(iPoster) Who Burdens Whom? How Diversity in State Legislatures Influences Burden-Focused Policy Design

• In Event: Poster Session: Ralph Bunche Summer Institute (RBSI) Scholars

Abstract

While questions of what policies get passed and their effectiveness once implemented are common, understanding what conditions effect how these policies are designed and enforced are just as critical to answer. Particularly, a gap exists in our understanding of how policymakers choose to design their policies—to either impose burdens that punish non-compliance or extend benefits to increase compliance—and the effect of legislature demographics on those decisions. Does the number of diverse legislators in a state legislature influence the choice to enact punitive, burden-focused policies? Or do state demographics and partisanship drive policy designs? This paper answers this question using data from the Correlates of State Policy Project on a 10-policy sample between 1969-2020. I find that levels of descriptive representation (in this study, the proportion of non-white legislators to non-white state residents) have the strongest effect to reduce burden-focused policy implementation. Most interestingly, the increase in number of non-white legislators in a Republican-majority state are more punitive than white legislators in the same conditions, contrary to prior expectations. Further, the presence of diverse legislators alone can increase the rate of which burdensome policies are passed. These findings implicate a need for more work on partisanship as it relates to non-white politicians, and policy design preferences more broadly.

Author

• Paige Morgan Gonzales, Purdue University - West Lafayette