Shared Pain, Common Purpose: How Shared Problem Status Drives Congressional Collaboration on Opioid Legislation
2025-12-16
Why do members of Congress collaborate on legislation in an era of intense partisan polarization? This paper argues that shared exposure to pressing, district‐level policy problems can motivate cross‐party collaboration, particularly in a policy area that cuts across traditional ideological divides. Focusing on the case of the opioid crisis, I develop the importance of shared problem status in driving cosponsorship of opioid‐related legislation. That is, when legislators represent similarly affected constituencies, they are more likely to cosponsor opioid‐related legislation, even when they differ in party or ideology. While existing research often treats cosponsorship as a function of social networks or institutional proximity, there are clear incentives for members to respond to issue areas that reflect local problem severity. Using dyadic data on bill cosponsorship in the House and Senate from portions of the 112th through the 116th congresses (2012–2019), I find that member pairs with each legislator representing districts with high opioid death rates are significantly more likely to collaborate on opioid legislation. These findings suggest that geographically distributed policy crises can open space for bipartisan cooperation, even in an otherwise gridlocked Congress.