I focus on three district-level demographic variables indicative of contemporary social cleavages, and construct measures of their influences on partisan representation in American state legislatures during the 1999-2000 years. Using these measures, I examine a series of questions concerning the relationship between social cleavages and state legislative outcomes. I find that district racial composition is the most important constituency-based factor influencing partisan representation and voting in legislatures, but that other constituency variables are also important under various circumstances. I also present OLS regression analyses demonstrating the independent effect of the overall representation of social cleavages on levels of legislative polarization. / text
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UTEXAS/oai:repositories.lib.utexas.edu:2152/ETD-UT-2011-05-2664 |
| Date | 26 July 2011 |
| Creators | Myers, Adam Shalmone |
| Source Sets | University of Texas |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
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