Social Fabric Decay: The Case of Congressional Travels Abroad

Members of Congress frequently tout their official travels abroad as one of the best opportunities to develop friendships across the aisle. Yet since 1977, roughly one of every eight days that representatives spent abroad was with members of only their political party. Some members have spent more than a month’s worth of time in a single congress traveling and never doing so with a member from the other party. This chapter examines the causes and consequences of these members who are willing to travel overseas so long as it is not with a member of the opposing party. We find that ideological extremism among Democrats increases their country-days abroad with copartisans and that cross-party support for ideological extremism decreases with the number of bipartisan country-days abroad. Taken together, these results suggest that ideological extremism and partisan warfare are continuing to fray the social fabric of Congress.