The Role of Personal Attributes in African American Roll-Call Voting Behavior in Congress

• Author: Ron Nikora,Gabriel R. Sanchez,Michael S. Rocca
• Date: 01 June 2009
• Published date: 01 June 2009
• DOI: 10.1177/1065912908319573
• Subject Matter: Articles

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Political Research Quarterly

Volume 62 Number 2

June 2009 408-414

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The Role of Personal Attributes in

African American Roll-Call Voting

Behavior in Congress

Michael S. Rocca

Gabriel R. Sanchez

Ron Nikora

University of New Mexico, Albuquerque

In this research note, the authors explore the extent to which personal attributes influence voting behavior for African

American members of Congress. The authors test the relationship between legislators’ personal attributes and Poole

and Rosenthal’s DW-NOMINATE scores for black members of the 101st to 108th Congresses. The results suggest that

personal attributes matter. They increase the explained variance in the models, and factors such as generational cohort,

religion, and military experience are statistically significant. These results suggest that while descriptive members of

Congress share much in common, they should not be interpreted as monolithic with respect to congressional voting.

Keywords: descriptive representation; substantive representation; attributes; Latino; African American

The purpose of this research note is to examine the

extent to which the personal attributes of black

members of Congress (MCs) influence their voting

behavior. The motivation for the study stems from

two primary sources. First, the 2006 congressional

elections led to an unprecedented number of black

MCs chairing full committees: Charles B. Rangel

(D-NY) of Ways and Means, the late Juanita

Millender-McDonald (D-CA) of House Administra-

tion, John Conyers Jr. (D-MI) of Judiciary, and

Bennie Thompson (D-MS) of Homeland Security.

Since black MCs tend to behave differently than

white MCs (e.g., Swain 1993; Lublin 1997; Canon

1999; Tate 2003), notwithstanding Swain’s (1992)

analysis, it is reasonable to expect their newly

acquired positions of influence to facilitate substan-

tive changes in policy agendas.

Second, much of the work on black representation

in Congress has tended to treat black MCs as a mono-

lithic group (e.g., an MC is coded as either black or

not black). But Canon (1999) and Tate (2003) are

among those who have found interesting variation

within the Congressional Black Caucus. Similarly,

Dovi’s (2002) analysis contends that minority and

female representatives are not monolithic and that

some descriptive representatives are preferable to

others. We applaud these efforts to move beyond a

monolithic view of descriptive representation and

advance this argument by exploring the diversity

among black MCs and how it may affect their roll-

call vote decisions.

We approach this study from the perspective that

personal attributes matter to how MCs vote. We

believe representatives’descriptive characteristics are

important determinants of their ideology, a factor that

students of Congress have long shown to be a key

predictor of congressional voting (see Kingdon 1989;

Poole and Rosenthal 1997). Our theory is grounded

in the work of Easton and Dennis (1969) and

Jennings and Niemi (1974), who argued that attitudes

are a result of a lifelong process of political social-

ization and learning. To test our theory, we focus on

five general agents of socialization for black MCs:

education, religion, generational cohort, military

experience, and nativity relative to their district. We

also address gender, a factor that has consistently

been shown to matter for congressional behavior.

Our results show that even after controlling for

institutional and electoral factors, personal attributes

Michael S. Rocca, Assistant Professor of Political Science,

University of New Mexico; e-mail: msrocca@unm.edu.

Gabriel R. Sanchez, Assistant Professor of Political Science,

University of New Mexico; e-mail: sanchezg@unm.edu.

Ron Nikora, PhD Candidate, Department of Political Science,

University of New Mexico; e-mail: nikora@unm.edu.