Collaboration Network Among French Députés

Baptiste CoulmontUniversité Paris 8 and CRESPPA (CNRS)

http://coulmont.com/

Introduction

• One article : James H. Fowler « Connecting the Congress: A Study of Cosponsorship Networks » Political Analysis (2006) 14:456–487 doi:10.1093/pan/mpl002

Cosponsors are connected

The bills cosponship graph (more than 1000 bills)Is the French national assembly a tri-partite institution ?

Clusters of relationships and parliamentary groupsDark-blue : UMP members of parliament (conservative and center-right party)Orange : « New center » members of parliament (small center-right group)Pink : Socialists and « radicals » (which means left-of-center)Red : Communists and environmentalists

More than 49000 amendments (2007-2012)- same tri-partite clustering- « New center » (orange) and « red-green alliance » appear to develop specific strategies : assimilation to UMP (orange/blue) or « third voice » (red/green alliance)

Who is strongly linked to whom ?If we underline the strongest links (repeated weighted directed collaborations), we still easily identify group differences :- the red-green alliance is strongly linked as a group- the UMP députés (the conservative majority between 2007 and 2012) are not strongly linked together by amendment-work.

Direction for future research

• The Assembly is made of groups :– institutional groups: parliamentary groups,

committees, political parties– other « groups » : regional origin, offices

proximity, occupational similarity (lawyers, teachers, MD...)

Do they influence the fabrique of the law ?

Baptiste Coulmont – Université Paris 8 & CRESPPA (CNRS)