The Political Glass Ceiling

Abstract

Why has the integration of women into elective office, particularly Congress, been so slow? We argue that incumbency and the general lack of competition in American elections serve as a “political glass ceiling,” having a dampening effect on the number of women running in both primary and general U.S. House elections. With data from House elections from 1978-1998, we find that although there have been general upward trends in the number of women running in primaries, winning primaries, and winning election to Congress, there is a distinct gender gap between the parties. The growth in the presence of women since 1988 is largely a Democratic phenomenon. In addition, women are strategic in their decisions regarding whether or not they will run; the likelihood of success influences the decision to become a candidate. Women are far more likely to run in districts with an open seat than they are in districts where they would face a safe incumbent. This implies that the number of women entering the House depends upon the political cycle of redistricting or unanticipated events and “crises” that create large numbers of open seats.     

Candidate Sex and Congressional Elections

Abstract

In 1992, an unprecedented number of women were elected to Congress. This election seemed to debunk the notion of female disadvantage as female candidates ran better than males. Since 1992, however, female candidates have failed to compete as effectively as men in congressional elections, again raising the specter of a sex bias. In this paper, we examine 365 open seat congressional elections held since 1982 in order to ascertain whether the indicators of female success in the 1980s and early 1990s structured female candidate success and/or failure after 1992. For this study, these indicators include candidate attributes such as financial quality and candidate experience. Our examination indicates that candidate attributes have significantly weakened as predictors of open seat election outcomes, especially in female versus male races. Instead, a strong increase in the correlation of the presidential normal vote and the congressional vote in open seats since 1992 indicates the emergence of elections where candidate attributes are secondary to the partisanship of the district. Female versus male races demonstrate much higher partisan coherence than all-male open seat contests, and Democratic women run about six points behind Republican women when district partisanship is controlled. These factors, combined with the increasingly Democratic distribution of female nominations, mitigate against female gains through open seats after 1992.     

An empirical analysis of union election outcomes in the electric utility industry

Unions in the electric utility industry consistently won a greater percentage of elections between 1970 and 1989 than did unions in other industries. Several factors significantly affected union victory rates at electric utilities: when the election was held, the union involved, the size of the utility, the percent of the state’s labor force unionized, the number of eligible voters, whether the election involved multiple-unions, and whether the election was Regional- or Board-directed.     

Electoral Context,Issues, and Voting for Women in the 1990s

Abstract

This research hypothesizes that, because of the particular stimulation provided by the focus on candidate sex and gender-related issues in the electoral environment, there was a unique set of demographic and attitudinal variables related to voting for a woman candidate for the House of Representatives in 1992. Because the environments of the elections of 1994 and 1996 were relatively “gender-free,” these variables were not related to voting behavior in these years. The analysis supports the hypothesis that the determinants of support for women congressional candidates are different in 1992 than in subsequent elections. It also suggests that the differing environments of the three elections may be a contributing factor to these differences.     

Unions,PAC contributions,and the NAFTA vote

Political action committees (PACs), especially those controlled by organized labor and business, have been shown to affect Congressional voting. We explore how PACs influenced the House of Representatives’ vote on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The NAFTA vote is analyzed because organized labor strongly opposed the treaty while business generally supported it and because of the straight-forward voting generated by its fast-track status. Probit analysis of a unique, unpublished data set containing information about PAC and non-PAC contributions to the 1992 House election campaigns demonstrates that Representatives who depended largely on labor PACs tended to oppose NAFTA, while Representatives who derived a large proportion of their campaign contributions from business PACs tended to favor its passage.     

Two’s a Crowd: Women Candidates in Concurrent Elections

ABSTRACT

Most research on evaluations of women candidates considers single elections in isolation. Using two Dynamic Process Tracing experiments, this article examines whether voters alter their evaluations of women candidates, as well as their willingness to learn about and vote for them, based on the presence of other women running simultaneously in concurrent contests. We find a consistent pattern in which female candidates are not adversely affected when they are the only woman on a voter’s ballot, but they are disadvantaged when other women appear on the same party’s ballot in other races. This effect is more prominent for women in lower offices: women running for the House of Representatives are more disadvantaged than women running for higher offices are.     

AN ANALYSIS OF THE IMPACT OF CONGRESSIONAL TERM LIMITS

We examine the impact of a six-term tenure limit on members of the U.S. House of Representatives. The first part of this study develops a methodological framework for simulating the quantitative impact of term limits. The second part of this study uses this framework to estimate the effects of term limits on (i) the value of holding office, (ii) turnover, and (iii) the size of the Democratic majority in the House. Both steady-state and transition period effects are explored.     

Voting rights for alien residents--who wants it?

Foreign nationals permanently domiciled in Sweden have been entitled since 1975 to vote and to municipal and county council elections. This article examines some of the major issues associated with international migration and disenfranchisement of migrants created by a contradiction between economic and political rationale. The alien population of Sweden remained small for a long time, but during the 1960s it rose 1st to 300,000 and later to 400,000 persons. Since 1970, aliens have constituted roughly 5% of the total national population of 8.3 million. Surveys following the 3 elections held in Sweden so far have shown immigrants to be quite well informed concerning election procedures and the parties. In contrast to single males, women with children tend to be highly stable, because of favorable social security for women, particularly for women with children. Participation elections among women (55%) is higher than among men (49%), and married women (58%) are usually the highest participants. Class-voting is still rather strong in Sweden; the percentage difference in preference for Socialist parties between working-class and middle-class was as high 55% in 1960. Long term trends in the distribution of party-preference among immigrants are determined to a large extent by the policy on immigration regulation and political asylum for refugees and exiles. Another selectivity is due to the differential remigration rate. A 1976 study showed that although local franchise of immigrants is now the law of the land, some Swedes are still against the granting of voting rights and electability to immigrants. On the whole, there is clearly a psychological environment conducive, at least in Stockholm, to the task of putting local franchise reform into real practice.     

Do Differences Matter?

Abstract

Have women members of Congress made a difference? A handful of studies have answered this “so what” question by looking for differences between male and female legislators. We build on previous research and propose an additional way of answering this question. If women members are making a difference, then they should be changing how men behave in Congress. Specifically, if women members are making a difference, then they should be changing how their male colleagues debate the issues. We content-analyze each House floor debate on the Hyde Amendment to see if women are changing how men debate the abortion issue. We find that men and women frame the abortion debate differently, and we find some evidence that women members of Congress have shifted the debate over time to focus less on the morality of abortion and more on the health of the pregnant women. We hope our research stimulates further work that not only looks for differences between men and women legislators, but also looks to see if the differences cause legislatures to change the way they do business.     

Success in multiple union elections: Exclusive jurisdiction vs. competition

We consider union success in certification elections where more than one union appears on the election ballot. While union victory rates in single union elections have remained well below 50 percent over the past ten years, we find that unions have been much more successful in multiple union certification elections, with win rates of as high as 90 percent during certain years. We present two theories of union success in multiple union elections and offer relevant empirical results.     

CONSTITUENT INTEREST VS. LEGISLATOR IDEOLOGY: THE ROLE OF POLITICAL OPPORTUNITY COST

This paper applies the economic model of legislative voting to the automobile industry domestic content vote in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1982. We consider constituent interests for and against the Ml, and compare the predictive powers of alternative indicators of ideological preferences.
We also examine the role of political opportunity cost and find that lame ducks were significantly less likely to vote for the bill than were returnees to Congress. Given the political advantages of voting for the bill, this is consistent with the view that legislators were influenced by the case for freer trade.     

Is Local Office a Springboard for Women to Dáil Éireann?

Previous research has found the single transferable vote electoral system is relatively friendly to women candidates. Despite this, female representation in the Irish Parliament remains substantially lower than in most other democracies. Drawing on pipeline theory and localism, we assess the impact of local officeholding on the success of male and female major party candidates in the 2007 and 2011 Irish general elections. We find previous experience in local office is a key springboard to higher office for men and women, and when women serve in local government, the likelihood of election increases significantly.     

The effects of management practices on union election returns

This paper examines the importance of management suppression tactics on union activity in the United States. NLRB data on individual certification elections which have recently become available for the period 1972–1976 are merged with structural, demographic, and industry characteristics of the 96 largest SMSAs to ascertain the role of strategy versus structure in explaining union outcomes. The measures of election-generated membership outcomes are voter participation, the margin of pro-union votes, and union wins. Union suppression practices under study include consent elections, election delays, formal objections after unions win a certification election, elections overruled because of management unfair labor practices, elections held by management petition, and the number of unfair labor practice charges per representation election. Five of the six measures of suppression are significant determinants of some facet of union expansion after adjusting for structural characteristics of the area work force.     

Determinants of the decertification process: Evidence from employer-initiated elections

There have been relatively few studies on why workers choose to decertify a union as their bargaining unit and virtually no empirical studies on the outcomes of employer-initiated representation elections. Using data from the NLRB monthly election reports (1977–1981), we attempt to analyze the factors that seem to influence the outcomes of employer-initiated representation elections with an incumbent union. Variables in our analysis include size of the election unit, region, industrial classification, type of incumbent union, and the state of the local economy. While the data show a concentration of elections on the West Coast, there is no significant difference in the ability of unions there to “win” decertification elections.     

How Local Social Movement Groups Handle a Presidential Election

How do local social movement groups respond to national electoral politics? Previous studies, often based on aggregated data on public protests, focus on the effects of elections on established social movement organizations (SMOs). Some find that SMOs flourish during election years, taking advantage of the political opportunities that elections pose. Others conclude that elections hurt SMOs, siphoning members and resources. Using ethnographic, in-depth interview, and document data on new and emerging social movement groups (SMGs) in Pittsburgh for 20 months before and after the 2004 U.S. presidential election, we examine how members think about elections and whether and how groups decide to respond to national electoral campaigns. We find that SMGs vary considerably in the strategies of action or inaction they adopt, depending on their changing sense of whether the election poses an opportunity or a threat to the group and that these strategies of action are patterned in path-dependent sequences. We conclude with a discussion of the possibilities for integrating concepts of path-dependency and timing into social movement research.     

Gender,added-worker effects,and the 2007–2009 recession: Looking within the household

The U.S. recession of 2007–2009 saw unemployment rates for men rise by significantly more than those for women, resulting in the downturn’s characterization as a ‘mancession’. This paper uses data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey to reexamine gender-related dimensions of the 2007–2009 recession. Unlike most previous work, we analyze data that connects men’s and women’s employment status to that of their spouses. A difference-in-difference framework is used to characterize how labor-market outcomes for one spouse varied according to outcomes for the other. Results show that that employment rates of women whose husbands were non-employed rose significantly in the recession, while those for people in other situations held steady or fell—consistent with the view that women took on additional bread-winning responsibilities to make up for lost income. However, probabilities of non-participation did not rise by more for men with working wives than they did for other men, casting doubt on ideas that men in this situation made weaker efforts to return to work because they could count on their wives’ paychecks to support the household.     

A sign of the times? Weak and strong polarization in the U.S. Congress, 1973–2016

Claims that the United States Congress is (becoming more) polarized are widespread, but what is polarization? In this paper, I draw on notions of intergroup relations to distinguish two forms. Weak polarization occurs when relations between the polarized groups are merely absent, while strong polarization occurs when the relations between the polarized groups are negative. I apply the Stochastic Degree Sequence Model to data on bill co-sponsorship in both the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, from 1973 (93rd session) to 2016 (114th session) to infer a series of signed networks of political relationships among legislators, which I then use to answer two research questions. First, can the widely reported finding of increasing weak polarization in the U.S. Congress be replicated when using a statistical model to make inferences about when positive political relations exist? Second, is the (increasing) polarization observed in the U.S. Congress only weak polarization, or is it strong polarization? I find that both chambers exhibit both weak and strong polarization, that both forms are increasing, and that they are structured by political party affiliation. However, I also find these trends are unrelated to which party holds the majority in a chamber.     

Migrant women: the path from Beijing

This article discusses the statement of the UN International Office of Migration (IOM) delivered at the Fourth World Congress on Women held in Beijing in 1995. The Beijing Platform of Action identified migrants as comprising an estimated 125 million people. Half of the international migrants live in developing countries, and at least 50 million are women. Another 500 million are internal female migrants. Migration programs tend to marginalize female migrants and to ignore women's special needs and experiences. The Third World Conference in Nairobi in 1985 indicated that women migrants were more likely to suffer deprivation, hardship, isolation, loss of status, and discrimination. Women bear the burden of a family's daily life, are more vulnerable than men, and face additional problems in the work force. Women migrants are identified as dependents and must be sponsored for admission to the host country; they are often subjected to physical and sexual abuse and must face discrimination in a foreign environment. The special needs of migrant women must be addressed at every stage of the migration process: the decision making stage, the integration into host communities, and the reintegration upon return. Women must be empowered. IOM recently established the International Center for Migration and Health. This center will focus on special problems faced by women migrants and on migrants' rights. Between the Nairobi and Beijing conferences the plight of migrant women was not prominently addressed. Migration references were made in Beijing's Platform of Action in scattered places in the text. Governments need to provide gender-sensitive human rights education and training for public officials in order to fulfill the Beijing Platform. The IOM technical assistance to Argentina illustrates what cooperative ventures are possible. IOM has made important progress in implementing Beijing's Platform.     

Predicting the decisions to vote and support unions in certification elections: An integrated perspective

This article develops and empirically tests a model of the dual decision-making process employees undergo to guide their behavior during organizing campaigns and elections. The model combines principles of risk-aversion theory with more traditional views that election decisions stem from cost-benefit analyses of union representation. Previous research lacks this integrated approach to the study of election behavior. Regression analyses on a sample of approximately 16,000 certification elections strongly supported the use of risk-aversion theory to predict employees’ willingness to formally participate in elections. Furthermore, we found that time exhibited a statistically significant, negative relationship with voting participation rates, the percentage of union votes, and union victories. The results also indicated that a saturation effect may exist for delays in the election process. Financial support for this research was provided by the Syracuse University Research Fund. The authors wish to thank two anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions that significantly improved the paper.     

Out of Step? Voters and Social Issues in U.S. Presidential Elections

Recent political commentary has argued that the Republican Party is “out of step” with voters on social issues, costing Republicans the 2012 presidential election. This dramatic claim is deserving of scrutiny in its own right and also for the way it offers new perspective on long‐standing controversies concerning the role of social issues in U.S. national elections. We present results that seek to advance established scholarship on electoral politics as well as journalistic claims concerning the rising importance of social issues for elections. Using data from the American National Election Study, we find that social issues mattered to voters in presidential elections from 1992 through 2012. The influence of social issues on voter choice rivals those of attitudes toward defense spending and government provision. We find further evidence that liberalizing trends in social issue opinion consistently benefited Democratic candidates in presidential elections. We consider the relevance of these results for scholarship on voter choice and elections, noting further implications for commentary on the 2012 presidential election.