Chapter 5 examines how collaboration varies across members. Nearly every member of Congress collaborates to some degree, but there is significant variation with some members coauthoring one or two policy proposals in a Congress and others forming relationships with fifty colleagues or more. Examining this variation reveals clear patterns in the characteristics of the most and least collaborative members and illustrates how collaboration is a function of a member's incentives and opportunities. Members who interested in policymaking are incentivized to collaborate more, and those who are well connected in Congress have more opportunities. Members representing competitive districts are more likely to collaborate with the other party, while those representing partisan districts work with their co-partisans. Consistent with social exchange theory, members collaborate to support their electoral and policy goals but are constrained by their ability to identify a worthwhile partner.

This chapter provides an introduction to the meaning of issue intensity and frustrated majorities through review of the existing theory and evidence of political science. I suggest that while theories of trade politics, bureacracy, legislative behavior, and political parties have explicitly or implicitly considered the consequences of varying issue intensity, the political science of elections has given it short attention. I show how the political science of the electoral connection complicates many existing explanations for frustrated majorities and suggest that adding issue intensity to the electoral connection provides an improved explanation.