The majority-rules nature of American politics in both political institutions and in electoral behavior has been widely decried as the most significant barrier to the full representation of minority Americans in the United States Congress. However, there are other features of congressional institutions and elections that have not been examined as carefully as influencing the representation of minorities. Furthermore, the study of the representation of minority Americans has been largely conducted through the lens of the black political experience. In this dissertation, I address both of these shortcomings by studying the representation of Latino interests in Congress and do so by looking at other significant features of Congress other than political parties and also propose alternate ways of looking at the influence of the electoral connection. Largely using congressional roll call voting data from the 1990s and demographic and electoral characteristics of congressional districts, I show that both majoritarian and pluralist features of Congress influence the representation of Latino interests. In addition, I also show that Latinos in the American electorate can influence the behavior of representatives despite their low levels of socio-economic status and low levels of political participation. The research presented here has implications for future studies of minority representation by presenting other institutional and electoral factors that ought to be considered in the study of minority representation.
展开▼
