{"73961":{"#nid":"73961","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Math Says Homeland Security Committee Most Partisan","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EThe Select Committee on Homeland Security of the 107th Congress was one of the most partisan in the U.S. House of Representatives. No, that\u0027s not the latest finding of a Washington think-tank, it\u0027s the results of a new analysis from mathematicians at Georgia Tech. That\u0027s right - I said math. \u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EThe report examines the degree of partisanship and the strength of connections among House committees in the 107th Congress (2001-2002) using network analysis (something like a mathematical version of the six degrees of Kevin Bacon).\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EAmong other findings was that the Homeland Security Committee had very strong ties to the Rules Committee. It had very weak ties to the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and shared no members in common with its Terrorism and Homeland Security Subcommittee, which grew out of the bi-partisan group assigned to investigate the 9\/11 terrorist attacks. The research is published in this week\u0027s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. \n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0022We use a tool called network theory, which we borrow from other situations like studies of the World Wide Web or of people who sit together on the boards of more than one company, \u0022 said Mason Porter, visiting assistant professor at Georgia Tech. \u0022By looking at the number of members that pairs of committees and subcommittees share, we were able to determine the strengths of those connections.\u0022\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EPorter and colleagues studied these relationships in the House from 1989-2004 and provide detailed examples for the 107th Congress. Using a method known as singular value decomposition, they also examined the voting records for each of the 435 members to get an objective indication of how partisan they are. \n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0022Every representative boils down to two numbers that you can put in a rectangle on a piece of paper. One represents how far they are on the extremes of the political spectrum - we called that partisanship - and the other represents how well they play with others,\u0022 said Porter. \n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003ECurrent Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, along with Janice Schakowsky and James McGovern from Illinois were among the most partisan Democrats of the House. Among the most partisan Republicans were Thomas Tancredo from Colorado, John Shadegg from Arizona and Jim Ryun from Kansas. The least partisan members included Frank Lucas from Oklahoma, former congresswoman Constance Morella of Maryland and Ralph Hall from Texas.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EThe researchers assigned each member a color based on their degree of partisanship (in either party). Red denotes very partisan while blue denotes least partisan with orange, yellow and green falling somewhere in between. They then placed the members in each of their committees and, using the same color system, described the committees based on the average extremism of its members. Arranging the committees around a circular diagram, they drew lines between committees that shared members. \n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0022What the colors do is make certain committees jump out at you,\u0022 explained Porter. \u0022That\u0027s how we discovered the strong ties between the Homeland Security Committee and the Rules Committee and how we found the extreme partisanship of both of those groups and the Judiciary Committee.\u0022\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0022Checking our study against the historical record, our study shows that network theory and singular value decomposition can accurately describe political bodies like the House of Representatives,\u0022 said Porter. \u0022Our analysis strongly suggests that committee assignments are indeed stacked, and that some of the most partisan committees share some unusually strong connections considering the differences in their jurisdictions. Our approach suggests that these types of analyses can be very useful to political scientists in the future.\u0022\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EIn addition to Porter, the research team consisted of: Peter J. Mucha, assistant professor of mathematics at Georgia Tech; Mark Newman, associate professor of physics and complex systems at the University of Michigan; and graduate student Casey Warmbrand, from the University of Arizona. The project originated as Warmbrand\u0027s student project when he was an undergraduate at Georgia Tech in 2003. The research is supported by the National Science Foundation\u0027s Vertical Integration of Research and Education program (VIGRE).\n\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"The Select Committee on Homeland Security of the 107th Congress was one of the most partisan in the U.S. House of Representatives. No, that\u0027s not the latest finding of a Washington think-tank, it\u0027s the results of a new analysis from mathematicians at Georgia Tech. That\u0027s right - math.","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Study details partisanship in the U.S. House"}],"uid":"27310","created_gmt":"2005-05-16 00:00:00","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:02:27","author":"David Terraso","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2005-05-16T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2005-05-16T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"73962":{"id":"73962","type":"image","title":"Dendrogram of House Committee Partisanship","body":null,"created":"1449178037","gmt_created":"2015-12-03 21:27:17","changed":"1475894683","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:44:43"}},"media_ids":["73962"],"groups":[{"id":"1214","name":"News Room"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EGeorgia Tech Media Relations\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ELaura Diamond\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:laura.diamond@comm.gatech.edu\u0022\u003Elaura.diamond@comm.gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E404-894-6016\u003Cbr \/\u003EJason Maderer\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:maderer@gatech.edu\u0022\u003Emaderer@gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E404-660-2926\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["david.terraso@comm.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}