Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age

The American political science review

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1057%2Fpalgrave.ap.5500015.pdf

The Macro Polity

http://www.exeter.ac.uk/media/universityofexeter/elecdem/pdfs/florence/Van_Ham_Smets_The_Embarrassment_of_Riches.pdf

The embarrassment of riches?: A meta-analysis of individual-level research on voter turnout

We use a field experiment to investigate whether race affects how responsive state legislators are to requests for help with registering to vote. In an email sent to each legislator, we randomized whether a putatively black or white alias was used and whether the email signaled the sender’s partisan preference. Overall, we find that putatively black requests receive fewer replies. We explore two potential explanations for this discrimination: strategic partisan behavior and the legislators’ own race. We find that the putatively black alias continues to be differentially treated even when the emails signal partisanship, indicating that strategic considerations cannot completely explain the observed differential treatment. Further analysis reveals that white legislators of both parties exhibit similar levels of discrimination against the black alias. Minority legislators do the opposite, responding more frequently to the black alias. Implications for the study of race and politics in the United States are discussed.

/pdf/do-politicians-racially-discriminate-against-constituents-a-g4rhjhk3gx.pdf

Do Politicians Racially Discriminate Against Constituents? A Field Experiment on State Legislators

Studies of political participation and representation often contend that elected officials respond more to the preferences of voters than those of nonvoters, but seldom test this claim. This is a critical assumption because if true, biases in who participates will lead to biased representation. Office holders might respond disproportionately to voters’ preferences because voters tend to select like-minded representatives, voters tend to communicate their preferences more, and only voters can reelect representatives. We find that voter preferences predict the aggregate roll-call behavior of Senators while nonvoter preferences do not. We also present evidence supporting the three explanations advanced to account for the preferential treatment of voters.

Are Voters Better Represented

Does vigorous electoral competition help to convert citizens' preferences into government action? No, concludes a series of theoretical and empirical studies conducted over the last 35 years. If these findings are correct, efforts to enhance competition such as depoliticizing the redistricting process and achieving greater equity in campaign spending, while perhaps beneficial in other respects, will not improve government responsiveness. However, these studies are limited by a shortage of data, by biased measures of district competitiveness, and by their conceptualization of responsiveness. Using both cross-sectional and fixed-effects modeling frameworks, this study finds that in recent years elected officials who represent more competitive districts are indeed more responsive to their constituents' preferences.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1111/j.1468-2508.2006.00479.x

Electoral Competition and Democratic Responsiveness: A Defense of the Marginality Hypothesis

Though many studies have focused on African Americans' turnout levels in descriptively represented electoral districts, few have examined the composition of African-American turnout in these districts, compared to districts that are not descriptively represented. This study contends that descriptive representation should conditionally affect African Americans' political participation, given preference heterogeneity among this group. It then examines the extent to which the ideological orientations of African Americans condition the effect of their Representative's race in the 104th House on their probability of participating in the 1996 national election. The study finds that when liberal African Americans are descriptively represented, they are more likely to vote, while moderate and conservative African Americans are less likely to vote. These findings not only help to resolve prior studies' disparate conclusions concerning descriptive representation's participatory effects, but they also show that descriptive representation affects which African Americans' interests are communicated to elected officials through voting.

Descriptive Representation and the Composition of African American Turnout

We compare the ideological proximity of Latinos and whites to their Members of Congress (MCs), demonstrating the degree to which Latinos are underrepresented compared to whites. We show how this representation gap varies with group differences in electoral turnout and income, district ethnic composition, and MCs' ethnicity and party affiliation. We find that Latinos' unequal representation is not simply a function of the group's numerical minority status. Concentrating Latinos in congressional districts does not necessarily translate into more equal representation. However, several factors can enhance the equality of Latinos' representation—participation in elections and representation by both Latinos and Democrats.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1111/j.1468-2508.2007.00605.x

The Unequal Representation of Latinos and Whites

Are the views of Latinos and African Americans underrepresented in our federal government? For that matter, what does it mean to be represented equitably? Rather than taking for granted a single answer to these complex questions, John D. Griffin and Brian Newman use different measures of political equality to reveal which groups get what they want from government and what factors lead to their successes.One of the first books to compare the representation of both African Americans and Latinos to that of whites, "Minority Report" shows that congressional decisions and federal policy tend to mirror the preferences of whites as a group and as individuals better than the preferences of either minority group, even after accounting for income disparities. This is far from the whole story, though, and the authors' multifaceted approach illustrates the surprising degree to which group population size, an issue's level of importance, the race or ethnicity of an office holder, and electoral turnout can affect how well government action reflects the views of each person or group. Sure to be controversial, "Minority Report" ultimately goes beyond statistical analyses to address the root question of what equal representation really means.

John D. Griffin

Papers

Are Voters Better Represented

Electoral Competition and Democratic Responsiveness: A Defense of the Marginality Hypothesis

Descriptive Representation and the Composition of African American Turnout

The Unequal Representation of Latinos and Whites

Minority Report: Evaluating Political Equality in America