The Face of American Government: Effects of Racial and Ethnic Firsts on Minority Perceptions of Government Responsiveness

Ostfeld, Mara Cecilia; Mutz, Diana C.

doi:10.1007/s11109-020-09664-9

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 74 publications

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“…Research shows that institutions produce fairer and more representative and legitimate outcomes when they are run by a gender and racially diverse body (Armstrong et al 2021, Bowen and Clark 2014, Hayes and Hibbing 2017, Rhode 2017, particularly the judiciary (Boyd 2016, Kastellec 2013, Scherer and Curry 2010, Sen 2015. Institutions, even those whose members are un-elected like the Supreme Court, are also more likely to be supported when individuals see people who look like them in positions of power (Armaly, Krewson and Lane NP, Badas and Stauffer 2018, Evans et al 2017, Kaslovsky, Rogowski and Stone 2019, Ostfeld and Mutz 2021, because they often believe they are more likely to represent their interests (Bonneau andRice 2009, Clayton, O'Brien andPiscopo 2019). By focusing our analysis specifically on attorneys who argue at the Supreme Court we provide insight into the extent of minoritzed attorneys' opportunities to use their unique lived experiences in their approach to law to influence major national policy (Collins, Corley andHamner 2015, Corley 2008).…”

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confidence: 99%

“Excuse me –” Race and Intersectionality of Interruptions at the U.S. Supreme Court

Lane,

Widner

2024

Preprint

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Racial and gender bias pervade American political institutions, and the Supreme Court is no exception. Women lawyers are interrupted more and allowed to speak for less time than their male colleagues. We expect that stereotypes will also lead to biased treatment of attorneys of color, and will have the greatest impact on women attorneys of color due to their intersectional identity. In doing so, we introduce a refined measure of interruptions that more precisely captures oral argument dynamics. Using a database of the race of members of the Supreme Court bar and transcripts of all oral arguments held from October Terms 2009 – 2018, we find that women attorneys of color receive harsher treatment by the justices during oral arguments than their peers. We also find that when the case involves racial issues, attorneys of color are interrupted less than their white counterparts.

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confidence: 99%

“Excuse me –” Race and Intersectionality of Interruptions at the U.S. Supreme Court

Lane,

Widner

2024

Preprint

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The Influence of Descriptive Representation on Support for Judicial Nominees and the US Supreme Court

Armaly,

Krewson,

Lane

2024

Polit Behav

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We argue that characteristics of unelected officials directly influence individuals’ perceptions and evaluations of them. These evaluations then have indirect, downstream consequences on evaluations of the institution. To test this, we fielded a unique survey with an oversample of Black Americans after the nomination of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. Using a conjoint experimental design to randomize nominee race, we find that increased racial descriptive representation elicits more favorable views of the nominee and Court among Black respondents. Causal mediation analysis confirms our theoretical expectation that descriptive representation indirectly influences views of the Court through its effects on views of nominees. The effects we uncover are not confined to co-partisan nominees, indicating that descriptive representation may matter for more than policy reasons alone. Finally, our external validity test suggests these effects generalize beyond our experimental setting, with Black (but not white) respondents equally as supportive of an anonymous profile matching Justice Jackson’s characteristics as they are of Jackson herself.

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No votes for old men: Leaders' age and youth turnout in comparative perspective

CASTANHO SILVA

2024

European J Political Res

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Across countries, young people vote less than older citizens. While a few explanations have been suggested, this paper proposes that one core reason lies in youth under‐representation in partisan politics, in particular as issues such as climate change increase the salience of inter‐generational conflict. I argue that young people are less likely to vote in elections if they do not feel their age represented by candidates. I test this with data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems spanning 223 national elections in 58 countries between 1996 and 2021, combined with data on 980 party leaders and/or presidential candidates in those elections. I find that respondents younger than 30 are up to 4 per cent less likely to vote if the leading candidate of their favourite party is 70 in relation to a leader around 40. However, this effect only appears in more recent years and was nonexistent in the 1990s and early 2000s. Older voters' turnout is unaffected by leaders' and candidates' ages. Two potential mechanisms are the effects of descriptive representation of young voters on their external efficacy and democratic satisfaction. These findings corroborate the possible emergence of age as potential cleavage in contemporary politics and point to an important element of low youth participation as well as to the mobilization potential by parties selecting younger candidates.

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The Face of American Government: Effects of Racial and Ethnic Firsts on Minority Perceptions of Government Responsiveness

Cited by 4 publications

References 74 publications

“Excuse me –” Race and Intersectionality of Interruptions at the U.S. Supreme Court

“Excuse me –” Race and Intersectionality of Interruptions at the U.S. Supreme Court

The Influence of Descriptive Representation on Support for Judicial Nominees and the US Supreme Court

No votes for old men: Leaders' age and youth turnout in comparative perspective

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