LGBT Incorporation: Party Delegates and the Politics of Sexuality, 1980-2012

• In Event: Parties and American Political Development

Abstract

How have LGBT people been incorporated into party institutions? My dissertation argues that, rather than having pre-defined and formed interests, groups and political actors engage in a recursive process of representation that leads to mobilization. First, groups present visions of how they wish to be represented in political life. These visions can then be (un)recognized and (de)legitimated by political actors, who are seeking to (de)mobilize constituencies. Political actors constitute groups by making representative claims that (de)recognize the group as a constituency. As such, political actors from more powerful social groups have an advantaged position in the representation process. They may construct hegemonic representations of less powerful groups that are at odds with the in-group vision of a group, or they may make representative claims that are consistent with the in-group constructions put forth by a constituency. The group then responds through political mobilization. Over time, this recursive process constitutes groups and their interests and identities. I evaluate this framework by identifying (in)congruence between the vision of groups and actors claiming to represent the group. To gain empirical traction for my theory, I examine this dynamic process of “constitutive group mobilization” across multiple dimensions, including policy, identity recognition, group incorporation, and the behavior and attitudes of political actors. This chapter examines the incorporation and behavior and attitudes dimensions using survey data of party convention delegates. I conduct secondary analyses of the Convention Delegate Studies between 1980 and 2012. I find evidence that party delegates’ negative attitudes about LGBT people relegates the politics of sexuality to the margins of party institutions. Among Democratic Party convention delegates, I find that negative ratings of gays and lesbians increase delegates’ support for “downplaying issues to win” and “minimizing disagreements in the party.” This relationship exists for ratings of gays and lesbians but not for ratings of other constituency groups, including feminists, African-Americans, and labor. I also find that gays and lesbians are the lowest rated constituency among those that form the Democratic Party coalition. I interpret these differences to mean that party delegates do not consider LGBT civil rights to be on equal footing with other civil rights groups. Thus, there is incongruence between the in-group LGBT political vision framed around minority group civil rights and the political vision of Democratic party delegates. For comparison, I leverage analyses of Republican Party delegates to show how the group is marginalized within the two-party system.

Author

• Andrew Thomas Proctor, Princeton University