Why do black members of Congress introduce black issue bills?

Why are politicians more likely to advance the interests of those of their race? I present a field experiment demonstrating that black politicians are more intrinsically motivated to advance blacks’interests than are their counterparts. Guided by elite interviews, I emailed 6,928 U.S. state leg-islators from a putatively black alias asking for help signing up for state unemployment benefits.Crucially, I varied the legislators’ political incentive to respond by randomizing whether the senderpurported to live within or far from each legislator’s district. While nonblack legislators weremarkedly less likely to respond when their political incentives to do so were diminished, black leg-islators typically continued to respond even when doing so promised little political reward. Blacklegislators thus appear substantially more intrinsically motivated to advance blacks’ interests. Aspolitical decision making is often difficult for voters to observe, intrinsically motivated descriptiverepresentatives play a crucial role in advancing minorities’ political interests.

0.2 Abstract 2

We use state legislator ideology estimates (standardized W-nominate values) to examine whetherLatino and African American legislator ideological differences can be explained away by traditional constituency characteristics like partisanship and demographics. We find instead that both Blackand Latino legislators are unique ”types.” Our evidence supports the theoretical presumption thatthere is a minority dimension to legislative voting and that it is uniquely personified by minorityofficeholders. White, Black, Latino, Democrat, and Republican representatives are all examined forresponsiveness to different partisan and racial/ethnic populations. The dataset includes all 50 statelegislatures from the 1999-2000 legislative sessions, including information from the U.S. Census,NALEO, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, Gerald Wright’s Representation inthe American Legislature Project, and CQ Press’s Almanac of State Legislative Elections.1

0.3 Abstract 3

Most scholarship on minority descriptive representation focuses on whether minority legislators are”more” supportive of minority concerns than white legislators but does not address how descriptiverepresentatives differ in the use of decision-making cues when advocating for minority interests.Drawing on data from four Congresses and comparing two sets of minority group representativeswith their white counterparts and each other, the authors show that an important effect of descrip-tive representation is that racial/ethnic minority representatives are uniquely influenced in theiradvocacy of minority interests by cues that stand apart from the conventional liberal/conservativepolitical ideological frame.

0.4 Abstract 4

We explored the extent to which legislators respond to redistricting-induced demographic shifts intheir constituencies. Our analyses focused on the behavior of members of the House of Represen-tatives who served in the terms preceding and following the redistricting that took place in theearly 2000s (namely, the 107th and 108th Congresses). We investigated how demographic shiftsrelate to the content of legislators’ subsequent agendas (the legislation that members introduce andcosponsor) and the nature of members’ voting patterns (their interest group voting scores). Ourresults indicate that responsiveness is widespread, but important variation exists in the patternsfor agenda activities and roll-call voting. Overall, responsiveness to shifts in demographic charac-teristics manifests more in the content of legislators’ agendas. Responsiveness to partisan shifts ismore evident in their roll-call voting patterns.

0.5 Abstract 5

Fifty years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, there are still many questions aboutone of its signature achievement, the surge in black Congressional representation. This paperexamines the legacy of the Voting Rights Act in terms of the differences between black and non-black members of Congress regarding bill sponsorship, black issue recognition, and responsivenessto black protest. The findings show that there are racial differences in overall bill sponsorship, butthose disparities are driven by ideology – rather than race – when it comes to black issues. Blackmembers of Congress are more responsive to black protest in the post-civil rights era, but theyrecognize black issues at a lower rate compared to black representatives prior to 1965. As a result,it seems that protest is necessary for black representation to reach its full potential.2

0.6 Abstract 6

Why do majority parties choose to add extreme dead on arrival bills to their legislative agendasrather than enactable legislation? Majorities in Congress choose this strategy in order to accruepolitical support from their allied interest groups who reliably reward this legislative behavior. Byexamining all bills that receive floor consideration from 2003 through 2012, as well as interest groupscorecards and campaign commercials, I find support for my theory. Dead-on-arrival bills generateelectoral benefits for majority-party lawmakers, are more politically valuable than other bills, andare more often used to credit rather than punish legislators.

Read the abstracts in the attachment.
Group those abstracts into schools of thought that answer the research question, “Why do black members of Congress introduce black issue bills?”
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