Before assessing the construction of legislative agendas from the perspective of agenda crossover, Chapters 3 and 4 examine legislative behavior within each chamber separately. This chapter focuses on state delegations in the House of Representatives, and Chapter 4 focuses on state delegations in the Senate. Both of these chapters take a macro-level view of the delegation, which is similar to how previous literature studies state delegations. The goal of these two chapters is to show how intra-chamber delegations behave today and to inform the analysis of agenda crossover presented in Chapter 5.

Taking a bird's-eye view of legislative behavior within delegations is useful as it sheds light on whether there is variation in behavior among states and how this behavior has changed over time. For instance, do state delegations with a large majority of members hailing from one political party behave more similarly than those that are more divided? And how do these voting patterns change over time, especially as the power of delegations to influence outcomes on the floor has declined? Focusing on the individual chambers before exploring the inter-chamber connections as related to agenda crossover is key to gaining a better understanding of the general behavior of state delegations today. Given that so little scholarly attention in recent decades focuses on state delegations, it is important to afford intra-chamber delegations an examination, so that we have a better understanding of how members from the same state and same chamber are behaving today. Additionally, showing the linkages between state delegations and legislative behavior within each chamber enables me to better address the central questions that motivate my analyses on agenda crossover in Chapter 5.

The following analyses address several questions. First, in what way do members of state delegations in the House resemble one another? More specifically, do members of Congress hailing from the same state delegation vote similarly on the floor, and do they focus on similar legislative issues? Second, what explains the variation we find within delegations? That is, why do some members behave similarly while others do not? Third, what implications do these patterns have for the theory of agenda crossover?