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官僚机构广泛的权力，以实施从福利改革到民权执法的各种公共政策。尽管官僚决策在影响少数民族的问题上具有重要意义，但大多数种族和代表性学者都忽略了将这种决策活动纳入他们对实质性代表性的分析。相反，大多数人都把点名投票作为代表的主要衡量标准。这个项目证明了学者。对机构决策中立法干预的不重视，系统性地低估了少数民族成员对不成比例地影响种族和族裔少数群体的问题的反应。由于种族或民族身份，黑人和拉丁裔立法者（相对于白人）更有可能干预与民权执法有关的机构行动。本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，审查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）的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。通过检查个别立法者为确保官僚机构执行民权法律、法规和条例而投入的时间、精力和资源的强度。该研究扩展了实质代表性的概念，不再仅仅关注立法者。点名投票行为，包括他们在非法案相关活动中的行为，如规则制定和政策实施。此外，该项目表明，立法者的种族或民族身份在决定他们为什么付出高昂代价干预机构决策方面具有重要意义。更广泛的影响：该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划措施是否转化为少数民族利益的实质性代表，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.