John D. Griffin

Are Voters Better Represented

Studies of political participation and representation often contend that elected officials respond more to the preferences of voters than those of nonvoters, but seldom test this claim. This is a critical assumption because if true, biases in who participates will lead to biased representation. Office holders might respond disproportionately to voters’ preferences because voters tend to select like-minded representatives, voters tend to communicate their preferences more, and only voters can reelect representatives. We find that voter preferences predict the aggregate roll-call behavior of Senators while nonvoter preferences do not. We also present evidence supporting the three explanations advanced to account for the preferential treatment of voters.

How Citizens and Their Legislators Prioritize Spheres of Representation

The authors uncover evidence that citizens’ priorities about various spheres of legislative representation differ across demographic groups and that these differences are subsequently reflected in the in-office behavior of their elected officials. Specifically, African Americans and Latinos are less concerned than whites with policy representation—the attentiveness of elected officials to citizens’ policy preferences—but place more emphasis on their district receiving its fair share of federal money. Citizens with higher incomes place a higher priority on policy representation and less on constituency service than do those with lower incomes. Importantly, these priorities map onto their member of Congress’s behavior.

Senate Apportionment as a Source of Political Inequality

Political scientists have long known that the equal representation of states in the U.S. Senate and the placement of state lines might disadvantage politically relevant groups, granting some citizens greater voting weight in the chamber. Yet we lack systematic, longitudinal evidence that identifies the groups disadvantaged by Senate malapportionment, the sources of this disadvantage, and probes the policy consequences. In this article, I compare each states liberalism and racial composition with its relative voting weight in the Senate over time. Additionally, I examine whether roll-call coalitions in the Senate map onto these patterns of state ideology and racial composition.

Policy, Preferences, and Participation: Government's Impact on Democratic Citizenship

Do government policy decisions impact citizens’ involvement in politics? Using panel data, we assess the extent to which variation in levels of political participation among citizens between 2000 and 2004 is linked to the nexus of citizens’ preferences and government policy. We show that two policy decisions—military intervention in Iraq and the Bush tax cuts—did affect citizens’ subsequent political participation, mobilizing the biggest policy winners and galvanizing the greatest policy losers to increase their political activity. However, the mechanism that explains increased participation differs between winners and losers. We also uncover evidence that policy realization, or citizens’ retrospective perceptions of how well a policy played out, and political knowledge both moderate the effect of policy winning and losing on political participation.

Voting Power, Policy Representation, and Disparities in Voting’s Rewards

Reelection-minded officials have motivations to represent some of their constituents more than others when casting roll-call votes. In particular, reelection seekers have incentives to appeal to those with greater “voting power” (Bartels 1998): those who are likely to vote, are not strongly predisposed to vote for one of the parties, and are members of large groups within a particular constituency. We present two novel findings stemming from these incentives. First, we find that those with greater voting power tend to enjoy better policy representation. Second, the rewards of voting are greater for those belonging to groups with more voting power. Since voting power varies across racial/ethnic and income lines, these findings hold significant normative implications.

Legislator Wealth and the Effort to Repeal the Estate Tax

We relate legislators’ financial assets to their roll call voting on, and cosponsorship of, legislation to permanently repeal or significantly reduce the Estate Tax in the 109th Congress. Even after accounting for legislators’ party affiliations, their global opinions about taxation, and their constituents’ opinions about the Estate Tax, together with other confounding factors, we find that wealthier legislators were more likely to vote for and cosponsor bills to reduce and repeal the Estate Tax.

Are African Americans Effectively Represented in Congress

The authors relate the racial composition of districts to five measures of legislative activity and position in the 101st to 106th Congresses: bill introduction, colleague cosponsorship, bill passage, committee portfolio, and party leadership. The authors find that African American constituents generally are represented by less active and less well-positioned legislators on four of the five measures. They also explore the origin of these disparities. Two of the disparities (bill passage and party leadership) are partly explained by the tendency of districts with larger African American populations to be less electorally competitive. A third disparity (committee portfolio) is accounted for by the tendency of larger African American populations to be represented by African American members of Congress.

The Presidency and Political Equality

When black Americans and white Americans want the president to do different things, who wins? When low-income earners prefer different government action than do middle and high-income earners, whose preferences are reflected in presidential behavior? Recent studies show that congressional behavior often most closely follows the preferences of the white and the wealthy, but we know relatively little about presidential behavior. Since the president and Congress make policy together, it is important to understand the extent of political equality in presidential behavior. We examine the degree to which presidents have provided equal representation to these groups over the past four decades. We compare the preferences of these groups for federal spending in various budget domains to presidents’ subsequent budget proposals in those domains from 1974 to 2010. Over this period, presidents’ proposals aligned more with the preferences of whites and high-income earners. However, Republican presidents are driving this overall pattern. Democratic presidents represent racial and income groups equally, but Republicans’ proposals are much more consistent with the spending preferences of whites and high-income earners. This pattern of representation reflects the composition of the presidents party coalition and the spending preferences of groups within the party coalition.

Representation When Constituent Opinion and District Conditions Collide

When constituent opinion and district conditions point in two different directions, which factor is most influential for representatives who face important legislative roll calls? To address this question, we combine four types of data for the period from 2000 to 2012: key congressional roll call votes, district-level survey data, objective measures of district conditions, and other district demographics. We show (1) that material conditions in a district have an effect on legislative behavior independent of constituents’ opinions; (2) that opinions are not always a better predictor of lawmaker decisions, compared to conditions; and (3) that whether lawmakers tend to reflect constituent opinions or district conditions is a function of the demographic makeup of their districts.

Political inequality in America: Who loses on spending policy? When is policy less biased?

ABSTRACT Rapid growth in America’s economic inequality and endemic disadvantages among racial minorities have deepened fears about unequal political influence. From separate studies, it appears that the government responds more to the wealthy and to whites. But critical questions remain unanswered. What are relative contributions of race and class to government responsiveness? Why do these inequalities exist in the first place? And under what contexts are disparities in responsiveness reduced? To answer these questions, we assess the congruence between individual-level policy preferences and policy outcomes using the General Social Survey. We match individual spending preferences in 11 policy areas with actual federal spending to see whose preferences are realized. We find that race, more regularly than class, shapes government responsiveness. We also find that Democratic Party control eliminates most of the racial bias in responsiveness. Economic growth also narrows racial inequalities.