Representation In State Legislatures Research Articles

Closing the Gap: An Analysis of Women's Representation in State Legislatures and the Gender Pay Gap

In several US state legislatures, the number of women lawmakers has recently reached unprecedented levels. This raises the following question: what are the policy consequences associated with an increase in women legislators? While legislative scholars have uncovered that an increase in representation through women state lawmakers can result in different policy outcomes, one outcome that has not been considered is the size of the gender wage gap. In this research note, we develop the theoretical linkage that connects gender representation in state legislatures to the level of pay inequality within a state. We test our theoretical expectation with two different measures of pay inequality at the state level using panel data. Our results suggest that an increase in women state lawmakers corresponds to a smaller wage gap between men and women within the state. These findings deepen our understanding of the importance of gender representation in state legislatures.

Women’s Representation in State Legislatures and Women-Friendly Policy Outcomes

Women’s Representation in State Legislatures and Women-Friendly Policy Outcomes

Take (Her) to the Limit: Term Limits do Not Diminish Women's Overperformance in Legislative Office

Women in political office outperform men in legislative activity and constituent services. Scholars have identified two potential explanations for this overperformance: women are higher quality candidates when they run for office and women face elevated voter expectations to win elections. We use the presence of term limits to examine how these two justifications for women's overperformance produce downstream effects. While designed to strike a blow to entrenched systems of power, term limits reduce the time that legislators spend on constituent service and legislative output, including bill sponsorship, votes, and committee work. We use the effects of term limits as a tool for understanding the two paths to women's overperformance, using data on over 6000 legislators serving in term‐limited states. We find more evidence for the quality candidate hypothesis than the voter expectations hypothesis. While term limits degrade men's performance in office, women officeholders continue to overperform even under this institutional constraint. Our findings that women's overperformance is more likely due to their higher quality have implications for efforts to increase the representativeness of political bodies, the quality of representation in state legislatures, and the gendered consequences of institutional reforms.

An Intersectional Approach to Understanding Representation in State Legislatures

An Intersectional Approach to Understanding Representation in State Legislatures

Gender, Race/Ethnicity, and Representation in State Legislatures

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Do scheduled caste and scheduled tribe women legislators mean lower gender-caste gaps in primary schooling in India?

Despite India's substantial investments in primary schooling, gaps in schooling persist across gender and caste—with scheduled caste and scheduled tribe (SC/ST) girls being particularly disadvantaged. The representation of SC/ST women in state legislatures may help to mitigate this disadvantage. Specifically, because of her intersecting gender and caste/tribe identities, a SC/ST woman legislator might maintain a strong sense of solidarity especially with SC/ST girls and women, and support legislative policies benefitting SC/ST girls. Consequently, for this reason, we expect that living in a district where SC/ST women represent in state legislatures in a higher proportion may increase SC/ST girls' primary school completion, progression and performance. We tested this hypothesis using district-level data between 2000 and 2004 from the Indian Election Commission, the 2004/5 India Human Development Survey, and the Indian Census of 2001. As expected, the representation of SC/ST women in state legislatures was positively associated with SC/ST girls' grade completion and age-appropriate grade progression but was apparent not SC/ST girls' primary-school performance. SC/ST women's representation in state legislatures may reduce gender-caste gaps in primary-school attainment in India.

White‐Collar Government in the United States

White‐Collar Government in the United States

Contrasting party dynamics: A three decade analysis of the representation of Democratic versus Republican women state legislators

This research explores the partisan dynamics characterizing women's representation in state legislatures over time, a dynamic that is obscured when focusing on women as a single group undifferentiated by party. The realignment of the parties ideologically, and over the appropriate role for women in particular, has impacted their respective abilities to recruit, support, and elect women. As the Republican party became more conservative over the past three decades, gains among Republican women legislators stalled, and in some cases reversed. Republican women have faced their biggest obstacles in conservative states dominated by Republicans and made their biggest gains in states trending Democratic, where Republican seats are arguably less valuable. In contrast, the Democratic party's comparatively stronger support for gender equality, as well as its alliance with feminist groups focused on electing more women to office, has made it a more welcoming home for women seeking political careers. The Democratic party has effectively tapped into the growing pool of working women to facilitate a steady increase in Democratic women legislators in all regions of the country. These differing party dynamics have implications for women's descriptive and substantive representation, the prospects for women in higher office, and the image and future viability of the two parties.

Measuring Constituent Policy Preferences in Congress, State Legislatures, and Cities

Little is known about the American public’s policy preferences at the level of Congressional districts, state legislative districts, and local municipalities. In this article, we overcome the limited sample sizes that have hindered previous research by jointly scaling the policy preferences of 275,000 Americans based on their responses to policy questions. We combine this large dataset of Americans’ policy preferences with recent advances in opinion estimation to estimate the preferences of every state, congressional district, state legislative district, and large city. We show that our estimates outperform previous measures of citizens’ policy preferences. These new estimates enable scholars to examine representation at a variety of geographic levels. We demonstrate the utility of these estimates through applications of our measures to examine representation in state legislatures and city governments.

Health and the Political Agency of Women

We investigate whether women's political representation in state legislatures improves public provision of antenatal and childhood health services in the districts from which they are elected, arguing that the costs of poor services in this domain fall disproportionately upon women. Using large representative data samples from India and accounting for potential endogeneity of politician gender and the sample composition of births, we find that a 10 percentage point increase in women's representation results in a 2.1 percentage point reduction in neonatal mortality, and we elucidate mechanisms. Women's political representation may be an underutilized tool for addressing health in developing countries. (JEL D72, I12, I15, J16, O15, O17)

Year of the Woman, Decade of the Man: Trajectories of growth in women’s state legislative representation

The expansion of women’s political representation ranks among the most significant trends in American politics of the last 100 years. In this paper, we develop two longitudinal theories to explain patterns of growth and change in women’s state legislative representation over time. Gender salience suggests that years in which women’s absence from politics is problematized (e.g., 1992—the Year of the Woman) will demonstrate higher levels of growth. Political climate suggests that periods in which domestic issues are stressed (e.g., the 1990s) will produce higher levels of growth than periods in which international issues are stressed (e.g., post 9/11). Combinations of these two theories create four possible trajectories of growth in women’s representation that may be observed over time. We use latent growth curve models to assess the four theoretical trajectories, using data on women’s state legislative representation from 1982 to 2006. We find that while women achieved fleeting success in the Year of the Woman, further gains were limited in the remainder of the 1990s and average growth stalled completely after 2001. Our results show futher that gender salience and, to a lesser extent political, climate matter to growth and change in women’s political power over time.

Ambition, Gender, and the Judiciary

With the work of scholars like Fox and Lawless (2004) and Sanbonmatsu (2002), the discipline of political science began to understand individual-level explanations for women's representation in state legislatures. Such analysis, however, has not been extended to other branches of government, including state judiciaries. To examine individual-level explanations for representation on state courts, this article examines the results of a survey of Texas attorneys. The results of this research suggest that running for the judiciary is somewhat different from running for other office, and future research needs to explore the variation in ambition across types of offices.

Representation and Backlash: The Positive and Negative Influence of Descriptive Representation

For this article, I built on previous studies of representation by exploring the potential positive and negative impacts of descriptive representation in the policy process. Specifically, I examined the influence of openly lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) state legislators on the amount and types of LGBT‐related state legislation introduced from 1992 to 2002. My findings suggest that higher LGBT representation in state legislatures leads to greater substantive representation. The results also suggest, however, that descriptive representation is associated with the amount of anti‐LGBT legislation introduced. Additional analysis reveals that the net policy influence of increased LGBT representation is positive for the LGBT community.

The Behavior and Success of Latino Legislators: Evidence from the States*

Objectives. Research on the link between descriptive and substantive representation has focused almost exclusively on women and African Americans. In the last two decades, Latino representation in state legislatures has more than doubled, yet scholars have only begun to examine the policy interests and legislative success of these legislators. The objectives of this study are to test a descriptive representation model, in which the ethnicity of the legislator influences legislative behavior even after accounting for the ethnic composition of the district, and to examine ethnic differences in legislative success.Methods. Multivariate regression analyses are used to examine the effect of legislator ethnicity and district composition on bill sponsorship, committee service, and bill passage in seven U.S. legislatures.Results. I find that both constituency composition and the ethnicity of the legislator influence legislative behavior. The success of measures sponsored by Latino legislators varies substantially across states.Conclusions. I conclude that both the ethnicity of the legislator and the composition of the district influence legislative behavior and success. There is clear support for a descriptive representation model of agenda setting, particularly on issues involving immigration. However, this link between descriptive and substantive varies substantially by political context.

The Effects of Term Limits on State Legislatures: A New Survey of the 50 States

Term limits on legislators were adopted in 21 states during the early 1990s. Beginning in 1996, the limits legally barred incumbents from reelection in 11 states, and they will do so in four more by 2010. In 2002, we conducted the only survey of legislators in all 50 states aimed at assessing the impact of term limits on state legislative representation. We found that term limits have virtually no effect on the types of people elected to office—whether measured by a range of demographic characteristics or by ideological predisposition—but they do have measurable impact on certain behaviors and priorities reported by legislators in the survey, and on the balance of power among various institutional actors in the arena of state politics. We characterize the biggest impact on behavior and priorities as a “Burkean shift,” whereby term‐limited legislators become less beholden to the constituents in their geographical districts and more attentive to other concerns. The reform also increases the power of the executive branch (governors and the bureaucracy) over legislative outcomes and weakens the influence of majority party leaders and committee chairs, albeit for different reasons.

Term Limits, Electoral Competition, and Representational Diversity: The Case of Florida

AbstractThe article assesses two predictions made by term limits advocates: that term limits would increase electoral competition and enhance demographic representation in state legislatures. Although term limits may indeed have these consequences in some places and some times, their early effects in Florida do not provide support for these predictions. Our analysis suggests that state legislative seats that have opened up as the result of term limits yielded races with no smaller margins of victory than in previous elections, nor were they more likely to be contested by the two major political parties. Likewise, we found no significant increase in the representation of minorities or women in the Florida State Legislature after term limits.

Black Substantive Representation in State Legislatures from 1971–1994*

Objective. To determine if increased black descriptive representation in state legislatures has resulted in greater influence over policy outputs.Methods. I examine state budgets over a 24‐year period, comparing changes in spending priorities within budgets.Results. The results demonstrate that increased black representation has resulted in state legislatures giving greater priority to policy areas important to black elected officials.Conclusion. When measured correctly, increased descriptive representation can result in increased substantive representation in large political institutions.

Bringing Representation Home: State Legislators Among Their Constituencies

Bringing Representation Home: State Legislators Among Their Constituencies. By Michael A. Smith. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003. 227p. $34.95.In his seminal essay on state legislatures (“The State of U.S. State Legislative Research,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 6 [February 1981]: 1–25), Malcolm Jewell seemed puzzled that our knowledge of state legislative representation was so limited. After all, there was a long and productive history of work on representation in Congress, and the states provided variation that could help advance our theoretical understanding of this important topic. Unfortunately, apart from recent work by Alan Rosenthal (The Decline of Representative Democracy, 1998) and a few articles on particular aspects of representation (such as casework), research over the last 20 years has not advanced our knowledge of representation as much as Jewell might have liked.

Postmaterialism and Post-Industrialism: Cultural Influences on Female Representation in State Legislatures

AbstractIn the last 30 years, female state legislative representation in the United States has increased steadily and dramatically. While the cross-sectional variation in this representation has been studied at length, longitudinal changes have yet to be explained. We attempt to do this using two theories of large-scale cultural and political attitude change over the last several decades—postmaterialism and post-industrialism. Our empirical analyses are more consistent with post-industrialism theory than postmaterialism theory. We find that both cross-sectional differences and longitudinal changes in the percentage of state legislators who are female are explained primarily by college education and religious adherence, not age cohort or income. The effects of college education and religious adherence remain strong even in the presence of controls for other cultural and institutional variables that have been found to influence the sexual composition of state legislatures. Thus, our study suggests the existence of an education-religion cleavage on social issues among Americans.

The Complicated Impact of One Person, One Vote on Political Competition and Representation

This Article assesses the political consequences of the Supreme Court's decision in Baker v. Carr and the related cases establishing the one-person, one-vote rule for legislative redistricting. Through a set of new empirical tests, the Article examines the often-perverse effects of one person, one vote on political competition and representation in state legislatures. For four state senates the Article draws the 1960 district lines onto the 2000 political data and finds that the lines existing pre-Baker would usually be more representative than the lines currently in existence