Cohesiveness: a study of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus

Congressional caucuses are informal groups in Congress that are used by members to gather information and to make informed policy decisions. National constituency caucuses are formed to represent groups nationwide. The CBC and the CHC are two examples of these groups. The purpose of this paper is twofold: (1) to determine the cohesiveness of these two ndthgroups from the 102 Congress through 108 Congress and (2) to determine what individual and constituency level factors influence cohesiveness. Calculations from the Rice Index show that the CBC exhibits higher levels of cohesion than the CHC in all but one Congress. Within the four categories designated, some prove to be more cohesive than others based on the Congress. When using DW-NOMINATE Scores and LCCR Scores separately as dependant variables, party, percent black, percent Hispanic, party of the president, and terms in office are significant for the CBC while only party and terms in office achieves significance for the CHC.