Month: September 2022

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Clientelism in American Political Development

PI: Jeffrey Broxmeyer, Associate Professor, University of Toledo

Grant Amount and Grant Fund: $2,500, Presidency Research Fund

Project Abstract: My research explores the “spoils system” in American political development. From the Age of Jackson to the Gilded Age, political parties were built by strategically distributing patronage to allies. Party leaders appointed spoilsmen to government jobs in return for organizational and financial support during elections. In this way, patron-client relations, also known as clientelism, became deeply engrained, outlasting the Whig party, the Civil War, and innumerable political careers. Using archival methods, I plan to investigate the federal appointment of western territorial officeholders, U.S. foreign diplomats, and federal land agents. My goal is to analyze how clientelism shaped the process of state-building across three dimensions: national consolidation, foreign policy, and economic development. Ultimately, I want to know how spoils worked in diverse historical contexts and why the dynamics of party clientelism transformed over time. A better understanding of the spoils system will show the impact of clientelism on long-term patterns of democratization in America.

 

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Marginalized Across Gender & Ethnicity: Multi-issue Policies & Mobilizing Latinas

Margaret Bower

PIs: Margaret T. Bower, Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University; Amanda Sahar d’Urso, Postdoctoral Fellow, Dartmouth College

Grant Amount and Grant Fund: $4,068, Rita Mae Kelly Fund

Project Abstract: This research project aims to elevate and examine the decision-making factors that mobilize Latinas to support policy agendas led by advocacy groups. Advocacy groups are important actors for communicating and engaging people in the policymaking process, especially people of color and women. Latinas, cis or trans women that identify as Hispanic or Latinx, are a unique group when it comes to supporting policies. They are marginalized across at least two axes of their identities: gender and ethnicity. Latinas can additionally be marginalized by their native language, citizenship status, and income-level. Marginalization across these multiple categories can position Latinas between several policy issues at one time such as immigration, poverty, and gendered violence. In this project, we examine different underlying causal mechanisms to help explain when and why Latinas are mobilized by certain policy agendas. Conducting a conjoint experiment that focuses on Latinas as a unique group, allows us to thoughtfully consider what aspects of a policy agenda are most important to them.

Amanda Sahar d’Urso

 In the future, we hope to build on this research by similarly teasing out these differences among other multiply-marginalized groups of women such as Black women, Asian-American women, and LGBTQ women.

 In an increasingly diverse U.S. polity, teasing out these experiences is exceptionally important for ensuring that policymaking equitably represents all people, especially groups like Latinas, that hold multiple marginalized identities.

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Racial Pragmatism and Opinion Change Among Black Voters

PI: William Bishop, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Maryland, College Park

Grant Amount and Grant Fund: $2,500, William A. Steiger Fund for Legislative Studies

Project Abstract: Despite largely converging on party preference and their support of social policies designed to reduce inequality, Black Americans differ in their views on strategy and how the group should tactically strive to advance in America. In this project I offer a theory and measure of racial pragmatism to understand how these strategic considerations influence the political opinions of Black Americans. Through a scale of original and adapted survey questions, I measure whether due to their marginalized status, Black Americans feel they must utilize pragmatic strategies such as relying on doble-consciousness and strategic deracialization to help Blacks advance in politics and America generally. I expect that Black Americans who hold higher levels of racial pragmatism will report more moderate, but not conservative attitudes on racial policies when compared to group members who are less pragmatic. Additionally, building upon Katherine Tate’s (2003) research on opinion change among Black voters when responding to threat, I analyze whether this pragmatism leads Black voters to compromise on and update their policy attitudes when appraised of political constraints. I will use this award from the Centennial Center to test my theory by fielding a survey with a national sample of Black Americans. This survey will contain framing experiments on policy to measure attitude change, as well as other survey items to measure pragmatism and support for a host of racialized and ostensibly race-neutral policies to interrogate heterogeneity in Black public opinion.