Suchergebnisse

4 Latino Interests and Latino Representation in Legislative CommitteesImportance of Legislative Committees; Expectations about the Behavior of Latinos on Legislative Committees; Data and Methods; Dispositional/Institutional Characteristics; District Characteristics; Results; The Effects of Ethnicity on Committee Participation by Specific Bill Type; A Congruent Analysis of Committee Activity?; Conclusion; 5 Vote Choice and Latino Representation; Previous Work on Roll Call Behavior and the Link between Descriptive and Substantive Representation.

Recent scholarship has shown that legislators with deeper local roots and other preexisting place‐based attachments to their districts enjoy far‐reaching electoral advantages over their more "carpetbagging" colleagues. In this article, we consider how local roots, and its intersection with legislative polarization, influences legislative behavior, using a dataset of nearly 5,000 state legislators and novel measures of their local roots. We hypothesize that state legislators with deep local roots in their districts should be less ideologically polarized than their less‐rooted colleagues. This is precisely what we find. Using Shor‐McCarty ideology measures, we show that the most locally rooted legislators are 16% less ideologically extreme than their unrooted counterparts. These effects are comparable to or exceed those of district partisanship, chamber seniority, or other legislator characteristics. Collectively, these findings show that legislators' local roots not only affect their electoral fortunes, but also have major implications for legislative activity and party polarization.

In this study, we explore the determinants of cosponsorship activity within state legislatures. Utilizing a social dynamic framework, we develop and test a model of the interplay of the activities of sponsorship and cosponsorship that includes both individual‐level and social network characteristics as determinants of agenda‐setting behavior; the latter demonstrating how collaboration and mutual interests shape the agenda‐setting process. We find several consistent factors that influence the frequency of cosponsorship activity: (1) ideological distance, (2) proximity of legislators' districts, (3) homophily (similar characteristics such as race, gender, and ethnicity), and (4) transitivity (the idea that friends of my friends are also my friends).

Objective-This article explores the empirical effects of U.S. drug policy on coca cultivation in the Central Andes. We assess the impact of U.S. military assistance on the production of coca in the Central Andes, while controlling for other explanatory variables that influence coca cultivation. Method-Using data from 1980-2001 for Colombia, Bolivia, and Peru, we perform a pooled cross-sectional time-series analysis. Results-The effects of U.S. military assistance on coca cultivation are not uniform across the Central Andes. Coca production decreased in Bolivia and Peru and increased in Colombia. Total coca production in the Central Andes, however, remained unchanged. Conclusion-This study is consistent with existing literature that points out the obstacles governments face as they attempt to suppress illicit goods. Specifically, our empirical findings support the idea of the "balloon effect," whereby government efforts to "squeeze" illicit trade in one area result in the expansion of that trade elsewhere. Tables, Figures, 2, References. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractWhen one political party gains control of American national governing institutions, it increases the prospects of enacting its policy agenda. Faced with this partisan misalignment, the authors expect state governments controlled by the national out-party to respond to the national partisan context with more state policy activism. The study examines changes in state policy liberalism from 1974 to 2019, and finds that both Republican- and Democratic-controlled states have pushed policy further in their preferred ideological directions when the opposing party has greater partisan control over the national policy agenda in Washington. It also identifies differences between the two parties. While the effect of Republican control modestly increases as Democrats gain power at the national level, Democratic-controlled states have shown dramatically larger shifts in policy liberalism during periods of Republican national control. This arrangement, however, appears to be a contemporary one, emerging in the more polarized political environment since the mid-1990s.

ObjectiveDrawing a distinction between conditional and prevalence factors that affect immigration attitudes, we examine if the recent economic recession has influenced the Millennial Generation's attitudes about immigration, compared to non‐Millennials.MethodsEmploying data from the 2008 American National Election Study (ANES), we conduct a logit analysis to estimate the effects of theoretically relevant factors on immigration attitudes.ResultsOur findings indicate that even in the face of poor economic conditions that disproportionately impacted Millennials, this cohort's attitudes toward immigration are quite resilient. While Millennials' immigration attitudes vary across a number of determinants, overall, they are more tolerant of immigration than non‐Millennials.ConclusionMillennials' tolerance of immigration is consistent with their general liberal beliefs. This is true even under the conditional impact of economic self‐interest and the conditional and prevalence impact of culture during the recession—a time when Millennials could have been susceptible to factors mitigating their feelings toward immigrants.