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Women's access to elective political office, an indicator of political inequality, was studied by surveying the percentage of women holding elective political positions in national legislatures of 74 countries. This study used a cross-sectional research design with multiple regression analysis.

Comparatively few studies have explored how variations in state governing institutions influence voting behavior. Utilizing lower chamber state legislative election returns from the years 2000 through 2010, and the 2002 through 2010 GSS data series, this dissertation focuses on how US state legislatures influence voting behavior and political attitudes of the American electorate. Specifically, this research takes on a comparative approach and illustrates how institutional differences in the size, capacity, and composition of the US state legislatures affect the electorates’ propensity to vote and how politically efficacious people feel.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / O presente trabalho examina as razões dos procedimentos de urgência nos projetos do Executivo junto à Assembléia Legislativa do Estado do Rio Grande do Sul entre 1999-2006. Para tal, o texto discute os fundamentos e algumas implicações de teorias sobre a organização legislativa, especialmente as vertentes partidária e informacional, situando, primeiramente, o debate sobre a política regional gaúcha e as relações Executivo-Legislativo no âmbito subnacional brasileiro. O objetivo do estudo é analisar a rationale dos procedimentos de urgência utilizados pelo Governador, unilateralmente, e pelo próprio Legislativo, através de seu Colégio de Líderes, para acelerar a tramitação dos projetos do Executivo, retirando a matéria das Comissões permanentes antes da aprovação de parecer. Empiricamente, a pesquisa investiga se a presença de cartéis legislativos e a distância das preferências do Governo em relação às do mediano do Plenário da Assembléia têm efeitos sobre as chances de utilização de tais procedimentos. Assim, avalia a possibilidade de conjugação da teoria partidária com problemas informacionais para a análise do processo decisório legislativo no âmbito subnacional. O exame conclui que tanto a urgência governamental quanto o acordo de lideranças possuem padrões distintos apresentando resultados diversos que dependem do tamanho das forças políticas e da distribuição de preferências, figurando as instituições como fatores intervenientes, de modo que tais procedimentos obedecem a uma lógica partidária, mas colocada diante de problemas informacionais / This paper examines the reasons of the urgency procedures in the Executive bills at the state legislature of Rio Grande do Sul from 1999-2006. To this end, the text discusses the fundamentals and some implications of theories on legislative organization, especially partisan and informational aspects, placing first the debate on regional politics and Executive- Legislative relationship at subnational scope. The goal is to analyze the rationale of the urgency procedures used by the Governor unilaterally and by the Legislature, through partisan leaders, to accelerate the conduct of executive bills, removing them from committees before approving reports. Empirically, the research investigates whether the presence of legislative cartels and Government distance of preferences in relation to the median of the floor Assembly have effects on the odds of using such procedures. Thus, it evaluates the possibility of combining partisan theory with informational problems for the analysis of legislative decision-making at subnational levels. It concludes that both the gubernatorial urgency procedure and the leaderss agreement have distinct patterns showing different results depending on the size of political forces and the distribution of preferences, with the institutions figuring as intervenient factors, so that such procedures follow a partisan logic, but placed in front of informational problems

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / O presente trabalho examina as razões dos procedimentos de urgência nos projetos do Executivo junto à Assembléia Legislativa do Estado do Rio Grande do Sul entre 1999-2006. Para tal, o texto discute os fundamentos e algumas implicações de teorias sobre a organização legislativa, especialmente as vertentes partidária e informacional, situando, primeiramente, o debate sobre a política regional gaúcha e as relações Executivo-Legislativo no âmbito subnacional brasileiro. O objetivo do estudo é analisar a rationale dos procedimentos de urgência utilizados pelo Governador, unilateralmente, e pelo próprio Legislativo, através de seu Colégio de Líderes, para acelerar a tramitação dos projetos do Executivo, retirando a matéria das Comissões permanentes antes da aprovação de parecer. Empiricamente, a pesquisa investiga se a presença de cartéis legislativos e a distância das preferências do Governo em relação às do mediano do Plenário da Assembléia têm efeitos sobre as chances de utilização de tais procedimentos. Assim, avalia a possibilidade de conjugação da teoria partidária com problemas informacionais para a análise do processo decisório legislativo no âmbito subnacional. O exame conclui que tanto a urgência governamental quanto o acordo de lideranças possuem padrões distintos apresentando resultados diversos que dependem do tamanho das forças políticas e da distribuição de preferências, figurando as instituições como fatores intervenientes, de modo que tais procedimentos obedecem a uma lógica partidária, mas colocada diante de problemas informacionais / This paper examines the reasons of the urgency procedures in the Executive bills at the state legislature of Rio Grande do Sul from 1999-2006. To this end, the text discusses the fundamentals and some implications of theories on legislative organization, especially partisan and informational aspects, placing first the debate on regional politics and Executive- Legislative relationship at subnational scope. The goal is to analyze the rationale of the urgency procedures used by the Governor unilaterally and by the Legislature, through partisan leaders, to accelerate the conduct of executive bills, removing them from committees before approving reports. Empirically, the research investigates whether the presence of legislative cartels and Government distance of preferences in relation to the median of the floor Assembly have effects on the odds of using such procedures. Thus, it evaluates the possibility of combining partisan theory with informational problems for the analysis of legislative decision-making at subnational levels. It concludes that both the gubernatorial urgency procedure and the leaderss agreement have distinct patterns showing different results depending on the size of political forces and the distribution of preferences, with the institutions figuring as intervenient factors, so that such procedures follow a partisan logic, but placed in front of informational problems

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This dissertation attempts to explain why cross-national variation exists in government approaches to dealing with illegal drugs. As other scholars have shown, several domestic and international political factors do account for some of this variance. However less is known of the effect that bureaucratic dominance and political institutions may have on drug policy. This research argues that bureaucrats define problems in ways that make their services the best possible solution to policymakers. Mediating the ability of bureaucrats to influence drug policy outcomes are political institutions. Certain institutional structures foster a competitive policymaking environment while others foster a more cooperative policymaking environment. In the former of these, law enforcement approaches to the drug problem are often retained as the status quo because competition between policy actors prevents consideration of alternatives. In the latter environment however, prevention, treatment, and harm reduction approaches to the drug problem are developed because cooperation between policymakers allows other actors. namely public health bureaucrats.to influence drug policy decision making. To test this argument, I constructed an original dataset that includes over 4,000 observations of drug policy in 101 democracies. Institutional data on intergovernmental relations, regime type, political bargaining, electoral design, and cameralism were regressed on 6 different drug policy indices: law enforcement, deterrence-based prevention, abstinence-based treatment, educationbased prevention, substitution-based treatment, and harm reduction. While controlling for government resource capacity, severity of the drug problem, international pressure, and political ideology, I found that institutions explain a portion of the variance in drug policy outcomes. Providing in-depth information about these phenomena is a large amount of field data I collected while interviewing 155 politicians, bureaucrats, interest group leaders, and service providers. Respondents from all four of the case countries examined in this research.including United States, Canada, Austria, and Netherlands.report that bureaucrats play a major role in the formation of drug policy. Which bureaucrats have the most influence on policymakers is largely a function of domestic political conditions, international political factors, and political institutions.

In this dissertation I systematically examine African-American and Latino legislator behavior in a legislative setting. The project specifically examines whether and how minority legislators represent and influence African American and Latino policy interests during the legislative process. I perform an analysis of minority legislator participation rates on bills and develop an original measure of substantive representation using patterns in legislative speech of state representatives’ language during committee hearings. I build on existing theory in the representation literature and offer new hypotheses for expanding the scope of how substantive representation is defined and investigated, namely through an empirical investigation of the link between deliberation and descriptive representation. Second, I collect an original data set and develop an original measure of substantive representation to test these hypotheses with participation rates and a linguistic frame based content analysis approach of minority and non-minority representatives’ language on bills for racial perspectives during state legislative committee hearings on several policy issue areas including, but not limited to education, healthcare, and immigration. Third, I offer a critical test of hypotheses to test whether African American and Latino representatives’ (1) participate more when the legislation is deemed minority interest in comparison to their non-minority counterparts? (2) their behavior (or deliberation style) is different from non-minority legislators? (3) impact the deliberation style of non-minority legislators? The analysis draws on original data collected through committee hearing tapes and online video archives of Texas committee hearings in multiple policy areas, and the findings indicate that minority legislators do indeed provide a voice for minority constituents, providing more minority interest language on minority interest bills in comparison to their non-minority colleagues, especially when the legislation is threatening to minority populations. These results support the argument that minority legislators do indeed substantively represent minority constituents at levels greater than non-minority representatives during the legislative process.

In this dissertation I systematically examine African-American and Latino legislator behavior in a legislative setting. The project specifically examines whether and how minority legislators represent and influence African American and Latino policy interests during the legislative process. I perform an analysis of minority legislator participation rates on bills and develop an original measure of substantive representation using patterns in legislative speech of state representatives’ language during committee hearings. I build on existing theory in the representation literature and offer new hypotheses for expanding the scope of how substantive representation is defined and investigated, namely through an empirical investigation of the link between deliberation and descriptive representation. Second, I collect an original data set and develop an original measure of substantive representation to test these hypotheses with participation rates and a linguistic frame based content analysis approach of minority and non-minority representatives’ language on bills for racial perspectives during state legislative committee hearings on several policy issue areas including, but not limited to education, healthcare, and immigration. Third, I offer a critical test of hypotheses to test whether African American and Latino representatives’ (1) participate more when the legislation is deemed minority interest in comparison to their non-minority counterparts? (2) their behavior (or deliberation style) is different from non-minority legislators? (3) impact the deliberation style of non-minority legislators? The analysis draws on original data collected through committee hearing tapes and online video archives of Texas committee hearings in multiple policy areas, and the findings indicate that minority legislators do indeed provide a voice for minority constituents, providing more minority interest language on minority interest bills in comparison to their non-minority colleagues, especially when the legislation is threatening to minority populations. These results support the argument that minority legislators do indeed substantively represent minority constituents at levels greater than non-minority representatives during the legislative process.

Made available in DSpace on 2010-04-20T20:49:54Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 3 61770.pdf.jpg: 10662 bytes, checksum: 5d51af05b4de1da9a6071f2deac97110 (MD5) 61770.pdf: 1756077 bytes, checksum: 3def4ef9ba4ec0574d2884b60b37258f (MD5) 61770.pdf.txt: 589936 bytes, checksum: 6b29df295a97461f10ca89d588bf63df (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-10-09T00:00:00Z / This dissertation aims to assess the effect of institutional variations in Executive-Legislative relations over policies in Brazilian states. It analyses Legislative institutions, governor’s agenda and leadership, and government coalitions. The first part of the text is based on scholarship on American state legislatures and the Brazilian Congress, to estimate the best approaches to assess the institutional diversity on the ability to legislate and to oversight the Executive on Brazilian state legislatures. Subsequently, it is performed case studies concerning the state legislatures from Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Sul and São Paulo and their participation on State reform policies, the main issue on gubernatorial agenda for the studied interval. Finally, it concludes that, institutions, although important, are incomplete to explain how the political process for policy-making occur in Brazilian states. / Este trabalho tem como objetivo estudar os impactos das variações institucionais nas relações Executivo-Legislativo nos estados sobre as políticas públicas neles implementadas. Para isso, analisa as instituições, com foco no Poder Legislativo, a agenda do governador, sua liderança política e as coalizões de apoio. Inicialmente é feita uma discussão sobre os instrumentos analíticos disponíveis para os estudos legislativos e sua utilização para a compreensão de processos políticos no contexto brasileiro. Em seguida, com base em estudos sobre a Câmara dos Deputados brasileira e sobre os legislativos estaduais norte-americanos, são selecionados os recortes mais aplicáveis para se captar a diversidade institucional nos estados brasileiros, especialmente no que se refere à sua capacidade legislativa e fiscalizadora. Posteriormente, são elaborados estudos de caso com os estados de Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Sul e São Paulo na implantação de programas de Reforma do Estado, o principal item da agenda no período estudado. Conclui-se que as instituições, embora importantes, são insuficientes para explicar como se dão os processos políticos para a implementação de políticas públicas nos estados brasileiros.