Browsing by Author "Jones, Mark P."
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Item 2019 Conference Report: A Presidential Election in an Uncertain TimeJones, Mark P.; Williams, John B.; James A. Baker III Institute for Public PolicyItem A Presidential Election During the Time of COVID-19(James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy) Jones, Mark P.; Williams, John B.; James A. Baker III Institute for Public PolicyItem Authoritatively Democratic: The Functioning of Elections in Botswana's Dominant Party System(2012) Burchard, Stephanie Marie; Jones, Mark P.Since 1991, multiparty elections have been held in almost every country in sub-Saharan Africa. These elections, however, have returned the same "dominant" political parties to office time and again. While dominant party rule is often associated with authoritarianism and its variants, many of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa that are operating under dominant party rule are by most other indicators considered to be democratic (freedom and fairness of elections, independent press, protection of civil liberties and rights, etc.). Regardless, many researchers argue that lack of party alternation at the national level precludes dominant party systems from being considered democratic. I contend that previous analyses focused on elections at the national level only and, thus, are unable to accurately comment on the democratic quality of elections in dominant party systems. Further complicating matters, the logic of electoral behavior under these types of systems is not well understood. It is not clear how, if at all, electoral outcomes under dominant party systems affect individual-level democratic satisfaction--something that is intimately related to a country's democratic stability. Finally, we do not know what factors affect individual-level vote choice under dominant party systems and how these compare with more mature, consolidated democracies. This project contributes to our understanding of electoral behavior under dominant party systems by systematically examining several facets of elections in Botswana, sub-Saharan Africa's longest tenured dominant party system. I conduct both within country analysis using data from the constituency level and between country comparisons to examine the relationship between partisan competition and electoral behavior in Botswana and several of its continental counterparts. I use a combination of electoral data and survey data draw a more complete picture of the voting landscape under a dominant party system. My main findings indicate that dominant party systems where truly democratic elections (free and fair) are held exhibit significant levels of electoral competition; exert a negligible effect on democratic satisfaction; and that some citizens, conditional on educational attainment, do engage in ideological voting. Together, this project depicts a more complex and nuanced electoral environment under a dominant party system than previous research has acknowledged.Item Ballots, Vote Casting Procedures and Electoral Outcomes(2018-03-16) Tchintian, Carolina R; Jones, Mark P.This research focuses on the overlooked role that ballot design and vote casting procedure have in shaping voters and elite decisions and electoral outcomes. It seeks to understand how the different presentations of the electoral offering are critical to understanding how (and what) voters choose, as well as whether some voting options are benefited over others. The countries selected for this project (Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador and Brazil) offer the opportunity to measure a variety of outcomes affecting representation that result from ballot structure. First, using survey and observation data from El Salvador and Ecuador I analyze whether candidates’ personal attributes observed in their ballot pictures affect the probability of being elected and how this varies with other contextual information provided by the ballot such as length and crowdedness. Second, using Chilean municipal level data, I study the probability of women and incumbent candidates being elected given their location and position in the ballot and how party elites take advantage of these ballot features to increase their vote share. Third, I study how different presentations of the electoral offering affect certain parties and minorities opportunities to win votes using a quasi-experimental research design with Argentine subnational data. Finally, I show how the change in the vote casting procedure affects the level of visibility of candidates in Brazil, increasing intraparty fragmentation and disunity both at the electoral and legislative arena. Given the potential consequences of the different vote casting procedures on descriptive representation, the findings of this research would have implications on the quality of democracy. While many countries resist major electoral change, policy makers may be more willing to undergo ballot design changes to improve representation, improve accountability and the general quality of electoral democracy in a given polity.Item Conditioning Descriptive Representation: Institutional Moderation of Unique Group Perspectives in Legislative Debates(2013-07-30) Eichorst, Jason; Martin, Lanny W.; Carroll, Royce A.; Jones, Mark P.; Soligo, RonaldIncorporating legislators from historically underrepresented groups into the legislature should be associated with the introduction of new perspectives to the legislative process. Achieving an ideal form of political representation is not so simple. The institutional structure of the political system shapes legislative choices and defines the process of political representation. Structured legislative choices can have moderating effects on the presence of unique perspectives during the policymaking process. This means that the incorporation of historically underrepresented groups is not always sufficient for group representation. I develop a contextual theory of political representation that isolates when we should-and should not-observe unique patterns of political representation. I argue that ballot type and party affiliation are two distinct factors that shape legislative choices and define to whom legislators are accountable. The theoretical argument synthesizes previous literature on gender and ethnic descriptive representation to develop an integrated theory of political representation. It leverages the uniqueness of group identity and cross-cutting factors to isolate where descriptive representatives should express unique patterns of political representation and the extent to which the political context conditions the legislative behavior of descriptive representatives. I develop a new measure of political representation using automated content analysis of legislative debates to empirically explore patterns in speech communication across different types of descriptive representatives. This measure makes it possible to empirically determine the strength of the divide that separates types of descriptive representatives. Unique perspectives should be apparent in the way legislators frame the justification and explanation of public policy to those who hold them accountable. This helps us identify the extent to which incorporating legislators from historically underrepresented groups has an influence on a broadly-defined set of issues. Bolivia provides a unique opportunity to explore patterns of representation. Indigenous and female descriptive representatives have been historically underrepresented in Bolivia and possess interests that are relatively uncrystallized in the legislative assembly. The historical absence of these interests in the legislative assembly leaves a void in group representation. Indigenous legislators are expected to possess broadly-defined unique perspectives associated with group identity. Party affiliation, however, should structure the primary dimension of conflict for Indigenous representatives, whose interests overlap with partisan affiliation. Unique group perspectives should be observed within party. Female representation is different. The nature of cross-cutting factors should suppress the uniqueness of female perspectives within party, but unique collective perspectives should be obvious between parties. Overall the empirical evidence supports theoretical expectations. Indigenous representation is structured by party when explored at the chamber-level. The most distinct patterns of Indigenous representation are within party. These differences are moderated when we explore the strength of the divide for those legislators elected on party lists compared to those elected in plurality districts. The most distinct speech patterns of female representation are at the chamber-level. Cross-cutting interests make it possible for women to speak with a collective voice. Unlike Indigenous representation, distinct patterns of female representation are moderated within party, where there is broader agreement on partisan issues among copartisans. I interpret these results as preliminary support for a theoretical argument that simultaneously explains ethnic and female descriptive representation. Understanding when interests intersect and isolating the uniqueness of those interests can help us strengthen our broader understanding of gender and ethnic representation. We need to know where to look and how to find these unique patterns of political representation. Plenary debates provide an opportunity for different types of descriptive representatives to frame messages in order to simultaneously strengthen a collective partisan and individual reputation. This is particularly valuable in systems where political parties are unified. This project finds that the political context does indeed condition the behavior of descriptive representatives and moderate observed legislative behavior. Unique patterns of representation of historically underrepresented groups, fortunately, do exist under favorable conditions and fill a void of representation that satisfies normative values of democracy.Item Dimensions of Politics: How Institutions Shape East. Asian Legislatures(2014-04-22) Jang, Jinhyeok; Jones, Mark P.; Martin, Lanny; Carroll, Royce A.; Lewis, Steven W.This dissertation project explores how institutions have shaped dimensional structure in East Asian legislatures, including Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan in the past two decades. The major issues dividing the left and right in East Asia are not about economic in nature, but rather structured by legislators' preferences vis-\`a-vis democratization and the relationship with Beijing in Hong Kong, the geo-security issue in South Korea, and the Taiwanese or Chinese identity issue in Taiwan. This dissertation provides either the first or some of the very first empirical evidence of the dimensional structure of the three East Asian politics. By drawing from the literature on political parties, electoral laws, and legislative agenda dynamics, my dissertation also explains how legislators facing different institutional incentives align differently either with or against the main political cleavage.Item Gender Quotas and The Representation of Women: Empowerment, Decision-making, and Public Policy(2012-09-05) Barnes, Tiffany; Jones, Mark P.; Carroll, Royce A.; Stevenson, Randolph T.; Heffes, GiselaOver the past two decades governments worldwide have begun to take action to correct gender disparity in representative bodies, resulting in drastic increases in women’s numeric representation. It is unclear, however, how these increases influence legislative behavior. This research contributes to our understanding of how increases in women’s numeric representation influences substantive representation of women. I collected an original dataset to examine this relationship across twenty-three subnational Argentine legislatures over eighteen years. This project represents one of the first empirical efforts to examine women’s substantive representation over a large number of legislatures over a long duration of time. A key piece of the puzzle is to understand if female exhibit distinct preferences from their male colleagues. The second chapter of the dissertation uses a new data set of ideal point estimates recovered from cosponsorship data to examine gender differences in legislative preferences. I find strong evidence to suggest women display different legislative preferences than their male colleagues. Chapter three investigates how increases in women’s numeric representation influence women’s legislative behavior. Previous research suggests that increasing women’s numeric representation should enhance the probability that women work together to pursue common legislative agendas. Yet, I demonstrate that as the percentage of women in the chamber increases, women are increasingly less likely to work together. I argue that this unexpected finding can be explained by considering how institutions shape women’s legislative incentives. In chapter four, I develop theoretical expectations about the conditions under which increases in the proportion of female legislators, in combination with institutional arrangements, will foster or stifle women’s opportunities and incentives to represent women’s interests. The chapter provides strong empirical support for the hypothesis that women behave differently conditional on institutional incentives. These findings imply that understanding institutions is key to understanding how and when female representatives will stand for women. Taken together, this dissertation makes an important contribution to our understanding of how changes in the proportion of female legislators and differences in institutional contexts shape women’s legislative behavior.Item How Much Has the Game Changed? Revisiting Policymaking in Latin America a Decade Later(2017) Jones, Mark P.; James A. Baker III Institute for Public PolicyIn the early 2000s the Inter-American Development Bank launched a visionary and influential research agenda that dramatically improved understanding of the policymaking process (PMP) in Latin America. It did so by detailing the role played by key actors in the PMP and how those actors interacted to produce public policy throughout the region in general, and, via the publication of a volume in English and an updated version in Spanish, in eight countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Venezuela) in particular. This paper reviews the degree to which these eight country-level analyses still accurately portray the actors and their role in the PMP today. It concludes that in a large majority of the countries the analysis is still broadly valid and accurately describes the political institutions and actors who are pivotal for the policymaking game, although in some areas the original analysis would benefit from revision and update.Item Ideology and Partisanship in the 87th (2021) Regular Session of the Texas Legislature(James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy) Jones, Mark P.; James A. Baker III Institute for Public PolicyItem Immigration Policy and Partisan Politics in the State Legislatures: 2010-2012(James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy) Jones, Mark P.; Chou, Benjamin; James A. Baker III Institute for Public PolicyOne point upon which virtually everyone can agree is that the current U.S. immigration system is broken. Partially in response to federal inaction in the area of immigration reform, between 2010 and 2012 legislatures in a number of states took it upon themselves to debate and, in some instances approve, restrictive omnibus legislation designed to address the presence of undocumented immigrants within their respective borders. This study utilizes roll-call vote data from these legislatures to examine the partisan, ethnic/racial and regional dynamics surrounding the debate over this restrictive omnibus immigration legislation in these states. We highlight the extremely partisan nature of the votes on this legislation, with virtually all Republicans supporting the omnibus bills and an overwhelming majority of Democrats opposing. While there is little intra-party variance in Republican support, among Democrats rural Anglo legislators were significantly more likely than their colleagues to break with the party majority and side with GOP legislators in support of restrictive immigration reform legislation.Item Liberals and Conservatives in the 2011 Texas House of Representatives(James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy) Jones, Mark P.; James A. Baker III Institute for Public PolicyItem Measuring political clientelism: The systematic qualitative method(2008) Robinson, Jonathan B.; Jones, Mark P.A new method for measuring political clientelism is developed: the Systematic Qualitative Method (SQM). Ideal for measuring clientelism, the new method is also easily adapted to measure other kinds of social phenomena for which there is no available data. After elaborating a detailed guide for using the method, its validity is established by comparing SQM measurement of clientelism in Argentina and Brazil with existing measures found in the literature. Finally, the results of SQM measurement of clientelism in Argentina and Brazil are presented. An analysis of variation in clientelism within and across the two countries yields some hypotheses for future research.Item Minority Voices: The Representational Roles of African American and Latino Legislators during State Legislative Deliberations(2013-09-16) Miller, Renita; Hamm, Keith E.; Jones, Mark P.; Marschall, Melissa J.; Byrd, Alexander; Meier, KennethIn 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.Item Parties, Incumbents and the Reform of Electoral Rules in Latin American Democracies(2017-11-30) Alles, Santiago; Jones, Mark P.A modern democracy is essentially a representative democracy. However, representation does not occur in the vacuum. Representation, as research has extensively showed, is shaped by the design of institutions, and politicians are those who design institutions. Nevertheless, until recently, research has paid little attention to the sources of institutional choice. This problem is of particular importance for the consolidation of democracy in developing nations: institutions have been much more fluid in younger democracies than in consolidated ones. Since institutions have strong partisan consequences, the chance of a reform creates incentives for strategic manipulation. How do local elites shape institutions in federal countries? Second-level authorities concentrate a large amount of power in federal countries, but their ability to shape the electoral rules in their districts have not received considerable attention. This project analyses the reform of electoral rules in in Argentine provinces, and it provides an explanation to the adoption of these reforms. How does party organization shape preference over institutions? Parties are not monolithic actors and their organizations differ considerably. This project exploits more than 5,400 face-to-face interviews conducted to Latin American lower house members in 17 countries to analyze individual preferences over important aspects of the institutional design, such as electoral rules and the power of the executive office. How do governors set the second-level electoral calendar? Finally, this project analyses how governors strategically decide whether provincial elections are concurrent with the renovation of national authorities. Governors fear the potential effects of the national elections in their districts, and they separate the province-level elections when an uncertain national election threatens their dominant position over the provincial race.Item Shale Renders the ‘Obsolescing Bargain’ Obsolete: Political Risk and Foreign Investment in Argentina’s Vaca Muerta(James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy) Collins, Gabriel; Jones, Mark P.; Krane, Jim; Medlock, Kenneth B. III; Monaldi, Francisco J.; James A. Baker III Institute for Public PolicyItem Social Media, Changing Demographics, and Implications of the 2016 Presidential ElectionJones, Mark P.; Williams, John B.; James A. Baker III Institute for Public PolicyItem The 2014 NRG Astrodome Survey(James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy;University of Houston) Jones, Mark P.; Granato, Jim; Murray, Richard; Cross, Renée; Mainka, Chris; Wan, Kwok-Wai; Wang, Ching-Hsing; James A. Baker III Institute for Public PolicyItem The electoral connection in multi-level systems with non-static ambition: Linking political careers and legislative performance in Argentina(2009) Micozzi, Juan Pablo; Jones, Mark P.Legislators who do not expect to be permanently reelected are not necessarily non-ambitious politicians. Whenever current legislators have different office goals in mind, it is likely that they try to use their available resources to further those aims. Thus, it can be expected that they bias the content of the bills they draft towards their prospective constituents. Through the analysis of 180,000 bills and an original database of candidacies in Argentina, I demonstrate that legislators who have subnational executive ambitions tend to submit more municipality-based legislation. This finding is substantive for the literature on electoral systems, political careers and representation in federal regimes; as well as the keystone towards the creation of a general theory of legislative performance in multilevel systems.Item The Electoral Strategy of Legislative Politics: Balancing Party and Member Reputation in Japan and Taiwan(2012-09-05) Matsuo, Akitaka; Jones, Mark P.; Stevenson, Randolph T.; Martin, Lanny; Carroll, Royce A.; Lewis, Steven W.This thesis explores how political parties coordinate competing objectives, such as winning elections and influencing public policy with demands from their legislators whose interests lie principally in re-election and policy distribution. Electoral and legislative institutions affect the prioritizing of these goals and the appropriate strategy by which to achieve them. Utilizing two East Asian democracies, Japan and Taiwan, my dissertation evaluates this argument via the econometric analysis of various aspects of legislative behavior and policy outcomes, such as committee assignments and deliberations, and intergovernmental fiscal transfers. In regard to committee activities, there exists a significant difference between governing and opposition parties in terms of the expected role of their members on legislative committees. In regard to fiscal transfers, governing parties distribute fiscal resources strategically to party strongholds.Item The gendered effect of losing an election and its consequences on descriptive representation(2018-11-28) Vallejo, Agustín; Jones, Mark P.As in many other aspects of life, politics is not a one-shot-game. Most of the time it requires candidates running and losing several times before getting elected. By running and losing candidates can learn from their mistakes and be better known among voters in future elections. However, not all individuals decide to continue with their political careers after an electoral setback. In this dissertation I analyze gender differences in candidate persistence, defined as the probability of running for office in following elections. My main hypothesis is that the effect of losing an election on political ambition is stronger for women than for men. In particular, I argue that women are less likely than men to continue running for office after losing an election. I also argue that this gender gap may have consequences on representation because candidates with prior experience in elections – candidate experience – are more likely to be elected.