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From Congress to the States: Explaining the Emergence and Membership of Freedom Caucuses in State Legislatures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 November 2024

Matthew N. Green Open the ORCID record for Matthew N. Green [Opens in a new window]  and
Florian Gawehns
Matthew N. Green*
Affiliation:
The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, USA
Florian Gawehns
Affiliation:
University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
*
Corresponding author: Matthew Green; Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Since 2017, Republican lawmakers in a growing number of US states have formed ideological intraparty organizations, modeled after the US House Freedom Caucus, that seek to move state policy further rightward. What explains the appearance of these state freedom caucuses, and what kinds of lawmakers are more likely to join them? We show that the creation of these caucuses was initially motivated by concerns that state-level legislative Republican parties are too ideologically heterogeneous but has since been driven by conservative entrepreneurs seeking to spread freedom caucuses nationally. We also provide evidence that conservative legislators are more likely to join a new state freedom caucus, as one would expect, but also that, in a few states, lawmakers who are more electorally vulnerable lawmakers or lack internal influence have also been more likely to join. These findings underscore how state-level ideological caucuses can appeal to members’ multiple goals and serve as instruments of vertical polarization in a federal system.

Keywords

political partiesparties in legislaturesstate legislaturesRepublicanscaucusesconservatismfederalism
Type
Original Article
Information
State Politics & Policy Quarterly , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , December 2024 , pp. 370 - 388
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the State Politics and Policy Section of the American Political Science Association

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Green and Gawehns Dataset

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https://doi.org/10.15139/S3/ENSLIB
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