Dissertation Research: Policy Preferences and Legislative Decision-Making

本博士论文研究了男性和女性州议员在政策偏好和立法活动方面的差异，以及这些差异对州社会福利政策的影响。与以往大多数研究所假定的那样，所观察到的男女立法者在态度和活动方面的差异完全是基于性别的，这项研究将表明，这些差异大部分是由男女立法者所代表的选区种类的差异引起的。研究的第二个目标是表明立法机构的组织调节了妇女的偏好对国家政策的影响程度。先前的工作假设立法机构中妇女人数与政策产出的内容之间存在非线性关系。该文献还假设，同样的关系适用于所有州。目前的研究表明，妇女偏好的影响随委员会制度的性质、立法机构中政党的实力以及妇女在两党中的分布而变化。本研究及其假设建立在以往实证分析的基础上，这些实证分析显示了立法者偏好和行为的性别差异，以及立法组织的正式模式。测试这些预测所需的数据来自于向24个州的2529名立法者发送的邮件调查。调查数据还补充了有关个别立法者的活动和特征、国家福利政策的内容以及构成州立法机构决策的规则和程序的信息。研究的实质重点是福利政策。这是一个及时的立法问题，立法者和他们的选民可能对各种具体的福利政策选择有意见。这项研究对妇女当选官员的研究以及更普遍的代表性研究具有重要意义。具体说明立法机构的组织如何影响妇女将其独特偏好转化为政策的能力，有助于确定描述性代表性和实质性代表性之间的关系。

This Doctoral Dissertation research investigates differences in policy preferences and legislative activities of men and women state legislators as well as the impact of these differences on states' social welfare policies. Rather than assuming that the observed differences in the attitudes and activities of male and female legislators are solely based in gender, as most previous research has assumed, this research will show that much of these differences arises from differences in the kinds of constituencies that male and female legislators represent.A second goal of the research is to show that the institutional organization of the legislature mediates the extent to which women's preferences influence state policy. Prior work assumes that there is a non-linear relationship between the number of women a legislature and the content of policy outputs. This literature also posits that the same relationship holds across all states. The current research demonstrates that the impact of women's preferences varies with the nature of the committee system, the strength of political parties in the legislature, and the distribution of women across the two parties.This research and its hypotheses build on previous empirical analyses that show gender differences in legislators' preferences and behavior, as well as formal models of legislative organization. Data, needed to test these predictions, are obtained from a mail survey sent to 2,529 legislators in 24 states. The survey data is supplemented with information on the activities and characteristics of individual legislators, the content of state welfare policies, and the rules and procedures that structure policymaking in state legislatures.The substantive focus of the research is welfare policy. This is a timely legislative issue where legislators and their constituents likely have opinions on a variety of specific welfare policy alternatives. The study has important implications for research on women elected officials and, more generally, representation. Specifying how the organization of legislative institutions affects the ability of women to translate their unique preferences into policy helps to define the relationship between descriptive and substantive representation.