Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Until our Voices are Heard: Legislative Representation of African American and Latino Interests in Agency Policy-Making

每年，国会都赋予联邦政府机构广泛的权力，以实施从福利改革到民权执法的公共政策。 尽管在影响少数群体的问题上，官僚决策很重要，但大多数种族和代表性问题的学者在分析实质性代表性问题时都忽略了这一决策活动。 相反，大多数人都把重点放在唱名投票上，把它作为衡量代表性的主要手段。 这个项目表明，学者。在机构决策中不注意立法干预，系统地低估了少数群体成员对不成比例地影响到种族和族裔少数群体的问题的反应。 由于种族或族裔群体的身份，黑人和拉丁裔立法者更有可能（相对于白人）干预与民权执法有关的机构行动。 该项目改进了早期研究的局限性，采用定量和定性相结合的方法来研究种族或族裔在委员会监督机构政策等不太明显的活动中的影响。 这些方法包括对国会监督听证会的详细内容分析，以及对第107届国会（2001-2002年）立法者及其工作人员的一系列精英访谈。 这些数据衡量了立法者。 通过审查个别立法者为确保官僚机构执行民权法律、规则和条例而投入的时间、精力和资源的数量，来确定立法的强度。 本研究将实质性代表的概念从只关注立法者扩展到立法者。点名投票行为，包括他们在非法案相关的活动，如规则制定和政策实施的行动。 此外，该项目表明，立法者的种族或民族身份是重要的，在确定他们为什么要付出高昂的成本干预机构的决策。 更广泛的影响：这项研究通过评估旨在让更多少数民族当选国会议员的种族重新划分措施是否能转化为增强少数民族利益的实质性代表性，为政策制定者和学者提供了见解。

Each year federal governmental bureaucracies are given broad authority by Congress to implement public policies that range from welfare reform to civil rights enforcement. Despite the importance of bureaucratic decisions on issues that affect minorities, most race and representation scholars have neglected to include this policy-making activity in their analysis of substantive representation. Instead most have focused on roll call voting as the primary measure of representation. This project demonstrates that scholars. inattention to legislative intervention in agency policy-making systematically understates minority members' responsiveness on issues that disproportionately affect racial and ethnic minorities. As a result of racial or ethnic group identity, Black and Latino legislators are more likely (relative to Whites) to intervene in agency actions relating to civil rights enforcement. This project improves upon the limitations of earlier studies by using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods to examine the effects of race or ethnicity in a less visible activity such as committee oversight of agency policies. These methods include a detailed content analysis of congressional oversight hearings and a series of elite interviews with legislators and their staff from the 107th Congress (2001-2002). These data gauge legislators. intensity by examining the amount of time, energy and resources that individual legislators invest in ensuring that bureaucracies are implementing civil rights laws, rules and regulations. The study expands the conceptualization of substantive representation from an exclusive focus on legislators. roll call voting behavior to one that includes their actions in non-bill related activities such as rulemaking and policy implementation. Additionally, the project shows that racial or ethnic identities of legislators are significant in determining why they pay high costs to intervene in agency policy-making. Broader Impacts: The research provides insight to policy-makers and scholars by assessing whether racial redistricting measures, designed to get more minorities elected to Congress, translate into enhanced substantive representation of minority interests.