Representation scholars link descriptive representation of blacks and Latinos in legislative bodies to substantive policy representation. We examine this relationship on local school boards where issue salience is high, the cost of gaining legislative access is relatively low, and nonpartisan elections produce a greater likelihood of linking policy preferences to racial cues. Theoretically, we connect substantive representation to the method of election; blacks and Latinos elected at-large face different constraints than their ward-elected counterparts, and thus behave differently on an at-large board than they would on a ward-elected one. This theoretical story suggests a number of hypotheses that we test using cross-sectional data from 1000+ school districts in Texas. Using OLS, we find that the type of election has significant direct and indirect effects on the hiring of black and Latino administrators and teachers to the school district, after controlling for other factors. We find that election type has descriptive representational effects for Latinos, but more importantly, electoral constraints produce variable substantive policy outcomes once both black and Latino officials take office.The analysis proceeds in six parts. First, we review the literature on structure and representation. Second, we examine the underlying logic of two electoral systems-at-large and ward-based single-member districts. Third, we operationalize hypotheses derived from the spacial logic inherent in electoral structures, using a data set for 1000+ Texas school districts. Fourth, we examine the influence that structure has on electing African American and Latino members to the school board, that is, the impact on descriptive representation. Fifth, we extend beyond descriptive representation to the quality of representation and examine the effectiveness of minority representatives in advancing the interests of the minority community by increasing the number of minority administrators and teachers in the school district. Finally, we explore the implications of these findings for the

Meier and O'Toole have developed an empirical model that allows scholars to test for the impact of managers on a system and its outputs. In this article I attempt to add to management theory and analysis by examining the impact of time in the system and management tenure. I use ordinary least squares to replicate and expand upon Meier and O'Toole's results, using school superintendent survey responses along with outcome measures from school districts in Texas. The most interesting results suggest that (1) networking has a much larger impact when one controls for experience with the system; (2) experience with the system has independent effects on outcomes; (3) management tenure interacts with networking, resulting in greater outcomes; and (4) new managers may find alternative (possibly deceitful) ways of affecting outcomes other than working their networks.The public management field is in the midst of a theoretical and empirical upheaval concerning the role played by networks in the delivery of public services. The rise of public/private cooperation in the public sphere has cast doubt on the picture of the modern bureaucracy as a hierarchical system of inefficiency. I continue the process of examining management effects through public/private networks by exploring the frequently discussed but infrequently tested idea of time within a network. Much of the management literature treats networking as a one-shot phenomenon, ignoring ''managerial experience'' differences across organizations, but this study treats the relationships formed over time as a critical element of network management success.The article is fairly straightforward in that it adds a number of new components to a previously developed model of management, to look separately at ''new'' and ''established'' managers in their respective networks. There are two overriding themes: First, what effects do new managers have in their networks? Do they find it easy to operate, or do they need time to develop relationships and build trust? The converse is asked about established managers: Do they make outcome production inefficient because they are

We use state legislator ideology estimates (standardized W‐nominate values) to examine whether Latino and African American legislator ideological differences can be explained away by traditional constituency characteristics like partisanship and demographics. We find instead that both Black and Latino legislators are unique “types.” Our evidence supports the theoretical presumption that there is a minority dimension to legislative voting and that it is uniquely personified by minority officeholders. White, Black, Latino, Democrat, and Republican representatives are all examined for responsiveness to different partisan and racial/ethnic populations. The dataset includes all 50 state legislatures from the 1999–2000 legislative sessions, including information from the U.S. Census, NALEO, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, Gerald Wright's Representation in the American Legislature Project, and CQ Press's Almanac of State Legislative Elections.

Nearly every aggregate study of minority legislative representation has observed outcomes of elections (officeholders), rather than the supply of minority candidates. Because of this, scholars have left a large amount of important data, the election losers, out of their models of minority representation. The evidence presented in this article demonstrates that voters in the United States cannot choose minority officeholders because there are rarely minority candidates on the ballot. I use state legislative candidate data from Carsey et al. (2008) and Klarner et al. (2012) to test models of Latino representation that correct for first-stage selection bias. Once candidate self-selection is taken into account, the probability of electing a Latino increases enormously. I then use data from 2010 to make out-of-sample predictions, which clearly favor the conditional model. Thus, our current understanding of Latino representation is significantly biased by ignoring the first stage of an election, a candidate's decision to run.T he two questions that motivate most of the minority representation research in the United States are "When and why do minority candidates get elected to office?" Although they are not always given explicit or foremost attention, they remain fundamental to understanding the processes of descriptive and substantive representation, legislative redistricting, co-ethnic voting, and related political phenomena. While scholars appear to have some good answers to the first question, we have fairly muddled answers to the second. This is because it is unclear to what extent the anti-minority prejudice found in some experimental settings and on some surveys hurts minority candidates in actual elections. Perhaps instead, partisanship, incumbency, and other electoral factors mitigate voters' negative "affect." If it turns out that minority candidates often get elected in white districts when they run, then our understanding of minority representation requires revision.Traditionally, minority representation research examines the "population-seats" relationship in order to

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