Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In this effort, we examine the effect dyadic and collective descriptive representation have on the political efficacy of California's Latino population. We argue that the representation of individual Latino citizens by one or more Latino legislators, as well as the overall number of Latino legislators in the institution, will each be associated with increased levels of efficacy among Latino constituents. Having a co-ethnic represent your interests, and seeing multiple co-ethnics participate in the policy-making process, we suggest, should reduce the perceived distance between the minority citizen and his or her government, and enhance that citizen's feeling of being represented.
We test this at both the dyadic level and the collective level of representation. Using data from the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute, we find no evidence of the dyadic effect we anticipate. By contrast, analysis of California Field Poll data suggests that the increasing total number of Latino legislators does have a positive and significant effect on the perceptions of government by Latino respondents. That is, while dyadic descriptive representation appeared to have no direct effect, the collective representation of Latinos in the legislature appears to have a positive effect on the broader Latino population's assessment of government. We speculate about the meaning of these different results and offer some thoughts on the implications of this relationship.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper seeks to “measure” the free trade ideas that MPs were exposed to in their constituencies from 1841 to 1846, and then link this to their voting records in Parliament. I use local newspaper coverage of trade policy in 1841 and 1846 to compare the prevalence of free trade ideas in the districts of Peelites and Non-Peelite Conservatives in order to examine the change from 1841 to 1846. The results provide empirical evidence of the increased intensity in lobbying by the Anti-Corn Law League from 1841 to 1846, thereby increasing the demand for Repeal. Yet, it is also found that Peelites did not experience any dramatic changes in the ideas to which they were exposed in their constituencies, thus strengthening the argument that the abrupt reversal of the Peelites was not simply the product of demand-side pressures.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In many advanced democracies predictable differences between parties in government have become more difficult to discern. We argue that in response to a less observable structure in electoral politics, citizens are less engaged in the democratic process. We test the hypothesis that fewer party differences in economic policy and outcomes dampens electoral participation rates. Based on aggregate-level data from 19 OECD democracies from the 1950s to 2000, we find the highest turnouts occur in elections where voters can discern differences in party control of unemployment based on long-term historical record. Even after controlling for different electoral systems, state structure, and election procedures, three factors-- unions, Labor parties, and Left party performance on unemployment-- create a context conducive to higher levels of turnout.

Publication Type: Proceeding

Publication Type: Proceeding
Abstract: The deliberative dimension of democratic politics is crucial for all the reasons that deliberative democrats have identified in recent years. Because mechanisms of preference aggregation are always imperfect, for instance, something more than aggregation is needed to establish the legitimacy of collective decisions.2 Moreover, whatever initial preferences citizens may have at the outset of deliberation are frequently transformed in the process of decision making. Consequently, the true source of political legitimacy in democratic societies must be “not the predetermined will of individuals but the process of its determination, deliberation itself.”3 And although interests rightly have a place in political decision making, questions of law and public policy that involve justice should not be left to interestgroup competition or the play of power. Such matters demand deliberation that is informed by a morally sound standpoint, for we could never endorse (from within a moral standpoint) the practice of deciding questions of justice on the basis of prevailing relations of power alone.4 Likewise, while acts of pure
altruism are relatively rare, most of us regularly vote on the basis of our convictions about what is right and not only as an expression of self-interested preferences for particular candidates or policies.5 This is often true even when the issue at hand is one of distribution, but it is virtually always the case when the issue involves conflicting values.6 Finally, public deliberation can usefully extend the individual moral imagination and thereby enhance the impartiality of our moral judgments.7 So for both political and moral reasons democratic deliberation is important. We should therefore support procedural mechanisms in political institutions and in the wider practices of civil society that facilitate a deliberative approach to public decision making, at least so far as this is consistent with protections for constitutional rights and basic civil liberties.