Majority rule vs. minority rights: immigrant representation despite public opposition on the 1986 immigration reform and control act

Abstract

ABSTRACTWhat explains legislators’ behavior when they are uncertain whether they will be rewarded or punished at re-election? Typically, politicians are incentivized to deliver policies preferred by the majority. Less well understood is what happens when legislators face decisions on issues on which their traditional supporters disagree. Owing to the unavailability of public opinion data for congressional districts, however, studies evaluating competing theories of representation on such issues are scarce. We examine this question by evaluating leading theories of representation on the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), a complex, historically significant, highly salient, and controversial bill that gave citizenship to millions of undocumented immigrants – precisely the type of group that past research suggests should struggle to obtain representation. We employ recent advances in estimating public opinion using multilevel regression and post-stratification to estimate district-level public opinion on IRCA. Contrary to traditional conceptions of subconstituency politics, the results suggest that, under at least some circumstances, traditionally marginalized groups are able to make important policy advances in the face of negative opinion, particularly when they are able to build coalitions that cross party lines and divide their opposition.