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Informational and partisan theories of legislative organization predict that most committees will be representative of their parent chamber and most committee delegations representative of their parent caucus. Unfortunately, despite the universalistic claims of these theories, the preponderance of evidence comes from only one chamber of one legislature: the U. S. House of Representatives. If informational and partisan theories are generalizable beyond the Congress, outlying committees should be rare in state legislatures as well as in the House of Representatives. We use a variety of measures of member preferences (e.g., roll call measures, surveys, constituency characteristics) and simple difference of means tests to explore the generalizability of these theories by examining the prevalence of committee outliers in the lower houses of a sample of 12 states. Consistent with expectations, outlying committees are rare in the state legislatures we sample, especially among important control committees. This provides evidence that informational and partisan models of legislative organization are applicable beyond the U. S. Congress.Although students of the Congress have long acknowledged the importance of committees for processing legislative workloads, their precise institutional roles have been hotly debated. Traditionally, most scholars have viewed committees as integral cogs in a highly decentralized, highly distributive institution. Under this view, committees are not "mini-legislatures," but often preference outliers with predilections at odds with those of the full chamber. This traditional distributive view of committees has recently come under intense criticism from two related theoretical perspectives: informational and partisan models. Both of these argue that collective concerns-either of the floor or of the majority The authors are indebted to

In this paper, we extend recent work exploring the prevalence of outlying committees in American state legislatures. Using an expanded sample of 45 states and measures of legislator preferences generated by a single, federated group, we find that most legislative committees are representative of the parent chambers from which their members are selected. Furthermore, we test multivariate models designed to account for theoretically relevant patterns in variations in outlier percentages among control and noncontrol committees. The fact that our models are such poor predictors of nonrepresentative committees speaks to the idiosyncratic nature of the relatively small percentage of outlying committees in the states. This conclusion, in turn, provides further support for the proposition that representative committees are simply rational.

Using data from an unusual survey, we gauge factors influencing support for a state anti-gay rights referendum. After controlling for other powerful predictors of attitudes, we find personal contact (especially relevant and voluntary contact) has an important impact on public support, although community context does not. These findings support an integrated notion of interactions with "out" groups, grounded in social categorization theory, that sees community context and interpersonal contact as concentric circles, moving from abstract, detached forms of contact to more pronounced, personal forms. However, even among those with substantial interpersonal contact, support for the referendum was still widespread.

The increasing public attention paid to Supreme Court nominations has elevated the salience of Senate confirmation battles, raising interesting questions about the impact of constituency preferences on senators' voting behavior. In this article, we explore this relationship using a logistical regression model to examine the impacts of African-American constituency size and the proximity of reelection on the roll call behavior of senators on the Clarence Thomas confirmation vote. Our analyses indicate that these factors were both statistically and substantively significant in the Thomas case. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of such findings.

Contact theory holds that interaction with members of minority groups makes members of the majority more tolerant. Unfortunately, in the case of homosexuals, previous research has been limited by significant conceptual and methodological problems. In this study, we attempt to alleviate these past problems by reconceptualizing the notion of contact to hypothesize that citizens who live in communities with larger gay populations will have significantly warmer affective attitudes toward gay men and lesbians. We test this hypothesis using data from a 1996 national survey and multivariate, censorednormal regression models. Our findings demonstrate that community context has a robust effect on citizen attitudes toward homosexuals, rivaling the impact of education and age. These results highlight the importance of public policies and group strategies aimed at encouraging openness regarding sexual orientation. CONTACT, COMMUNITY CONTEXT, AND PUBLIC ATTITUDES TOWARD GAY MEN AND LESBIANS 1In recent years, public policy decisions related to equal rights for homosexuals have been among the most hotly debated issues in the United States and other industrial democracies. Matters such as gays in the military, same-sex marriages, and adoption and benefit rights for gay couples have been the subjects of heated struggles at the national, state, and local levels. Because the political opinions of rankand-file voters can be crucial in determining how such issues are resolved, it is important to determine the factors that retard or promote public support for gay/lesbian rights. Many gay rights advocates argue that expansion of civil rights for homosexuals would be easier to accomplish if more gay people were open about their sexual orientation (see, for example, Sullivan 1995; Signorile 1993; Vaid 1995). As more homosexuals come out of the closet, the argument goes, a greater number of heterosexuals will come to realize that they have friends and/or family members who are gay, develop a "more individuated and personalized" view of the gay community that reduces both fear and prejudice (Herek and Glunt 1993), and, consequently, be more inclined to extend greater civil rights protection to gays and lesbians.The contact thesis, as it is known, is not only intuitive, but has been supported by at least two decades worth of empirical academic research in several disciplines-with gay men and lesbians seen more favorably by those who have contact with them. The virtually unanimous conclusion of these studies is that personal contact with homosexuals by heterosexuals is associated with more tolerant attitudes toward gay men and lesbians. Unfortunately, a variety of significant conceptual and methodological problems cast serious doubts over both the conclusions reached by these studies and their generalizability. In addition, any number of studies about the contact thesis as applied to other minority groups in the American context indicates that it is more likely that increased contact with members of groups against which there is prejudice ac...

This research examines two referenda in the Deep South, both of which can be categorized as antiblack. Specifically, we analyze a 2001 Mississippi flag referendum (in which the electorate rejected a new flag and retained the old state flag containing a Confederate insignia) and a 2004 referendum in Alabama (in which citizens voted to retain unenforceable constitutional language requiring separate educational facilities for black and white students, and a poll tax on voting). Using state election returns and census data, we employ weighted least squares regression to analyze voting patterns. The results reveal that across both states, white voters displayed significantly greater “antiblack” voting behavior in those areas with larger black populations and more urbanized environments. Our findings pose a direct challenge to both those who insist that the “racial threat” perceived by whites is diminishing and those who hold that urbanization will ultimately be corrosive of racist attitudes and behavior. Esta investigación examina dos referendos en el sur de Estados Unidos, cada uno de ellos puede ser categorizado como anti afroamericano. Específicamente, se analizó el referendo en 2001 a la bandera de Mississippi (en el que el electorado rechazó una nueva bandera y decidieron conservar la bandera anterior que contenía una insignia del ejército confederado) y un referendo en 2004 en Alabama (en el que los ciudadanos votaron para conservar un lenguaje constitucional imposible de aplicar que requería separar las instalaciones educativas para blancos y afroamericanos, y un impuesto al voto).Usando los resultados de las elecciones estatales e información estadística, empleamos un modelo de regresión de cuadrados mínimos comunes para analizar patrones electorales. Los resultados revelan que a través de ambos estados los votantes blancos mostraron un comportamiento electoral “anti afroamericano” significativamente mayor en áreas con una gran población afroamericana y entornos más urbanizados. Nuestros hallazgos plantean un desafío directo a quienes insisten que la “amenaza racial” percibida por la población blanca está disminuyendo, y aquellos que afirman que la urbanización eliminará actitudes y comportamiento racista.