Jason Eichorst

Department of Political Science, Rice University

Dissertation Overview (in progress):

Does better descriptive representation of traditionally underrepresented groups lead to better substantive representation of their interests in policy-making? Does the strength of the link between descriptive and substantive representation depend on the types of institutional mechanisms designed to enhance descriptive representation, the types of parties descriptive representatives belong to, or the strength of party control over their behavior?

My dissertation project will attempt to provide answers to these questions as they pertain to one important form of substantive representation---the expression of policy views of descriptive representatives in legislative deliberations. Building on previous work, I propose a contextual theory of substantive representation that accounts for why political context should affect the behavior of descriptive representatives in particular, thereby mitigating the link between descriptive and substantive representation. This project examines the deliberative behavior of descriptive representatives both on more traditional issues commonly explored in political science literature (e.g., land rights for indigenous representatives in Latin America, or social welfare policy for black representatives in the U.S.) and a wide variety of political issues that are arguably more salient to the general public (e.g., foreign policy, tax policy, and healthcare policy). In doing so, it develops an original measure of substantive representation that maps patterns in speeches during committee debates to uncover whether  representatives from underrepresented groups espouse significantly different policy views than representatives from historically represented groups. It will explain and show how the political context conditions legislator behavior and determines the extent to which we should see differences between descriptive and more traditional representatives. I test the theoretical argument using a sample of Latin American countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Panama, and Peru) where there is cross-national and temporal variation across the three different political contexts (i.e., the extent of party control, the type of party, and the institutional mechanism used for increasing descriptive representation) and where the committee deliberations appear to serve the same purpose cross-nationally, which is 1) to set the terms of the policy debate and 2) to signal to constituents that legislators are working on their behalf.

Funding for this project is supported by the National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science and the Rice University Ora N. Arnold Fellowship for Latin American Research.