VOLUME 3, ISSUE 3, 2008 <Previous Next> Where You Sit is Where You Stand: The Impact of Seating Proximity on Legislative Cue-Taking Seth E. Masket SUGGESTED CITATION: Seth E. Masket (2008) "Where You Sit is Where You Stand: The Impact of Seating Proximity on Legislative Cue-Taking", Quarterly Journal of Political Science: Vol. 3:No 3, pp 301-311. http:/dx.doi.org/10.1561/100.00007058 Download this article Associated files: Replication Data Tell a Colleague Get Acrobat Reader Printing Tip: Select the option to 'print as image' in the Acrobat print dialog to ensure the article prints as it appears on screen. Learn more... This article builds on Matthews and Stimson's (1975) study of legislative cue-taking, analyzing the extent to which legislators sitting next to each other influence each others' voting behavior. Data come from three decades of roll call votes in the California Assembly, a chamber in which each member is paired with a deskmate. By comparing deskmate pairs with nondeskmate pairs, I find that legislators vote identically to their deskmates on a sizeable subset of roll calls. This deskmate effect appears to remain strong even as a rival influence — legislative partisanship — increases in strength.

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