Do Minority Legislators (Co)Sponsor Differently than Non-minority Ones? Yes

• In Event: Descriptive Representation, Substantive Representation, or NO Representation?

Abstract

Currently, the 118th Congress is at its highest peak of racial diversity—with 144 of 535 (27%) legislators identifying as non-white. While there is plenty written about how institutional factors influence sponsorship and cosponsorship activity, scholarship continues to tell us little about how personal characteristics–specifically, race and ethnicity–do so as well. How does the race and ethnicity of a legislator impact the way they sponsor and cosponsor bills? Literature on descriptive and substantive representation hint at how factors such as institutional marginalization or enhanced electoral vulnerability may negatively impact sponsorship activity while positively impacting cosponsorship activity. To answer this question, I leverage the quasi-experimental nature of the 2016, 2018, and 2020 congressional elections to employ a synthetic difference-in-difference estimator that causally estimates the impact of minority legislators. I find that, on average, minority legislators sponsor less bills than non-minority legislators and greatly cosponsor more legislation than non-minorities do. The implications of these findings speak to the constraints that minority legislators have to influence policy at the legislative level.

Author

• Jose Alcocer, University of Southern California