Non-Voting Delegates and Representation in U.S. Territories

• In Event: Achieving Representation in Electoral Democracies

Abstract

One central problem for the ideal of democratic representation in the US since 1789 was how those living in US territories outside the states would be politically represented. The problem has only grown as the US territorial and military holdings extended as far West as Manchuria following WW2. Despite this broad expansion, the US has maintained a variety of political relationships with the peoples and governments of the territory it has controlled from Japan to Mexico to Hawaii. While these issues have always been present, the devastation of Hurricane Irma and the US response to this disaster in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin islands has shifted concerns about representation, race, and US foreign policy in Puerto Rico, the Caribbean, and throughout the world to crisis levels. This study analyzes Congressional behavior to examine the role of non-voting representatives in shaping US policy towards US citizens in territories outside the States. By leveraging the variation in the political and geographic relationship between the US and its various non-State territorial holdings, this study contributes to the literature by expanding notions of both citizenship and representation at the territorial fringes of imperial holdings.

Author

• David Brooks Ebner, University of Southern California