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Matthew B. Platt
Department of Government, Harvard University
Working Papers
** Please Do Not Cite Without Permission **
This group of papers address changes in both the strategies for and contents of black agenda setting over time. Taken together, these papers formed my dissertation titled "The Normalization of Black Politics".
Innovation, Inevitability, and Credibility: Tracking the Origins of Black Civil Rights Issues
(Last Updated: June 10, 2008)
A Change Narrative of Black Agenda Setting
(Last Updated: April 21, 2008)
Much of the literature on black agenda setting and policymaking
emphasizes the continuity of black Americans' struggle to achieve
full freedom and equality. However, this theme of continuity often
obscures the important changes that have taken place in terms of the
content of the black issue agenda. In this paper, I introduce a new
data set on how Congress recognizes and pays attention to black
issues from 1947 to 1998. Using a
variety of statistical tools, the exploration of this data reveals
that black agenda setting is fundamentally a story about change.
Over the last fifty years of the twentieth century Congress has
allocated a greater share of its agenda to black issues and those
issues cover a broader range of policy areas. Black Americans have
progressed from a state of impoverished political exclusion to
middle-class political incorporation, and the black agenda reflects
that change accordingly.
Marching Backwards to Freedom: Black Strategies to Expand the Scope of Conflict
(Last Updated: January 24, 2008)
Theories of agenda setting claim that political entrepreneurs must broaden their bases of support in order to place new issues onto the formal agenda. However, there are no quantitative, political science studies of agenda setting that relate non-voting political activity to the responsiveness of government agendas. This paper fills that void by examining the role of black protest and descriptive representation in securing white recognition of black policy issues. Making use of a new data set that provides measures of media attention and congressional bill sponsorship from 1948 to 1997, I show that both protest and descriptive representation were instrumental in gaining white recognition of black policy demands, culminating in the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. However, the potency of protest and descriptive representation have lessened in response to the black social and political advancement of the post-civil rights era. It seems that black strategies of conflict expansion have become victims of their own success.
Surprisingly Normal: Recognition of Black Issues by Non-Black Members of Congress
(Last Updated: August 10, 2009)
Debates in the race and representation literature have been focused
on whether race matters for the substantive representation of black
interests. However, this debate has overlooked the basic reality
that the vast majority of black issue legislation is sponsored by
non-black members of Congress. I introduce a problem-solving
framework to analyze sponsorship of black issue legislation from
1948 to 1997. The results show that black issue recognition has
changed over time, but ideology, institutional position, and
district composition are the core determinants of member decisions
to recognize black issues. Rather than relying upon the outsider
pressure of protest or the insider influence of descriptive black
representation, black Americans can expand the scope of conflict by
simply electing white liberal representatives. Contrary to
expectations of the exceptional quality of black agenda setting, in
post-war America black politics is surprisingly normal.
This group of papers are part of a larger interest in understanding bill sponsorship as an important component of agenda setting.
Notes on Black Representation and Bill Sponsorship
(Last Updated: August 24, 2008)
Legislative Problem-Solving: Exploring Bill Sponsorship in Post-war America
(Last Updated: September 15, 2008)
Given the small number of bills that are actually enacted into
public policy, it is puzzling that members continue to sponsor bills
at such high rates. The conventional approach to this puzzle has
been to either focus on the determinants of legislative
effectiveness or to conceive of bill sponsorship as symbolic
position-taking. As a result, we know relatively little about how
sponsorship patterns vary across members and over time, and more
importantly the introduction of legislation has been divorced from
the policy process. We address both of these problems by offering a
``problem-solving" framework of bill sponsorship that is compatible
with standard conceptions of goal-oriented behavior and conceives of
sponsorship as placing issues onto the public agenda. Using
multilevel models we analyze the volume and content of members'
legislative portfolios from 1947 to 1998. We find that members
adjust their sponsorship according to changing circumstances,
whether those changes are in terms of their own institutional
positions or broader developments in the social, political, and
economic environments. Bill sponsorship is neither irrational nor
devoid of policy relevance. It is a tool that members use to
recognize problems and cultivate reputations as problem-solvers.
These papers collectively attempt to lay the groundwork for a theory of policy-motivated participation by answering questions about the how and when of non-voting political activity.
Participation for What? A Policy-Motivated Approach to Political Activism
(Last Updated: October 11, 2007)
Normatively and intuitively, we conceive of political participation
as an integral component of democratic policymaking. However,
research on participation generally does not include policy
considerations as part of individuals' decisions to engage in
activism. I offer an Opportunity Model of participation that begins
to study how policy goals shape individual participation and how
aggregate participation shapes policymaking. The central argument is
that individuals policy goals allow them to recognize those moments
when it is most efficient and/or effective to take action. Examining
black participation from 1980 to 1994, I show that black Americans
are more likely to participate when they face external threats, are
embedded in social networks, and have greater access to
policymakers. Most importantly, the recognition of these
opportunities varies according to individuals' resources. This
research moves beyond the discussion of who participates to address
the equally fundamental question: participation for what?
Preaching in the Wilderness: Exploring the Macro Dynamics of Political Participation
written with Fredrick C. Harris
(Last Updated: January 8, 2007)
Research on the relationship between contextual factors
and individual-level participation has offered a new frontier in the
study of political activity. These studies push beyond the core
characteristics highlighted in the Civic Voluntarism Model to
understand how individuals respond to political, economic, and
social environments. In this paper, we build on the contributions
of both of these literatures to explore how national, political, and
economic contexts shape aggregate rates of participation from
1973-1994. The central argument is that changes in the political
and economic context produce alterations in individuals' political
orientations, and these changed orientations drive fluctuations in
aggregate behavior. Using standard time series techniques we find
that economic difficulties, competition over policymaking authority,
and national elections act as stimulants for aggregate
participation. Our message is simple: aggregate participation is a
dynamic response to a constantly changing world.
Opportunities for Inequality: Context and Disparities in Political Participation
(Last Updated: March 15, 2009)
Disparities in political participation along lines of race and class have been thoroughly studied in the literature. However, the previous research has tended toward cross-sectional studies, making it difficult to assess how these participation gaps change according to broader contextual factors. This paper offers an opportunity model of participation to explore and explain fluctuations in race and status gaps in participation. The analysis provides some evidence that individuals' differing perceptions of social, political, and economic realities mediate the effects of context on participation. I argue that these differences are the roots of participation gaps. Political activity is explained by neither individual
characteristics nor context; a true understanding requires both.
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