Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Until our Voices are Heard: Legislative Representation of African American and Latino Interests in Agency Policy-Making

Regents Of The University Of Michigan - Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor MI

Investigators

Abstract

Each year federal governmental bureaucracies are given broad authority by Congress to implement public policies that range from welfare reform to civil rights enforcement. Despite the importance of bureaucratic decisions on issues that affect minorities, most race and representation scholars have neglected to include this policy-making activity in their analysis of substantive representation. Instead most have focused on roll call voting as the primary measure of representation. This project demonstrates that scholars. inattention to legislative intervention in agency policy-making systematically understates minority members' responsiveness on issues that disproportionately affect racial and ethnic minorities. As a result of racial or ethnic group identity, Black and Latino legislators are more likely (relative to Whites) to intervene in agency actions relating to civil rights enforcement. This project improves upon the limitations of earlier studies by using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods to examine the effects of race or ethnicity in a less visible activity such as committee oversight of agency policies. These methods include a detailed content analysis of congressional oversight hearings and a series of elite interviews with legislators and their staff from the 107th Congress (2001-2002). These data gauge legislators. intensity by examining the amount of time, energy and resources that individual legislators invest in ensuring that bureaucracies are implementing civil rights laws, rules and regulations. The study expands the conceptualization of substantive representation from an exclusive focus on legislators. roll call voting behavior to one that includes their actions in non-bill related activities such as rulemaking and policy implementation. Additionally, the project shows that racial or ethnic identities of legislators are significant in determining why they pay high costs to intervene in agency policy-making. Broader Impacts: The research provides insight to policy-makers and scholars by assessing whether racial redistricting measures, designed to get more minorities elected to Congress, translate into enhanced substantive representation of minority interests.