Jean Reith Schroedel

Campaign Contributions and Legislative Outcomes

URING the last ten years there has been a growing public controversy over whether special interest groups use campaign contributions to influence Congress. Some public interest advocates assert that we are perilously close to having the best Congress that money can buy. Spokesman for the organizations making contributions counter by saying that their groups are nothing more than collections of citizens exercising their democratic rights. The limited research thus far performed has uncovered little evidence that a statistically significant relationship exists between the special interest money and legislative outcome. In the first section of this paper I trace the escalation in campaign costs, the dramatic increase in political action committees, and the subsequent debate about the implications of these developments. Then I lay out the conceptual framework which differs in two major ways from previous work in the field. First, I have chosen to focus upon the effect of campaign contributions upon behavior at the committees level instead of upon the House of Representatives as a whole. The committees function as gatekeepers by determining which legislative proposals are considered by the entire House. A crucial first step for lobbyists is to win support at the committee level. Much of the money an interest group gives to candidates is targeted at members of the committee considering legislation relevant to the giver. Therefore, if the money has an effect at all, it is most likely to appear in the behavior of members on committees dealing with legislation affecting those interest groups. Second, I have chosen to study three pieces of interrelated legislation which present very diverse surrounding conditions in terms of pitting interest groups against one another, the degree of public involvement, and intra-industry divisions. This systematic approach allows one to formulate hypotheses testing the conditions under which campaign contributions are likely to have an impact and when they are likely to be overshadowed by other factors such as political ideology, constituency, and seniority.

Senate Voting and Social Construction of Target Populations: A Study of AIDS Policy Making, 1987–1992

Scholars have devoted considerable attention to analyzing the social construction of AIDS. To explore the politics of AIDS policymaking, this research uses Schneider and Ingrams (1993) theory of the social construction of target populations to evaluate the U.S. Senates response to AIDS between 1987 and 1992. Our study found that Schneider and Ingrams model provides important insights into how political processes affect AIDS policy design. While our data did not strictly conform to all of the models theoretical expectations, the data provided evidence confirming its predictions about broad patterns in the allocation of both substantive and symbolic policy benefits and burdens to different target populations.

A gender analysis of policy formation: the case of fetal abuse.

In this paper we argue the value to policy research of taking a feminist perspective on policy issues. We show the development of fetal abuse as a policy issue and how the often unconscious patriarchal stance taken by those participating in the debate has led to fetal abuse being defined as an issue that arises from the negligence of women, when an equally good case can be made for male fetal abuse. We then show how this definition of the problem followed from the patriarchal belief systems of those who framed the issue.

The Paradox of Protestantism and Women in Elected Office in the United States

ABSTRACT In cross-national studies, scholars have found that wealthy countries and those with a Protestant tradition are more likely to have higher levels of women in elected office. Even though the United States should then be high in this domain, it lags behind many similarly situated countries. We posit that one reason for this paradox is that Protestantism in the United States is far more socially conservative than is typical in other Protestant countries. To test our argument, we use state-level data on the proportion of women in elected office from 2002 to 2004 and survey data on church membership. We find a negative relationship between the percentage of Protestants belonging to churches associated with the National Association of Evangelicals, a lobbying group representing socially conservative Protestant denominations, and the proportion of women in elected office.

Gender Relations and Institutional Conflict Over Mifepristone

Abstract This research uses mifepristone (RU 486) policymaking under the George Herbert Walker Bush and Clinton administrations to test whether having women in Congress and in influential positions in the executive branch increases the likelihood that policies favorable to women will be adopted. We consider whether women officeholders as a group have different policy priorities than do similarly situated male officeholders, and if so, what other conditions must be met for those differences to be translated into higher levels of support for policies that women support. The dramatic increase in the numbers of women serving in Congress and in senior policy positions in the executive branch over the past twelve years provides us with the first opportunity to test this proposition in both branches of government. We chose mifepristone policymaking because it was on the policy agenda throughout the period and it is an issue of major importance to women.

Cervical Cancer Screening Outreach Among Low Income, Immigrant, and Minority Communities in Los Angeles County

Abstract High cervical cancer mortality rates continue to be a significant problem in some sectors of the population. This study analyzes the success of the Los Angeles County Office of Womens Health free cervical cancer screening program in overcoming barriers that inhibit at-risk women (e.g., low income, immigrant, Hispanic, and Asian Pacific Islander women) from getting screened. The researchers assess the effectiveness of their two major outreach strategies—community outreach and mass media appeals—in mobilizing different groups of women. The study also identifies barriers to access that contribute to no show behavior on the part of women who had scheduled screening appointments.

Vote Dilution and Suppression in Indian Country

The struggle for Native American voting rights has lasted more than two centuries. Although the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act granted citizenship to indigenous peoples born within the geographic boundaries of the United States, it did not ensure the right to vote. Because the Constitution gives states the power to determine the “times, places, and manner of holding elections,” many states statutorily denied Native Americans the franchise until federal lawsuits forced them to change. Having the statutory right to vote, however, did not ensure that it could be exercised in a meaningful way. Since the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act there have been more than ninety voting rights cases involving Native Americans. While the overall historical trend has been toward extending the vote, periods of enhanced voting rights often have been followed by periods of retrenchment. In this article, we argue that the traditional frameworks used to explain racial inequalities fail to account for the unique character of relations between indigenous peoples and the U.S. government, and we propose a tripartite approach that draws from studies in core–periphery development and “racial institutional orders,” but also considers the many ways that tribal identities intersect with these.

Sexual Injustice: Supreme Court Decisions from Griswold to Roe by Marc Stein

Despite its title, which implies that Marc Stein has written a different book focusing on Supreme Court decisions dealing broadly with reproductive rights, Sexual Injustice: Supreme Court Decisions from Griswold to Roe’s central focus is on a little-known 1967 gay rights ruling. Stein devotes more than half of the book to an in-depth analysis of the court’s 6-to3 decision in Boutilier v. Immigration and Naturalization Service, which upheld the constitutionality of the “psychopathic personality” provision of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act that authorized the exclusion and deportation of “homosexual” aliens. Rather than seeing this decision as a conservative aberration in the midst of otherwise very progressive judicial decisions dealing with sexual matters, Stein persuasively argues that the court’s rulings with respect to birth control, abortion, interracial marriage, and obscenity in the 1960s and 1970s actually establish a “doctrine of heteronormative supremacy” that privileges “adult, heterosexual, marital, monogamous, private and procreative forms of sexual expression” (18). When examined within this context, Stein contends that the antiegalitarian Boutilier ruling is quite consistent with the other significant sexual freedom rulings of the era. In short, he argues that popular conception of the court as a bastion of sexual liberalism during this era is flawed and that a more nuanced interpretation, which recognizes both liberal and conservative elements, would be more accurate. While recognizing that some landmark court decisions—Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), Fanny Hill v. Massachusetts (1966), Loving v. Virginia (1967), Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972), and Roe v. Wade (1973)—greatly expanded sexual freedom for many Americans, Stein highlights the conservative thread that links these decisions together and creates a hierarchy of sexual rights. Through close textual analyses of the rulings, concurrences, dissents, dicta, and related documents, Stein demonstrates that the justices never intended to establish a doctrine of sexual libertarianism. Instead, even in its most vaunted “liberal” rulings, the court reiterated that it was constitutionally permissible for states to regulate or even ban many forms of sexual activity and give primacy to the marital relationship. He finds that even

Eileen McDonagh. The Motherless State: Women's Political Leadership and American Democracy

McDonagh begins by stating, “In the United States, we pride ourselves on our democratic and egalitarian values,” (1) but then goes on to briefly mention areas where the country historically has fallen short of its “promise of equality” before turning to the focus of her research, the paucity of American women in political office. She makes a normative claim that the near absence of women from high political office violates the core precept of representative democracy that all members of the community share in governance.1 McDonagh notes that the United States ranks 83rd in terms of the percentage of women serving in its national legislature, and unlike nearly half of all democracies, has never elected a woman to national executive office. She describes this as a paradox, given that women in the United States have high rates of educational attainment and have a record of professional and business success that exceeds that of women in nearly every country in the world. Her aim is both analytical and prescriptive. The roots of this paradox, McDonagh argues, lie in the American founding that enshrined negative individual rights, while abrogating the positive group rights inherent in hereditary monarchies. According to McDonagh, there is a “fusion of family with state” in hereditary monarchies that legitimates government

Assessing Medical Abortion in the US

In 1980 a team of French scientists, led by Dr. Étienne-Émile Baulieu, discovered that a combination of drugs could be used to non-surgically terminate early pregnancies. They found that the first drug, mifepristone (initially named RU 486), which is given through an injection, inhibits the effectiveness of progesterone and weakens the embryo’s attachment to the uterine wall. Two days later, the woman takes the second drug, misoprostol, which brings on uterine contractions that expel the fetal tissue. During the first eight weeks of a pregnancy, the drugs are effective 92-96% of the time (Population Council 2000; Schaff et al. 2000).1 Because surgical abortions had been the only safe and legal means of terminating an unwanted pregnancy for more than one hundred years, the discovery of an effective means of drug-induced abortions was viewed by many as a potentially revolutionary development.