No abstract

While a great deal of research documents women elected officials’ more liberal policy attitudes and concludes that increased women’s representation will produce more liberal policies, I argue that the influence of gender and ultimately the influence of women’s representation remain unclear. First, constituency demands may explain observed gender differences. Second, the influence of gender may vary among legislators. I find that although constituency interests do have a significant effect, women continue to express significantly more liberal welfare policy preferences than men. In addition, I find that gender differences in legislators’ preferences are greater among Republican and conservative legislators than among Democratic and liberal legislators. Consequently, predicting the impact of increasing women’s representation on policy is likely to be more complex than previously thought.

No abstract

Theoretical work assumes that legislators use ex ante design to gain bureaucratic influence, not only at an agency's appointment stage but also as an ongoing tactic. Yet no empirical work has investigated whether or not legislators prefer to use design to exert influence after an agency's appointment stage. Using a mail survey of more than 2,500 legislators, we model legislators' preferences for ex ante design as a function of both institutional factors and individual legislators' characteristics. Our results suggest that the feasibility of agency design as an ongoing tactic of bureaucratic influence is more limited than theoretical work indicates and that both institutional‐ and individual‐level factors explain legislators' preferences.

While previous work suggests that enacting coalitions' use of ex ante control devices shapes future legislatures' incentives to intervene in the bureaucracy, it is less clear how such insulation motivates individual legislators. We advance an individual-level account of how legislative rule review, a control device that structures an agency's insulation from political interference, differentially shapes legislators' preferences for direct and statutory intervention tactics. Using an original survey of U.S. state legislators, we find that insulation reduces the expected policy benefits of direct interventions, making these tactics less attractive to legislators. Moreover, to capitalize on more permeable agency design, legislators must have access to key resources. For statutory tactics, insulation has no effect on legislators' intervention preferences. Our findings suggest that insulation is a durable control device that casts a long shadow in protecting an enacting coalition's interest in agency affairs.