Racial Influence in Decision Making - Article Example

The article, “Do Politicians Racially Discriminate Against Constituents? A Field Experiment on State Legislators” by Butler and Broockman (2011) explored whether politicians discriminated against their constituents based on a set of factors. The primary research question was: Does race affect how responsive state legislators are to requests for help with registering to vote? According to the article, responsiveness plays a vital role in a democracy. For instance, if minorities view their representatives as more responsive, they will likely increase their participation in politics. The policy issue evaluated in the article involves political responsiveness based on race. It explored the aspect of race and its influence on political representatives’ decision-making when it comes to responding to their constituents. Also, the article focusses on political equality with regards to how racial minorities get treated. Despite the long struggle and strides made during the latter part of the 20th century, racial minorities are still politically disadvantaged compared to white counterparts. According to the article, uncertainty still exists whether politicians are biased against minorities. A democracy comprises political equality as one of its defining characteristics. The policy issue involving the treatment of racial minorities seeks to identify the underlying elements engaged in race and politics in the US.

The authors evaluated the impact of race on legislator responsiveness. Apart from assessing the aspect of race on legislators' responsiveness, the article also evaluated their response towards the minorities. Since there is uncertainty surrounding the political system's bias against the minorities, the authors experimented to test if the race element was influential in legislators' actions. The study's design was set in a way that intentionally used aliases that were mostly considered black and white. The underlying reason was that blacks were historically known to disproportionately vote for Democrats. This allowed the authors to test if discrimination persisted within the political system because of the politicians’ partisan ideologies. This highlights another issue that was an outcome of interest, which was partisan politics. Therefore, the outcomes of interest in the study involved examining the reasons why legislators may practice racial discrimination. Race is a significant factor that is expected to affect the legislators’ responsiveness. The racial aliases used in the study were crucial in revealing the legislators’ actions and behavior based on the racial factor. According to the study, legislators who share similar descriptive features to their constituents advocates for their policy preferences. Moreover, one reason that explains the increasing number of minorities elected to office depends on the expectation that the leaders will represent the people with whom they share close characteristics. The issue involving the implications of descriptive representation on responsiveness is still debatable.

Another critical issue is partisanship. This is another outcome of interest that the study attempted to evaluate its effects. The article explained that politicians tend to primarily appeal to the voters who support or are susceptible to their ideologies. According to the article, blacks overwhelmingly voted for the Democratic candidates as whites split their votes. Thus, politicians may discriminate voters according to their partisan affiliation. A Republican legislator may infer that an email received from a black alias will likely vote the other direction. A Republican will become less responsive to requests from aliases that are associate with black names. This happens due to strategic considerations on the part of the politicians. Such behaviors have implications for democracy. Thus, the action affects the individual on the receiving end of discrimination. This form of discrimination is unfair and is a direct violation of the democratic principle of equality. The study's findings are vital since they illustrate the existing forms of systemic discrimination. It is also difficult to contrast between statistical discrimination and taste-based discrimination. The study tested for statistical discrimination caused by different racial groups’ partisan preferences. By undertaking this measure, the study evaluated the existence of discrimination based on partisan preferences.

The confounding variables are the additional variables that are not accounted for in a study. Such variables ruin experiments and do not offer substantial results. Confounding variables suggest the existence of correlation. However, in the real sense, there is no correlation. In the study, the authors mentioned various confounding variables that were ruled out. Notably, the authors never randomized legislator characteristics during the interpretation of heterogeneous treatment impacts by the two factors, including the legislators' race and party. According to the authors, some confounding variables could have driven the observed results. The authors attempted to reduce the concern by controlling for various legislator's district and state elements. It included if the politician was due to seek reelection, the politician's legislative chamber, the districts' median household income, census information based on the percentage of the white and black population in the district, and the state's location. All these terms were insignificant since the study's main findings are more significant. Another significant confounding variable is private politics. Private politics occurs when the policy change is sought by citizens and activists outside the confines of the democratic legislative process. It entails the boycotting of products or companies to impact market practices. Private politics can complicate the understanding of democratic responsiveness. For instance, legislators can become less incentivized to respond to constituents' preferences. It takes place if legislators receive less credit and perceive themselves as unnecessary for policy-making. Another confounding variable is gender differences. Women respond to requests of constituents more than men. Female legislators respond more, especially in conservative districts.

The article also utilized an experimental design in investigating the relationship between the set variables. The experimental design used in the study allowed for the evaluation of competing claims concerning the nature of race and representation. It involved contacting the public officials and measuring their responsive levels. The authors randomized individual features of people who made contact. Each email that was sent to the legislators was subject to treatment conditions. The authors signaled the race of senders through the randomization process that involved mails sent using the account name ‘Jake Mueller’ or ‘DeShawn Jackson.’ In addition, texts got manipulated to signal partisanship of senders. The two names got chosen because previous studies indicated that they are the most racially unique names. Most individuals named DeShawn are black, while individuals named Jake are mostly white. Also, the surnames ‘Mueller’ and ‘Jackson’ got chosen because previous census data indicated that the surnames were strongly correlated with black or white. The partisan preference signaled in the email involved the inclusion of text that asked whether anything was required by the sender to register for future elections. Here, the authors randomized if they asked about Republican or Democratic primary elections. Race treatment alongside partisanship yielded six treatments. The study designed the treatment manipulations to measure if legislators displayed discrimination towards blacks. It also tested if proof existed to indicate that the discrimination could get explained by legislators by determining the senders’ race. According to the authors, holding the partisan preference constant could assist in identifying if the observed discrimination occurred because of strategic partisan considerations. Furthermore, the email’s text specifically covered request for constituency service. Since the experiment only examined constituency service, the authors could not determine if legislators responded differently to their voters in other sectors. The authors never expected legislator behavior to differ based on various levels of responsiveness.

The article’s sample comprised 44 US state legislators who held valid email addresses that were all accessed online via their state legislative websites. The period for the study was in September 2008. This field experiment involved a total of 4,859 state legislators in determining if race influenced legislators' responsiveness. All legislators received emails that asked for help in voter registration. In the experiment, the authors randomized if the email got sent from putatively black aliases or white aliases. The explanation for the comparison between whites and blacks was that the latter had a previous disproportionate voting pattern that favored the Democrats. The study randomized if the email signaled senders’ partisan preference. According to the article, the legislators’ email addresses got treated and not necessarily themselves. The authors indicated that responses to the emails might have originated from any other individual apart from the legislator like staff members. Since the study involved the use of a legislator’s official email address that was obtained from the state’s official website, the study believed that the persons responding did so on behalf of the leaders. After the collection of data, legislators got assigned to treatment groups that comprised the use of block randomization by the variables like legislators’ expectation of reelection, political party, legislative chamber, and state. The technique balanced the number of legislators that shared the characteristics in the treatment groups. It also allowed observations to be likely assigned to all the treatment groups. Emails got sent during the first weekend in October 2008 since most voter registration deadlines in various states occurred in the following week. The authors intentionally sent the emails when the legislators were busy with their campaigns to use the added activity as a potential excuse for ignoring them. Besides, sending the emails before the general election held in 2008 ensured that the strategic partisan considerations that the authors tested were more salient for the politicians. The analysis’ dependent variable was whether legislators responded at and before the election day. A benefit associated with this measure is that it ensures objectivity.

Overall, the study’s findings revealed that requests from blacks received fewer responses. The treatments based on race or the use of a black alias received a differential treatment despite the email signaling partisanship. This indicated that strategic considerations were not sufficient in explaining the differential treatment. Additional analysis revealed that white legislators displayed similar discrimination levels towards the black alias. In contrast, the minority legislators responded more frequently to black aliases. The white legislators of both parties engaged in discrimination of the black alias at almost similar statistically significant rates. Minority legislators responded more to the black alias. It indicated that the race of the elected leaders significantly impacted the way minorities are represented. The study’s findings suggested that race was still an important barrier towards realizing equality in the US political system. Moreover, the study’s results indicate that the black alias received a significantly low response rate compared to the white alias. The heterogeneous treatment impacts involving the legislators’ party and the experimental groups signaling partisan considerations only explains a part of the observed differential treatment that favors the white alias. In details, over half of the legislators in the study offered a response. A total of 2,747 responses from a total of 4,859 sent emails were received. It represented a 56.5% response rate. The black and white aliases never received similar rates of reply. From the results, the treatment of the race factor saw the Jake alias receive a higher response (60.5%) compared to DeShawn alias (55.3%). The findings also indicate that no evidence existed to suggest that Democrats participated in statistical discrimination according to inferred partisanship. The treatment for Republican legislators decreased responsiveness by 8.1% to the black-allied alias. This statistic consistently matches with the idea that Republican lawmakers utilize race in inferring about voters’ partisanship. The treatment used in the article also realized a significantly closer level between the Democrat and the Republican whites in discriminating against the black alias, indicated by 6.8% and 7.6% respectively. The minority legislators frequently responded to the black alias compared to the white alias by 16.5%. The article also highlighted various crucial issues. For instance, the article raised the concern that legislators exhibited discrimination behavior regardless of their party affiliation. These legislators are the ones responsible for establishing citizens’ interaction with the political institutions in the US. The legislators displayed their willingness to discriminate against the minorities whenever they sought access to the institutions.

The research design used contained some limitations. First, the study only examined responsiveness to help requests based on voter registration. It does not explicitly indicate that legislators show that the politicians display such behavioral patterns in other sectors. Secondly, the study could not control for every potential factor that makes the legislators engage in racial discrimination. The article did not include other vital factors such as the likelihood that voters turn out for the election. Another weakness associated with the article is its inability to distinguish the terms taste-based, as well as statistical discrimination. Another weakness is that the authors’ initial finding missed heterogeneity within the Democrats. The study’s estimation of the level of differential treatment that the party exhibited and found insignificant statistical differences in the likelihood of their response to Jake alias than the other one. However, this step masks the point that taking into account the race factor, Democrats discriminate just the way the Republicans also do.