Dissertation Research: Policy Preferences and Legislative Decision-Making

本博士论文研究考察了男性和女性州议员在政策偏好和立法活动上的差异，以及这些差异对州社会福利政策的影响。这项研究不会像大多数以前的研究假设的那样，假设观察到的男性和女性立法者的态度和活动的差异完全基于性别，而是将表明，这些差异很大程度上是由于男性和女性立法者所代表的选民类型的差异。研究的第二个目标是表明，立法机构的机构组织在多大程度上调节了女性的偏好对国家政策的影响。先前的工作假定，立法机构的妇女人数与政策产出的内容之间存在非线性关系。这篇文献还假设，所有州都存在同样的关系。目前的研究表明，女性偏好的影响因委员会制度的性质、立法机构中政党的力量以及女性在两党中的分布而有所不同。这项研究及其假设建立在先前的实证分析基础上，这些实证分析表明，立法者的偏好和行为存在性别差异，以及立法组织的正式模式。检验这些预测所需的数据来自一项寄给24个州2529名议员的邮件调查。调查数据补充了个别立法者的活动和特征、国家福利政策的内容以及州立法机构制定政策的规则和程序等信息。这是一个及时的立法问题，立法者及其选民可能对各种具体的福利政策替代方案有意见。这项研究对研究女性民选官员以及更广泛的代表性具有重要意义。具体说明立法机构的组织如何影响妇女将其独特的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.