Cindy Simon Rosenthal

Gender Styles in State Legislative Committees: Raising Their Voices in Resolving Conflict

Abstract This research focuses on the gendered nature of legislative institutions by examining the conflict resolution styles of state legislative committee chairs. Based on a survey of 285 state legislative committee chairs, focus groups and individual interviews, the study examines a sizeable cohort of men and women engaged in fundamentally similar leadership tasks but under varying institutional circumstances and in more than a single state. The research finds that women committee chairs raise their voices to resolve conflicts in a different way from their male colleagues. More importantly, the study shows how gender composition of the membership, the distribution of gender power, and the extent of professionalization influence conflict resolution style. These data challenge the predominant view of legislative leadership as transactional behavior and suggest the need to consider whether masculine behavior and institutional norms have been conflated.

Determinants of Collaborative Leadership: Civic Engagement, Gender or Organizational Norms?

This analysis attempts to unravel competing explanations of collaborative leadership styles of state legislative committee chairs. Specifically, the paper considers the influence of community or volunteer experience, gender, and institutional variables. The data show that women chairs are more likely than their male peers to cite as valuable the leadership skills and experiences that they gain through community and volunteer experience. Compared to their male colleagues, women committee chairs on average also report a greater reliance on collaborative strategies in the management of their committees. Prior community or volunteer experience has little or no direct effect on collaborative styles. In contrast, institutional factors have a much stronger and countervailing influence. Legislative professionalization produces a strong negative effect on collaborative style. Results suggest that conformity to institutional norms may be a more compelling influence than prior community experience. The analysis also points to the gendered nature of organizational leadership with mens and womens styles showing different associations to style depending on the number and power of women in a legislature.

Gendered Discourse in the Political Behavior of Adolescents

The roots of adult civic and political participation originate in pre-adult experiences (Verba et al. 1995) and high school extracurricular activities offer students opportunities to develop interpersonal and leadership skills. In this research, we ask whether adolescents also learn gendered norms of political discourse through extracurricular activities. This project assessed gender differences in participation at the 1999 Model United Nations of the Southwest (MUNSW) at the University of Oklahoma. Important differences in participation were observed in the number and character of speaking turns taken by male and female delegates. We find that contextual factors, such as the sex of the committee chair, the issue areas addressed by the committee, and the timing of the session in the conference significantly influence who participates in the discourse, but the percentage of female participants surprisingly does not. The character of the political discourse suggests norms dominated by masculinity.

New Party or Campaign Bank Account? Explaining the Rise of State Legislative Campaign Committees

State legislative caucus campaign committees have emerged in the 1980s as an important party adaptation in state politics. This study explores the factors associated with the existence of these new party organizations and with their levels of contributions to party candidates. To explain these phenomena, five hypotheses are investigated concerning the strength of state parties, the cost of state campaigns, the level of legislative professionalism, the degree of party competition, and the regulation of campaign contributions in states where these committees have emerged. Legislative professionalism and party competition are associated with the existence of the caucus committees. Legislative professionalization, party competition, and laws restricting campaign contributions are powerful explanations of the level of expenditure of these committees. Leadership stability and spending by the opposing party also help explain the activity of caucus campaign committees.

Sports Talk: How Gender Shapes Discursive Framing of Title IX

Existing scholarship has shown that the media and interest groups play an important role in the shaping of the publics perception of reality and in establishing the quality of democratic discourse on public policy questions. In turn, interest group actors employ different media and grassroots strategies in hopes of exploiting discursive opportunities that advance their cause. This study explores recent public policy debates over Title IX to illustrate how gender undergirds the discursive framing choices made by interest groups and presented in the media coverage. I find that framing, especially in the media, reinforces enduring cultural aspects of masculinity in sports.

Who is Nancy Pelosi

The election of a Democratic majority to the U.S. House of Representatives in the 110 th Congress paved the way for Nancy Pelosi of California to become the first woman speaker. As the incumbent Democratic leader, Pelosi was well known on Capitol Hill. Yet as the incoming speaker, and the first woman speaker, she faced the certainty of receiving extensive media scrutiny in the run up to the 2006 election, during the transition period, and during her first year in office. How would she become viewed by the American people? And who would shape the publics perception of her? What role would gender and her status as the historic first woman speaker play in focusing the lens of media attention?

Assessing Nancy Pelosi

Congressional scholars have devoted considerably more attention to describing and explaining congressional leadership than to evaluating it. The election of Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives provides fresh occasion for consideration of normative criteria for assessing leadership performance. In this article we develop a set of normative criteria grounded in congressional leadership theory. We discuss recent speakerships in relationship to these criteria. We then assess Speaker Pelosis performance in the 110th Congress. We conclude that by each criterion, she has provided effective leadership; however, we regard any assessment at this point to be provisional. Important tests of her leadership are yet to come.

Local Politics: A Different Front in the Culture War?

What do we learn by examining the so-called “culture wars” in the context of local government? Local politics are both similar and different from the partisan skirmishes evidenced at the national levels. More importantly by considering how local politics differs from national politics in the culture war, we are reminded that resources of social capital and integrative

A Review of“Becoming a Candidate: Political Ambition and the Decision to Run for Office”

But in my view, the notion of problem-solving is an awkward vehicle for this venture. It implies, somewhat indefinitely, several distinct ideas: unsatisfactory existing conditions; general agreement in assessing those conditions; the availability of means for decisive improvement; the need for invention or analysis to identify those means; and effort driven by broad societal objectives, not just parochial political interests. It is implausible to base a broad theoretical perspective on all of that. Along with others, I have suggested two other, related conceptions of policy-making activity that go beyond choice between competing preferences: the resolution of nonzero-sum policy conflict; and information processing or deliberation. In my view, these notions have more potential than that of problem-solving to offer a workable basis for analysis of Congress. In addition, I find a number of the empirical analyses only loosely linked to the theoretical notions. As noted above, the authors show that incumbent members have modestly better reelection prospects when the public approves of Congress’s performance. The authors use this finding to suggest a substantial individual incentive to promote problem solving. But with 535 members involved in the decisions that determine performance, such an electoral effect would not induce politically costly effort or position-taking by individual members. If rank-and-file members have incentives to cast votes that contribute to solving problems, it is because voters or (more likely) interest groups reward the positions themselves, not the overall performance of Congress. Similarly, Adler and Wilkerson show that legislators with prior successful experience sponsoring legislation are more likely to sponsor subsequent major bills. They interpret this tendency as an institutional inducement to problem-solving effort; but it could also induce ideological commitment and contestation. Although the empirical analyses are consistently interesting—often exploring new ground—I think there will be disagreement about how much the findings actually support the problem-solving perspective. In the end, I hope and expect that Adler and Wilkerson’s challenging study will be widely read. A book that forces us to think hard about how we approach the study of Congress does not come along very often.

From Green to Gold in Municipal Facilities

The experience of Norman, Oklahoma, demonstrates success in sustainability efforts when local leaders focus on incorporating green initiatives into the “ordinary things” of municipal facilities. Two projects highlight Normans efforts: LEED-certified fire stations and a CNG (compressed natural gas) fueling facility to help transition the city fleet to cleaner burning alternative fuels. The city overcame the initial funding challenges in two ways. A dedicated sales tax for new public safety facilities provided the necessary funding for the fire stations, and a combination of intergovernmental grants financed the CNG facility. Both projects already show important reductions in environmental impacts and savings in energy costs.