Replication Data for: The Politics of Bicameral Agreement: Why and When Do State Lawmakers Go to Conference?

The power of conference committees is well-documented and studied by scholars of the U.S. Congress. But little is known about politics of bicameral agreement within state legislatures. Leveraging variation across states, I explore the conditions under which legislative leaders prefer formal bicameral conference negotiations to informal talks to reach final legislative agreements. Deploying an original data set of state legislative decisions between 2005 to 2018, I find that ideologically cohesive majority parties favor the use of conferences, disproportionately relying on them to reconcile bicameral differences on salient measures. Majority parties, however, refrain from going to conference in those assemblies that empower the minority party to select its preferred conferees. The interaction of chamber rules and partisan dynamics thus shapes the contours of legislative agreements in systematic ways across the states.

美国国会研究领域的学者已对会议委员会（conference committees）的权力进行了充分的文献记载与学术研究，但针对州立法机构内部两院协议的政治运作逻辑，学界目前仍知之甚少。本研究依托各州之间的制度差异，探讨立法领袖更倾向于采用正式的两院会议委员会谈判流程而非非正式磋商来达成最终立法协议的具体情境。本研究使用2005年至2018年间州立法决策的原创性数据集，研究发现：意识形态凝聚力较强的多数党更倾向于启用会议委员会，且会格外倚重这一机制来协调两院在重要立法议题上的分歧。但在那些赋予少数党自主推选己方参会委员权力的立法机构中，多数党则会避免使用会议委员会程序。由此可见，院会规则与党派互动格局的共同作用，以系统性的方式塑造了全美各州立法协议的具体形态。