Central to Success: The Impact of Congressional Speech Networks on Legislative Effectiveness
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Date
2025-05
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The Ohio State University
Abstract
Members of Congress leverage their speeches to shape policy debates, express their ideological positions, and send cues to fellow legislators—but how effective is their rhetoric in advancing legislation? This thesis explores the relationship between congressional speeches and legislative effectiveness, using data from the 96th to the 114th Congresses (1979-2016). Speech and sentiment similarity among legislators are analyzed using two RoBERTa models, and four networks are constructed: two fully connected and two binary networks based on speech content and sentiment. Centrality measures (node strength, eigenvector centrality, and PageRank) are averaged to assess members’ influence, which is then analyzed using linear fixed effects regression. Results show influential House members in both speech and sentiment networks are more legislatively effective. In the Senate, effectiveness is linked to influence in binary networks but not fully connected ones, likely due to institutional differences. This network-based approach highlights how individual linguistic patterns drive broader shifts in legislative outcomes.
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Keywords
American political institutions, Congress, Congressional speech, Network analysis, Sentiment analysis, Legislative effectiveness, Rhetorical alignment