Piling On

Mikhail Simkin and Vwani Roychowdhury, at UCLA, think our national legislature works like a virtual sandpile:

Their model assumes that the roles of sand grains is played units of political pressure. They assume that there is a network of influence in Congress through which representatives exert political pressure on each other (just as sand grains exert forces on each other through the network of contacts between them in the pile). When the pressure on representatives reaches a threshold, they co-sponsor the resolution and this, in turn, puts pressure on other member of congress to sign.

Glenn Reynolds doesn't concur,
and he comments with a smile
that he always thought they were
a different kind of pile.