Who Leads? Institutions and State Legislative Leadership Diversity

• In Event: State Politics

Abstract

How do institutional features of state legislatures affect the race-gender diversity of party leaders and committee chairs? The presence of women and minority representatives in state legislatures is increasingly common, but leadership positions within legislatures are not always equally distributed across race and gender (Hansen and Clark 2020; Reingold 2023).

This discrepancy in who holds leadership positions is important for several reasons. First, holding these leadership positions is a step in the larger process of political incorporation (Browning, Marshall, and Tabb 1984). Second, these posts provide formal and informal power over agenda setting, policy outcomes, and coalition building (Anzia and Jackman 2013; Fouirnaies 2018; Hitt, Volden, and Wiseman 2017; Kanthak 2009), which can affect the substantive representation of marginalized groups (Haynie 2001; Holman, Mahoney, and Hurler 2021; Minta 2011; Preuhs 2005, 2006; Reingold and Smith 2012). Third, many of these leaders play gatekeeping roles; thus, women and minorities holding such gatekeeping positions may affect trajectories of continued incorporation (Crowder-Meyer 2013; Haynie 2002; O’Brien et al. 2015).

In this paper, we focus on how institutional features shape prospects for more diverse race-gender leadership and empowerment in state assemblies. This is a particularly fruitful area of inquiry: unlike underlying attitudes, institutions can be and are manipulated -- the implementation of term limits in US states, for example, quickly changed the incentives for those in office (Mooney 2009). By identifying how institutional features affect political incorporation, this study can inform discussions of institutional engineering for diversity and equality.

We theorize about the effects of four institutional features of state legislative office on leadership diversity: term limits, professionalism, the number of committees and leadership positions, and the selection procedures for leadership posts. We hypothesize that term limits increase leadership diversity by dampening the role of seniority in institutional advancement (Hall 2014; Kerevel and Atkeson 2013).

The literature provides contradictory expectations regarding the impact of state legislative professionalism. On the one hand, if professionalism increases the power and prestige of both the legislature and its leaders, it could in turn inhibit race-gender diversification (Anderson, Butler and Harbridge 2016; Clucas 2007; Diamond 1977). On the other hand, if professionalism is seen as an antidote to insular, informal “good ‘ole boy” networks of power (Blair and Stanley 1991; Smooth 2008), then it might promote more race-gender diversification of leadership ranks. Our research allows us to explore both possibilities.

We hypothesize that leadership diversity is positively associated with the number of leadership positions available for two reasons. First, having more posts simply increases opportunities to promote those who have been marginalized. Second, as the number of committees and party leaders increases, the prestige and power of each post diminish. To the extent that women and minorities are relegated to less prestigious positions, an increase in the number of posts should be associated with an increase in the race-gender diversity of leadership (Krook and O’Brien 2012; Meinke 2008).

Finally, we hypothesize that procedures for leadership selection that concentrate power in one or a few individuals should be associated with greater diversity for two reasons (Darcy, Welch, and Clark 1994). First, concentrated selection power allows for the possibility of “balanced tickets” for leadership positions with little need for coordinated, collective action. Second, to the extent those in office – the women’s or Black caucuses, for example – care about the diversity of leadership positions, pressure to diversify leadership can be more acutely focused on one or a few selectors than an entire party caucus or chamber (Rhinehart and Geras 2020). The balanced-ticket mechanism and the accountability mechanism should both lead to greater diversity when selection power is concentrated rather than diffuse.

We test our hypotheses on a new dataset of the gender and racial identities of committee chairs and party leaders of the upper and lower chambers of 25 state legislatures for the years 1991 to 2007. Our intersectional research design pays close attention to how race-gender institutions affect distributions of power between women of color, men of color, White women, and White men (Hawkesworth 2003). By shedding light on the ways in which institutional features of office alter the incentives and opportunities to select women and men of color and White women to prestigious leadership posts, we contribute to the extant literature on processes of representation and incorporation of marginalized groups and the importance of institutional features for structuring legislative behavior and outcomes.

Authors

• Beth Reingold, Emory University

• Nancy Bays Arrington, California Polytechnic State University

• Layla Brooks

• Alexandra Snipes, Emory University