Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

In numerous professions, elite education serves as a signal of excellence, indicative of everything from patience to intelligence to competence. Recent studies have shown a strong positive relationship between the elite education of CEOs and the performance of their companies, for example. In politics, elite education is also related to partisanship and ideology among citizens. We explore the extent to which these patterns apply to members of Congress. We find, first, that elite education is much more common among Democrats than among Republicans in Congress. Second, for both Democrats and Republicans, those with an elite education tend to be more liberal than others in their respective parties. Finally, Representatives with an elite education tend to be more effective at lawmaking, especially in producing the most substantive and significant (or landmark) laws.