicate the Congressman's name, Thomas ID#, and ICPSR ID#.

  • The house_status.zip and senate_status.zip archives contain 4 column, comma-seaprated text files of bill status information, with each row corresponding to a bill in house_bills.txt or senate_bills.txt. These columns indicated whether the bill passed the House, passed the Senate, was agreed to in a conference, and signed/vetoed by the President.

DATA FILES FOR REPLICATION

A zipped copy of all files used in the original two articles is available here. In these files an "NA" or a null value indicate the data is missing or was not matched. These occur because data was not available (e.g. early cosponsorship dates were not available at the time these files were generated) or there was a typo in Thomas or other problem with the matching procedure.

  • The SH.csv file is an aggregate results file. It is space delimited and here's a quick key:

    congress 93rd - 108th (i.e. 1973-2004)
    chamberHouse, Senate
    labelsname
    idsICPSR id
    ideol1Poole and Rosenthal Common Space Score, 1st dim
    ideol2Poole and Rosenthal Common Space Score, 2nd dim
    party100=Dem 200=Rep
    senioritynumber of Congresses served
    sponsorednumber of bills sponsored
    plnumber of sponsored bills that became law
    pbnumber of sponsored bills that passed chamber
    panumber of sponsored amendments that passed chamber
    inuunique inward cosponsors
    inbtotal inward cosponsor signatures
    inwtotal weighted inward cosponsor signatures (weights as described in my paper)
    outuunique outward cosponsors
    outbtotal outward cosponsor signatures
    outwtotal weighted outward cosponsor signatures
    betweenbetweenness (unweighted)
    closenesscloseness measure -- assumes bilateral ties
    evcenteigenvector centrality measure
    connectedness   connectedness measure
    ccindividual clustering coefficient

The next files are all 283,994 element vectors with measures on each bill.

  • The bills.txt file is the name of each bill as identified in the Thomas database. The name identifies the type, chamber, Congress, and number of each bill. Here's a key:

    HC   House Concurrent Resolutions
    HEHouse Resolutions
    HJHouse Joint Resolutions
    HRHouse Bills
    HZHouse Amendments
    SCSenate Concurrent Resolutions
    SESenate Resolutions
    SJSenate Joint Resolutions
    SNSenate Bills
    SPSenate Amendments

  • The senate.csv file and house.csv are csv files that match ICPSR numbers ("id") to names ("name") and a few other variables for all congresses. ICPSR numbers are derived from http://voteview.com/icpsr.htm and change if a person switches party, so it is important to match by congress.

  • The sponsors.txt file identifies the ICPSR code of each bill sponsor

  • The cosponsors.txt file identifies the ICPSR codes of each cosponsor (one bill per line, each cosponsor is space delimited) -- large (13M)

  • The cospcount.txt file is the total number of cosponsors on each bill

  • The dates.txt file is the date each bill was introduced

  • The cosponsordates.txt file shows the space delimited date(s) each bill was cosponsored -- the order of dates on each line conforms to the order of cosponsors on each line in the cosponsors.txt file -- large (22M)

  • The party.txt file shows the party of sponsor

  • The passedam.txt file shows whether amendment passed on the floor

  • The passedbills.txt file shows whether bill passed on the floor

  • The publaws.txt file shows whether bill became public law

  • The pvtbills.txt file shows whether bill is a "private" bill

Last Updated 20 June 2008
Copyright © 1998-2008 James Fowler, All Rights Reserved.