This collaborative research breaks new ground in the study of the political representation by bringing together and integrating perspectives on race, ethnicity, and gender. The past few decades have witnessed tremendous changes in the politics of race, ethnicity, and gender in the U.S., not the least of which is the simultaneous growth in the numbers of women and of racial and ethnic minorities in public office. This study examines the complex and conditional processes by which these female and/or minority lawmakers succeed or fail to enhance the substantive policy interests of women, women of color, and racial/ethnic minorities. It explores not only the ways in which the representation of race, the representation of ethnicity, and the representation of gender are both similar and different; but also the ways in which efforts to represent the policy interests of women and of various racial and ethnic minorities are linked. Thus, the primary questions motivating this research are: how might the representation of women and of racial and ethnic minorities be linked and how might those linkages be affected by the political and institutional contexts in which they do or do not take place?
To address these questions, this study takes a very close and extensive look at the policymaking activities of state legislators male and female, of all races and ethnicities, across multiple states, and over multiple decades. First, it examines the legislation proposed and sponsored by Black female and Latina state legislators (in comparison to their colleagues proposals) to shed light on how lawmakers who may identify with multiple groups, and see themselves as representing multiple group interests, participate in the agenda-setting stages of the policy making process. Next, it explores the formation of legislative coalitions across gender, racial, and ethnic lines by examining and explaining patterns in the co-sponsorship of bills. Finally, this study investigates how state policy outcomes are affected by the presence and activities of women and minority legislators. Of special concern is whether the fates of gender and race-related policies are linked by the efforts of women of color or by coalitions of women and/or racial-ethnic minorities within these lawmaking bodies.
To conduct this research on representation and the politics of race, ethnicity, and gender in the American states, the Principal Investigators created three inter-related databases: one on individual state legislators and their districts, one on bills introduced by those legislators, and one on the political, socioeconomic, and institutional characteristics of each state and state legislature. To construct these databases, information was gathered from 25 states, at four-year intervals starting with 1981 and continuing up to 2005. Collectively, these states are representative of all fifty states on several important dimensions including: proportions of women, African Americans, and Latinos in the state legislature; party control (Democrat or Republican); ideological climate (liberal, moderate, or conservative); and electoral competition. The availability of these databases to the wider scholarly community should spur a great deal more research on race, ethnicity, gender, and political representation as they are manifest throughout the policy making process, within and across various historical and institutional contexts.
