Family Ties? The Limits of Fathering Daughters on Congressional Behavior

Costa, Mia; Greenlee, Jill S.; Nteta, Tatishe M.; Rhodes, Jesse H.; Sharrow, Elizabeth

doi:10.1177/1532673x19826273

Cited by 9 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…Other replications have discovered important evidence of structural changes over time. For example, when replicating Washington's (2008) finding that members of the US House of Representatives with daughters were more likely to cast "feminist" roll call votes, Costa et al (2019) find that this relationship subsided over time, perhaps reflecting deepening partisan divides. The second reason is that few, if any, pioneering experiments are analyzed based on a pre-registered plan.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 89%

The effects of proposal power on incumbents' vote share: updated results from a naturally occurring experiment

Green

Sevi

2022

PSRM

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A pioneering study by Loewen et al. made use of the Canadian legislature's newly instituted lottery, which enabled non-cabinet Members of Parliament (MPs) to propose a bill or motion. Their study used this lottery in order to identify the causal effect of proposal power on incumbents' vote share in the next election. Analyzing the first two parliaments to use the lottery, Loewen et al. found that proposal power benefits incumbents, but only incumbents who belong to the governing party. Our study builds on these initial results by adding data from four subsequent parliaments. The pooled results no longer support the hypothesis that MPs—even those who belong to the governing party—benefit appreciably from proposal power. These updated findings resolve a theoretical puzzle noted by Loewen et al., as proposal power would not ordinarily be expected to confer electoral benefits in strong party systems, such as Canada's.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 89%

The effects of proposal power on incumbents' vote share: updated results from a naturally occurring experiment

Green

Sevi

2022

PSRM

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“…While we speculate that our results may reveal a potential contextual scope condition for daughter effects, we also acknowledge that our results add to recent evidence that casts doubt on the existence of daughter effects even in Western democracies. While the bulk of research in this area points to significant and positive effects, two recent studies report null effects among the general public in a large sample of European countries and the United States (Lee and Conley 2016) and among US Representatives (Costa et al 2019). We see evidence from the South African case as adding an important data point to an increasingly contested empirical finding.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… 1 Three of fourteen studies do not report positive effects: Conley and Rauscher (2013) find having a daughter moves parents in a more conservative direction, Lee and Conley (2016) report null effects across a number of European countries and the United States, and Costa et al (2019) reports null effects among U.S. representatives. …”

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confidence: 99%

Daughters Do Not Affect Political Beliefs in a New Democracy

2022

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A consistent finding in industrialized democracies is that having a daughter shapes parents’ attitudes and behaviors in gender-egalitarian ways. We test whether this finding travels to a young middle-income democracy where women’s rights are more tenuous: South Africa. Using a dataset of over 7,500 respondents with information on family structure, we find no discernible effect on attitudes about women’s rights or on partisan identification. We speculate that our null findings relate to opportunity: daughter effects are more likely when parents perceive economic, social, and political opportunities for women. When women’s customary status and de facto opportunities are low, as in South Africa, having a daughter may have no effect on parents’ political behavior. Our results demonstrate the virtues of diversifying case selection in political behavior beyond economically wealthy democracies.

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“…Though seeCosta et al (2018) for evidence that this dynamic may no longer occur among U.S. representatives.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Daughters do not affect political beliefs in a new democracy

Clayton¹,

Kadt²,

Dumas³

2019

Preprint

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Having a daughter shapes parents' attitudes and behaviors in gender-egalitarian ways, a finding documented in multiple industrialized democracies. We test whether this travels to a young middle-income democracy where women's rights are tenuous: South Africa. Contrary to prior work we find no discernible effect on attitudes about women's rights or partisan identification. Using a unique dataset of over 7,500 respondents and an equivalence testing approach, we reject the null hypothesis of any effects of 5 percentage points or greater at conventional levels of statistical significance. We speculate that our null findings relate to opportunity: daughter effects are more likely when parents perceive economic, social, and political opportunities for women. When women's customary status and de factor opportunities are low, as in South Africa, having a daughter may have no effect on parents' political behavior. Our results demonstrate the virtues of diversifying case selection in political behavior beyond economically wealthy democracies.

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Family Ties? The Limits of Fathering Daughters on Congressional Behavior

Cited by 9 publications

References 66 publications

The effects of proposal power on incumbents' vote share: updated results from a naturally occurring experiment

The effects of proposal power on incumbents' vote share: updated results from a naturally occurring experiment

Daughters Do Not Affect Political Beliefs in a New Democracy

Daughters do not affect political beliefs in a new democracy

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