Three Essays on Elite Ethno-Racial Minority Politics

Abstract

Political scientists often draw clear boundaries between the realms of “mass politics” and “elite politics,” asserting that systematic differences exist between the factors and motivations driving elites’ behaviors and those driving the behavior of the mass public. However, this stark difference is often elided in studies of elite ethno-racial minority behavior, where race is understood to influence elite behavior as a matter of course. In this dissertation, I leverage several novel data sources to shed light on why race and racial identity, in particular, matter for different forms of elite behavior: campaign speech, deliberative strategies, and representational styles. In the first paper, I describe how Black Congressional candidates present themselves on the campaign trail using campaign website text from more than 600 candidates over 8 electoral cycles. I establish that racialized language is more often used as a rhetorical device in races where there are more African American voters in the district. Moreover, I show using the natural experiment offered by repeat runners in the 2018 and 2020 cycles, that candidates are less likely to discuss race in more well-attended primaries when voter preferences are potentially more heterogeneous. In the second paper, I argue that identity-based groups in legislatures — like racial caucuses — exert a disciplining force on members to augment collective power. I demonstrate that members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) change their behavior in settings where they are around more fellow members of the caucus. Specifically, on Congressional committees, members to the right of the caucus, and thus farther ideologically from leadership, tend to speak less when more CBC members are added to their committee assignments. Members to the left of the caucus, those closer to leadership, speak more. I find that this pattern of behavior is maintained by caucus leaders withholding campaign contributions and legislative aid in the form of bill co-sponsorship from right-leaning members that speak more. Similarly, left-leaning members are punished for differing from the CBC majority on roll calls. Finally, in the third paper, I argue that because race indeed serves as a salient organizing feature for legislators working collectively, groups' relative capacities to maintain cohesion can influence their efficacy. Looking at state legislators, I show that Black, Hispanic, and Asian Democratic legislators tend to secure more funding for their districts when the size of their respective racial-ethnic delegation is larger. I then show, using newly constructed measures of roll call similarity, that these gains are further augmented for groups that maintain roll call cohesion despite a larger size. Taken together, this body of work advances our knowledge of this important class of individuals. Moreover, it lends support to the view that race is not simply a salient category in American politics that warrants the separate study of different groups but is also a feature that can complicate our understanding of candidates' and politicians' behaviors.