LAUSR

Although much has been written on legislative reciprocity, rarely have scholars had an opportunity to leverage a randomly assigned asset to assess whether and how legislators reciprocate when their colleagues assist them. Using the lottery that allows Canadian Members of Parliament (MPs) to propose bills or motions, we examine whether MPs’ priority numbers affect their proclivity to second motions made by other MPs, which would be expected if MPs sought to build support for their own proposals by supporting proposals by others. Although MPs almost always make a proposal if their priority number allows them to do so, we find a weak relationship between MPs’ priority numbers and their probability of seconding others’ proposals. Moreover, when we look at successive parliaments, we see only faint indications that those who, by chance, won the right to propose in the previous session (and who therefore were eligible to attract seconds) are more likely to second others’ proposals in the current session. Although subject to a fair amount of statistical uncertainty that will gradually dissipate as future parliaments are examined, this pattern of evidence currently suggests that correlated seconding behavior among legislators is more the product of homophily than reciprocity.