Descriptive Representation, District Demography, and ...tbrunell/papers/Brunell_Anderson... · regarding the makeup of congressional districts. We found that living in a district

223Descriptive Representation

LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, XXXIII, 2, May 2008 223

THOMAS L. BRUNELLUniversity of Texas at Dallas

CHRISTOPHER J. ANDERSONCornell University

RACHEL K. CREMONAFlagler College

Descriptive Representation,District Demography, andAttitudes toward CongressAmong African Americans

We examined the effects of subjective and objective descriptive representationand district demography on African Americans’ attitudes toward their member ofCongress and the U.S. Congress as an institution. We investigated whether or notAfrican Americans in more-racially homogeneous districts differ in their attitudesfrom counterparts in districts with fewer African Americans. We also studied theeffects of descriptive representation and district demography to determine if theseeffects are contingent on voters’ perceptions of descriptive representation. We foundthat living in a district with a higher proportion of blacks enhances African Americanvoters’ feelings toward their representative and marginally elevates these voters’evaluations of Congress. This effect is mediated, however, by the election of a blackrepresentative to Congress.

Issues of representation and attitudes toward government arecentral to an understanding of democratic political systems, andpolitical scientists widely believe that representation and attitudes arerelated: equal, fair, and effective representation, we commonly assume,breed positive attitudes toward the political process and governmentalinstitutions. Yet this conjecture has seldom been put to the test. Forthis article, we conducted one such test by drawing on two centralissues in contemporary debates about representation in the UnitedStates: majority-minority districting and descriptive representation.

Questions of both descriptive representation and district demog-raphy have recently become increasingly important, particularly incontemporary debates on redistricting and majority-minority districts

224 Brunell, Anderson, and Cremona

in the U.S. Congress. On the heels of the Voting Rights Act renewal, apotentially far-reaching court decision from the most recent round ofredistricting (Georgia v. Ashcroft), and the associated conflictsregarding “unpacking” majority-minority districts, we chose to inves-tigate how both descriptive representation (the election of a blackrepresentative and perceptions of black representation) and theproportion of minority voters in majority-minority districts affectAfrican Americans’ evaluations of government. As well, we sought todetermine if descriptive representation and district demography affectbeliefs about government independently of each other and whether ornot beliefs about black representation moderate the effect of objectivevariables, such as district demography or being represented by a blackmember of Congress.

Like prior researchers, we presumed that descriptive representa-tion in the form of electing a black member of Congress fosters a senseof empowerment among African American voters and thus enhancestheir attitudes toward both their representative and Congress as aninstitution. Additionally, following Tate (2003), we hypothesized thatsubjective perceptions of descriptive representation (that is, how wellAfrican Americans believe themselves to be descriptively representedat the national level) play a significant and independent role in affectingthe attitudes of blacks toward government. In a departure from previousresearch, however, our study explores whether or not black voters indistricts with greater numbers of African Americans are more likely toapprove of their representative and Congress, regardless of whetherthese constituents are represented by a black or nonblack member ofCongress. Moreover, we investigated the interaction of perceptions ofdescriptive representation with measures of actual descriptive repre-sentation and district demography to determine if such interactionshapes African Americans’ views of Congress and its members.

We examined our hypotheses using survey data collected as part ofthe National Black Election Study as well as demographic informationregarding the makeup of congressional districts. We found that living in adistrict with a higher proportion of blacks enhances African Americanvoters’ feelings toward their representative and marginally elevates theirevaluations of Congress. Similarly, we found that descriptive representa-tion (the election of a black representative) has a direct effect on AfricanAmerican attitudes toward their member of Congress, but not towardCongress the institution. In addition, our evidence shows that subjectiveperceptions of descriptive representation (beliefs about AfricanAmerican representation in Congress) exert a positive and significanteffect on attitudes toward Congress and its members.


Our results also suggest, however, that the effect of districtdemography is mediated by the election of a black representative toCongress. The degree of racial homogeneity of a congressional districtdoes not affect African Americans’ attitudes about Congress indepen-dently of descriptive representation. Furthermore, our work demon-strates that the positive effects of objective representation on AfricanAmericans’ views of their representative are, in part, contingent: theelection of a black representative has a stronger effect on respondents’evaluations of their representative if they perceive African Americansto have less representation in Congress as a whole.

In the next section, we review the literature on descriptive repre-sentation and examine the role it may play in shaping political attitudesamong black Americans. Subsequently, we present a model of attitudestoward government that includes contextual information about thenature of the political environment in which African Americans liveas well as information about individual voters and their perceptions ofblack representation. Using survey data from the 1996 Black NationalElection Study and census data for the districts in which voters reside,we explain our test of this model and the significance of our findingsin light of theories of descriptive representation and political support.We conclude by suggesting avenues for future research.

Descriptive Representation and Attitudes toward Government

Although individual members of Congress are usually well likedby their constituents and the abstract notion of Congress as a demo-cratic institution usually receives good marks, Congress as a collectiveis not very highly regarded by the American electorate (Hibbing andTheiss-Morse 1995; see also Fenno 1975 and Parker and Davidson1979). According to Hibbing and Theiss-Morse, the key tounderstanding the general distaste that Americans have for Congressis the recognition that voters hold Congress to an unreachable standard,expecting it to do what is right for all Americans and do it withoutmuch partisan bickering. Citizens’ views of Congress are partly afunction of (perhaps unrealistic) expectations.

While the literature on both the objective and subjective conse-quences of descriptive representation for African Americans is richand growing, and despite the fact that we have long known that blackAmericans generally harbor less-positive views of their government,there have been relatively few attempts to examine the relationshipbetween descriptive representation and the political attitudes of AfricanAmericans.


This paucity is all the more surprising when a number of scholarshave argued that one of the prime benefits of such representation ispsychological in nature. One perspective views the positive effects ofdescriptive representation on African Americans as rooted in itssymbolic value:

Symbolic representation is not only desirable but necessary for black Americans.Blacks need role models in government; they need representatives that they believewill represent their interests; they need to know that good leadership (or bad) is notdominated by one race or group. (Swain 1995, 217)

A contrasting perspective views the value of descriptive representa-tion more instrumentally. Gay (2002), for example, suggests that thedesire to attain descriptive representation arises from the belief that itresults in tangible gains for blacks, rather than because of its symbolicvalue in terms of racial identification.

Tate (2003), using Pitkin’s (1967) typology, distinguishes betweenthree types of political representation—substantive, descriptive, andsymbolic—and argues that, by its very nature, political representationis necessarily symbolic; it is not only about securing policy but alsoabout group/interest representation, or being physically and psycho-logically represented. In fact, Tate argues that substantive representa-tion in the form of policy congruence between representatives andconstituents is generally an unrealistic goal: “Perfect policy congruence. . . can be considered the elusive ‘Holy Grail’. . . ” (Tate 2003, 160).Thus, for representation to be meaningful, we must aspire to a formthat is more than substantive—representation that is also somehowpowerfully symbolic. And, as Tate asserts in the case of African Ameri-cans, “any other form of political representation short of descriptiverepresentation might result in the neglect or dilution of their interests”(2003, 15). So despite disagreement in the literature as to the underlyingmotivations for pursuing descriptive representation, researcherscommonly foresee it as having largely positive consequences forAfrican Americans’ views of the political system.

Among the few studies that have considered the effects ofdescriptive representation on the beliefs and behaviors of AfricanAmericans is Howell and Fagan’s (1988) examination of the determi-nants of trust among blacks in local government in the city of NewOrleans (where there had been a black mayor for eight years) and atthe national level (under the Reagan administration). The authors foundthat levels of trust among blacks were much higher at the local leveland that incumbent approval was the intervening variable between raceand trust, leading them to conclude that “having a black administration


at close range to black voters greatly heightens their trust ingovernment” (Howell and Fagan 1988, 347).

Although essentially consistent with the Howell and Fagan study,Bobo and Gilliam’s (1990) research painted a more-nuanced pictureby examining the connections between descriptive representation,political attitudes, and participation. Specifically, the authors contendedthat the relationship between descriptive representation and politicalparticipation is indirect and mediated through both political orienta-tion and political knowledge: “black empowerment is a contextual cueof likely policy responsiveness that encourages blacks to feel thatparticipation has intrinsic value” (Bobo and Gilliam 1990, 387). Boboand Gilliam suggested that the descriptive representation of AfricanAmericans should increase political participation because of itspsychological benefits for black voters, namely, increases in trust,efficacy, and political knowledge. Using survey data from 1987, theauthors found that blacks living in “high empowerment” areas (definedas areas where the largest city in the vicinity has a black mayor) weresignificantly more trusting of local officials, had significantly higherlevels of political efficacy, and were significantly more informed aboutpolitics than were black constituents living in “low empowerment”areas (383).1

A more-recent study by Banducci, Donovan, and Karp (2004)focuses explicitly on the minority empowerment thesis, which empha-sizes the benefits of stronger representational links, more-positiveattitudes toward government, and the greater political participationthat is engendered by descriptive representation. Relying on data fromthe National Black Election Study, the authors contend that thesignificance of descriptive representation is demonstrated by the factthat African Americans who are represented by black legislators aremore likely to know about, approve of, and contact their congressionalrepresentative. In fact, blacks represented by blacks are more than twiceas likely to recall the name of their representative, more likely (butstill relatively unlikely) to contact their representative, and more likelyto approve of their representative’s performance.

Not all studies on the effects of descriptive representation concurthat its effects are unambiguously positive, however. For example, usingdata from the 1980–1998 National Election Studies surveys, Gay hasdemonstrated that black Americans actually place less value ondescriptive representation than do white Americans, leading her tocontend that “more narrowly motivated by policy concerns, blackconstituents feel equally well represented by white or black legislatorswho share their policy preferences” (Gay 2002, 718). From this


perspective, then, the benefits for African Americans derived fromdescriptive representation are objective rather than subjective in nature.

Similarly, Tate’s (2003) empirical evidence on descriptive repre-sentation suggests that its symbolic effect on black political attitudesis somewhat mixed. Although she found that descriptive representationmakes African Americans more knowledgeable about their represen-tative, she also found that having a black representative does notincrease African Americans’ levels of political efficacy or participa-tion (in terms of voter turnout) (Tate 2003). This finding is consistentwith Banducci, Donovan, and Karp’s (2004) findings that descriptiverepresentation may improve political awareness among AfricanAmericans and enhance their view of their own representative, but itdoes not necessarily have a positive effect on their general attitudes(trust, perceptions of external efficacy) toward government. Perhapseven more suggestive is the fact that Tate did not uncover evidencethat descriptive representation increases trust in government amongblacks (Tate 2003).

In other work examining the political representation of blackAmericans, Tate has found evidence of a relationship betweendescriptive representation and more-positive evaluations of represen-tatives among African Americans; she has also discovered, however,that it is actually political party that proves to be the most powerfulindicator of representative approval (Tate 2001). Tate concludes, “it isnot clear . . . that the benefits of being represented descriptively inCongress on the basis of race outweigh other political considerations”(2001, 635).

On balance, then, the evidence available to date indicates thatthe effect of descriptive representation on African Americans’ attitudestoward government needs to be considered in detail as well as incontext. Specifically, although descriptive representation appears toenhance awareness and approval of the individual representative, it isless clear if and how it affects voters’ attitudes toward governing insti-tutions more generally. If anything, the evidence appears to suggestthat the positive effects of descriptive representation do not extend tomore-general evaluations of the political system and its institutions.

We posit that there are two competing perspectives regarding thelinks between descriptive representation and district demography onone hand and attitudes about individual members of Congress andinstitutions more generally on the other. One perspective is groundedin the literature on citizen competence (see, for example, Converse1964 and Lupia and McCubbins 1998). Most citizens generally knowlittle about the government in Washington or Congress as an institution


and do not spend much time or energy thinking or finding out aboutthem. If, in the absence of much systematic information about govern-ment, people see the election of a black representative as indicative ofthe system’s performance—that is, if people use the election of a blackrepresentative as a heuristic for what government is like—thendescriptive representation should affect both attitudes toward theindividual representative and approval of Congress and trust in thefederal government generally.

Nevertheless, there are good reasons to doubt that this transferactually takes place. A more-historical, more-political perspectivesuggests that African Americans do not feel empowered and have along history of evidence that the political system in the United Statesis not responsive to their needs and was, in fact, for a long time designedto systematically exclude them (Shingles 1981). It is undoubtedly truethat there is a common perception in the black community that publicinstitutions, including the courts, police, and government agenciesgenerally, are not responsive to blacks, and electoral processes maywell reinforce these attitudes. Thus, African Americans might feel goodabout their own representative, whom they helped to elect, but they donot see this representation as connecting with the “system” writ large.They may see the election of a black representative as the exceptionrather than the rule.2

The second critical question that emerges from a review of theliterature on descriptive representation and African Americans’ attitudesabout government is how we may best operationalize descriptiverepresentation. Is it sufficient to know (and measure) the race of thecitizens’ elected representatives in Congress or city hall, or are therealternative or additional ways to capture empowerment and descriptiverepresentation?3 Existing findings that rely on the unidimensionalmeasurement of descriptive representation can be challenged on twogrounds. First, they leave open the possibility that the effect of electinga black member of Congress or a black mayor is spurious and mayresult from the concentration of black voters in a district or city. Second,research on the link between black representation and beliefs aboutgovernment suggests that the election of black representatives, as wellas the conditions that facilitate such representation (for example, alarge number of black voters in a congressional district), can lead tomore-positive attitudes toward political institutions and representa-tives, but these factors have not previously been examined in tandem.

Independent of the presence of a black representative, the pres-ence of large numbers of black voters in a district is likely to enhanceAfrican Americans’ attitudes toward the political system simply through


the empowering potential it holds to influence their representativesregardless of their race. Yet to date, the literature is unclear on whetherit is the descriptive outcome (a black representative) or descriptivepotential (the power of a large black voting bloc), or both, that affectsattitudes toward government among African Americans.

More generally, district demography is a critical variable in anystudy of minority politics in America. In order to comply fully withthe Voting Rights Act and related decisions by the Supreme Court,states are required to pay attention to the racial composition of districts,and, in many instances, this monitoring includes the drawing ofmajority-minority districts. The landmark court case in this regard isthe 1986 decision Thornburg v. Gingles, which laid out the conditionsunder which a state must draw a district so that minority voters have areasonable opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice. In more-recent decisions, however, the Court has backpedaled: in the Georgiav. Ashcroft decision, the Court declared that a state, instead of preservingall existing majority-minority districts, could break up these districtsand create several “influence” or “coalition” districts in which minorityvoters, while not a majority of the district, would be sufficient in num-ber that elected representatives could not ignore their interests. Thisdecision produced opposition from both Democrats and Republicans.Democrats were wary of the decision because it could have allowed aGOP-controlled state to dismantle some of the existing majority-minority districts and decrease the number of minorities in Congress.Republicans did not like the decision because it opened the door forDemocrats to make majority-minority districts more streamlined byunpacking those districts overwhelmingly composed of minority voters.A more-efficient use of these voters could lead to more Democrats inCongress.

While the political and legal merits of majority-minority redis-tricting continue to be debated, the relationship between the wide-spread existence of majority-minority districts and the election ofminority candidates to office is clear. There were very few districtswith large black populations in the South until after the Gingles decisionin 1986, and therefore very few blacks elected to Congress. Since thattime—and the related increase in majority-minority districts—blackshave rarely been elected in districts with less than a majority of AfricanAmericans. Outside the South, there were more black Americans electedeven before Gingles and more instances of blacks elected from rela-tively low proportion black districts. Nonetheless, it is clear that theoverwhelming majority of black elected members of Congress continueto hail from majority-black districts.


African Americans’ Views of Congress: Hypotheses

Building on the existing literature, we posit that there are severalkey elements that may contribute to African Americans’ attitudes towardCongress and its members. First, attitudes may be influenced by whetheror not African Americans are able to elect representatives who looklike themselves (descriptive representation).

Hypothesis 1: African Americans who live in a congressional districtrepresented by a black member of Congress and who are awarethat their representative is black will display more-positive attitudestoward their representative and Congress than will other AfricanAmericans.

Additionally, we hypothesized that district demography, namely,the proportion of African Americans living in a district, is also a criticaland largely unexamined independent factor in shaping the attitudes ofblacks toward their government.

Hypothesis 2: African Americans living in congressional districts withgreater proportions of black voters will display more-positiveattitudes toward their representative and Congress.

Aside from the actual election of a black representative and thenature of a district’s demography, subjective perceptions of power andinfluence among African Americans should shape their attitudes towardCongress. We base this assumption on the notion of subjective percep-tions of empowerment and influence potential, which is frequentlydiscussed but infrequently studied in the literature on descriptiverepresentation. Subjective perceptions of descriptive representationamong African Americans may well be influenced by the probabilitythat power and influence will obtain,4 but perception and reality donot have to match. It is entirely plausible that perceptions, even ifincongruent with actual levels of descriptive representation, can inde-pendently affect people’s attitudes about governmental institutions.

Prior research has not usually investigated African Americans’attitudes toward government and those attitudes’ relationship to broaderperceptions of descriptive representation in addition to actual repre-sentation. That is, attitudes toward government may depend upon howwell blacks believe themselves to be represented, a perception likelyto be positively fostered in more-homogeneously black districts. Thus,following the pathbreaking work of Tate (2003), we hypothesized thatAfrican Americans who believe themselves to be descriptively


represented at the national level (who believe there to be a higher pro-portion of black representatives in Congress than there actually is) aremore likely to exhibit positive attitudes toward Congress and its members.

Hypothesis 3: African Americans who believe that a higher proportionof seats in Congress are held by black representatives will exhibitmore-positive attitudes toward their representative and Congressthan will other African Americans.

Finally, as is well documented in the literature on attitude forma-tion, objective political conditions can have variable effects on people’sbeliefs, depending on underlying predispositions or attitudes that leadindividuals to interpret conditions in a particular way (Zaller 1992).Therefore, in addition to having direct and independent effects onAfrican Americans’ attitudes toward Congress and its members,subjective and objective variables can interact. We posited that people’ssense of existing empowerment shapes the effect of descriptive repre-sentation on attitudes—that is, people’s perceptions of descriptiverepresentation may amplify or mute how much the election of a blackrepresentative affects people’s views of political institutions, includingCongress. We hypothesized that actual descriptive representation orempowerment potential, such as the election of a black representativeand district demography, is variously valuable, depending on theproportion of African Americans that respondents believe to be inCongress. We expected the objective variables to have stronger, more-positive effects on evaluations of the respondent’s representative andCongress when the respondent perceives African Americans as havinglittle descriptive representation in Congress.

Hypothesis 4: The positive effects of living in a congressional districtrepresented by a black legislator and living in a district with agreater proportion of black voters will be stronger among voterswho perceive African Americans to be less well descriptivelyrepresented in Congress.

Data and Analysis

Testing our hypotheses required information about AfricanAmericans’ attitudes toward government as well as information aboutthe congressional districts in which they live. To gauge African Americans’attitudes toward government, we utilized data from the National BlackElection Study (Tate 1998). We also gathered election and census datafor all congressional districts as of the 1996 election (the year our


survey data were collected). Census data on the percentage of AfricanAmericans in each of the 435 congressional districts came from theCensus Bureau’s website and was merged with the survey and electiondata by state and congressional district.

Rather than simply estimating the effect of being represented byan African American on respondents’ attitudes about Congress, wechose to modify this important variable, requiring that respondentsalso be aware that their representative is black. After all, it is difficultto argue that descriptive representation can have a positive effect whencitizens are unaware that descriptive representation exists. One of thesurvey questions asked each respondent to name the race of her or hisrepresentative, and the response was coded by the primary investigatoras being correct or incorrect. Of the 479 respondents in the surveywho were represented by an African American legislator, 76% (366)were aware of the legislator’s race. Thus, 24% (113 respondents) hada black representative but were not able to name that person’s race.Awareness of legislator race is substantially lower for AfricanAmericans who are represented by other races. Fully 42% could notaccurately name the race of their representative when that representa-tive was not African American. Overall, two out of three respondentscould correctly name the race of their representative (800 out of 1,216),regardless of the representative’s race.5

Models of African Americans’ Attitudes towardCongress and Representatives

Our research design required us to combine information at thelevel of respondents and congressional districts.6 Our data thereforehave a multilevel structure, with one unit of analysis (voters) nestedwithin the other (districts) (Bryk and Raudenbush 1992). This datastructure can generate a number of statistical problems, such asnonconstant variance and clustering. Failure to recognize the hierar-chical nature of the data can lead to underestimated standard errors—particularly at the macrolevel—and, thus, a higher probability of Type Ierrors (Zorn 2001). To estimate our models, we relied on statisticaltechniques developed specifically for modeling multilevel data structures7

(Steenbergen and Jones 2002).

Multivariate Model Results: Direct Effects

Our two dependent variables are citizens’ affect toward theirrepresentative (measured by the well-known feeling thermometer, here


labeled “Representative Thermometer”) and their approval of Congressitself. (See the appendix on the Legislative Studies Quarterly websitefor precise question wording.) Our primary independent variablescapturing descriptive representation are whether or not the respondentlives in a district represented by an African American and, if so, if therespondent is aware that the representative is black (1 = yes; 0 = no),as well as the percentage of black residents in the congressional district.Following Tate (2003), we also included in our model responses to aquestion asking what percentage of seats in Congress are held by blacks.To avoid spuriousness problems, we also included a number ofindividual-level control variables common in models of attitudes towardgovernment (cf. Hetherington 1998), such as education, income,economic evaluations, partisanship, and attentiveness to politics. (Seeonline Appendix <http://www.uiowa.edu/~lsq/Brunell_etal_Appendix> fordetails on variables and coding.)

We first examined the independent effects of objective represen-tation (being knowingly represented by a black member of Congress),district demography (proportion of black voters), and perceptions ofAfrican Americans’ proportional representation in Congress on the twodependent variables of interest. We then estimated our models with allthree variables together to understand their relative effects better. Tables1 and 2 present the results of these models.

Table 1 presents results for the models that examine the repre-sentative thermometer as the dependent variable. Model 1 includesonly the variable measuring actual descriptive representation (AwareRepresentative Is Black). The results show that the variable for havinga black representative is positive and significant, indicating that AfricanAmericans who are aware of being represented by a black member ofCongress feel significantly more positive about the representative thanconstituents not in this category. As an aside, respondents whosepartisanship matched that of the representative and who scored highlyon the political knowledge scale also reported more-positive evalua-tions of the incumbent.

The results for Model 2, which includes only the district demog-raphy variable (percentage black in the district), show that a greaterproportion of black voters yields a positive and statistically signifi-cant effect, as well. When the percentage of blacks in a district increases,so does the likelihood that citizens will rate the incumbent positively.This finding is consistent with the notion that influence potential riseswith an increase in the size of African Americans as a group, whichmay then also lead to better actual representation of the group’s politicalpreferences.


TABLE 1Explanatory Model for Representative Thermometer

Variable Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4

Aware Representative Is Black 17.30* 13.92* (0 = no, 1 = yes) (7.56) (4.09)District Composition 0.316* 0.116 (percentage black in district) (6.48) (1.63)Perception % House Black 0.213* 0.160* (0–100) (2.89) (2.28)Education 0.392 0.296 0.083 0.629 (higher = more) (0.59) (0.44) (0.11) (0.88)Income –0.386 –0.111 –0.017 –0.416 (higher = more) (0.94) (0.27) (0.04) (0.96)Gender –1.56 –1.21 –2.42 –1.41 (0 = female, 1 = male) (0.73) (.56) (1.04) (0.62)Age 0.01 0.006 0.065 0.046 (higher = older) (0.15) (0.09) (0.86) (0.61)Party Match 9.36* 8.54* 15.36* 7.38* (1 if R and MC same party) (3.90) (3.39) (6.30) (2.78)Care Who Wins Election 4.38 3.43 5.17 4.19 (higher = cares more) (1.29) (.99) (1.32) (1.16)Political Knowledge 4.25* 5.11* 5.85* 4.20* (higher = more knowledge) (3.33) (4.08) (4.44) (3.12)Media Consumption –0.198 –0.277 –0.224 –0.176 (higher = more media) (0.39) (0.55) (0.41) (0.33)Pay Attention to Campaign 0.329 0.558 0.569 –0.015 (higher = more) (0.21) (0.36) (0.34) (0.01)Pocketbook Economy 0.016 –0.318 0.172 –0.022 (higher = more positive) (0.01) (0.23) (0.11) (0.01)National Economy 3.06* 3.362* 2.99 3.01 (higher = more positive) (2.08) (2.27) (1.82) (1.94)Constant 27.618* 21.67* 19.77* 23.17*

(4.72) (3.62) (2.60) (3.35)

N 743 743 667 667R2 .26 .24 .19 .27

Note: Entries are unstandardized estimates with t-statistics in parentheses. All models wereestimated using the svy commands in Stata, with clustering done on the congressional district.The dependent variable is a thermometer rating of an incumbent House member. “AwareRepresentative Is Black” takes on a value of 1 only when a respondent is both represented bya black and aware that the representative is black. “Perception % House Black” is therespondent’s estimate for the percentage of the seats in the U.S. House of Representativesoccupied by African Americans.Source: Data are from the National Black Election Study (Tate 1998) and from data collectedby the authors.*p < .05.


Model 3 includes the variable capturing respondents’ perceptionof the percentage of seats in the House held by African Americans.Consistent with Tate’s results, the coefficient for this variable is positiveand significant. The three control variables that had significant effectsin Models 1 and 2 are important here also, as is the variable indicatingthat the respondent cares who wins the election.8 The higher therespondent’s estimate of black representation in Congress, the happierthe respondent reports to be with the incumbent representative.

Because the three primary independent variables are likely to berelated to one another—for example, the percentage of black voters ina district is related to the likelihood that the district elects a blackrepresentative—Model 4 includes all three variables simultaneouslyto get more-precise estimates of the individual contribution of eachwhile controlling for the other variables. The results show that all threecoefficients are positive, and two of the three are statistically signifi-cant at conventional levels. Respondents represented by a black memberof Congress and those who perceive greater descriptive representationin Congress as a whole have systematically more-positive feelings abouttheir representative. Substantively speaking, awareness of actual blackrepresentation (having a black member of Congress) is a more-powerfulpredictor of high evaluations of the incumbent member of Congressthan are respondents’ estimates of overall descriptive representationof blacks in Congress. The only variable that fails to achieve statisticalsignificance is the percentage of black voters in the district. This resultstrongly suggests that any effect of district demography on incumbentapproval is mediated by the election of a black representative.

To estimate the power of descriptive representation with regardto congressional approval, we replicated the models reported in Table 1,entering the three variables of interest singly, then all three at once,but we used a different dependent variable. The results, shown in Table 2,are quite different from those we obtained for our models estimatingevaluations of the individual representative. Only one of these variablessignificantly affects the approval-of-Congress variable. Specifically,only respondents’ perceptions of descriptive representation in Congressas a whole systematically shape African Americans’ evaluations ofCongress. In contrast, having a black representative or living in a districtpopulated by a high proportion of black voters does not matter.

Some of the control variables affect this dependent variabledifferently, however. For example, political knowledge and attentionpaid to the election campaign systematically reduce black voters’approval of Congress. And, in contrast to the representative-thermometer analyses, the party-match variable has no effect here. Thus,


TABLE 2Explanatory Model for Congressional Approval

Variable Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4

Aware Representative Is Black 0.143 –0.018 (0 = no, 1 = yes) (1.40) (0.13)District Composition 0.003 0.002 (percentage black in district) (1.70) (0.97)Perception % House Black 0.0135* 0.013* (0–100) (4.14) (4.04)Education –0.003 –0.003 0.006 0.008 (higher = more) (0.13) (0.10) (0.22) (0.29)Income –0.029 –0.027 –0.03 –0.030 (higher = more) (1.73) (1.60) (1.66) (1.63)Gender –0.175* –0.173* –0.189* –0.187* (0 = female, 1 = male) (2.02) (2.00) (2.05) (2.03)Age 0.0003 0.0003 0.0007 0.0007 (higher = older) (0.13) (0.13) (0.27) (0.26)Party Match –0.110 –0.136 –0.071 –0.118 (1 if R and MC same party) (1.22) (1.46) (0.81) (1.18)Care Who Wins Election 0.111 0.106 0.037 0.033 (higher = cares more) (0.88) (0.84) (0.27) (0.24)Political Knowledge –0.0275 –0.021 –0.013 –0.017 (higher = more knowledge) (.77) (.61) (.38) (.46)Media Consumption –0.052* –0.053* –0.045* –0.045 (higher = more media) (2.45) (2.49) (1.96) (1.95)Pay Attention to Campaign –0.150* –0.150* –0.153* –0.158* (higher = more) (2.33) (2.33) (2.24) (2.31)Pocketbook Economy 0.078 0.077 0.061 0.060 (higher = more positive) (1.49) (1.46) (1.08) (1.06)National Economy 0.073 0.076 0.110 0.111 (higher = more positive) (1.24) (1.30) (1.75) (1.77)Constant (1) –0.424 –0.357 –0.200 –0.31

(1.91) (1.60) (.84) (1.23)Constant (2) 0.186 0.254 0.407 0.262

(0.84) (1.15) (1.69) (1.05)Constant (3) 0.996* 1.066* 1.23* 1.09*

(4.43) (4.73) (5.00) (4.26)N 939 939 859 859Pseudo R2 .04 .04 .07 .07

Note: Entries are unstandardized estimates with t-statistics in parentheses. All models wereestimated using the svy commands in Stata, with clustering done on the congressional district.The dependent variable is approval of Congress (0, 1, 2). “Aware Representative Is Black”takes on a value of 1 only when a respondent is both represented by a black and aware that therepresentative is black. “Perception % House Black” is the respondent’s estimate for thepercentage of the seats in the U.S. House of Representatives occupied by African Americans.The models are ordered probits and therefore have multiple constants.Source: Data are from the National Black Election Study (Tate 1998) and from data collectedby the authors.*p < .05.


sharing the partisan background of the representative does little toenhance African Americans’ views of Congress as an institution.Finally, in Model 4, which includes all three variables, perception ofthe percentage of black representation in Congress as a whole remainsthe only variable that achieves statistical significance. Taken together,these results suggest that having a black representative does not havea major influence on African American citizens’ evaluation of Congress,and neither does the racial composition of the district.9

We also hypothesized that the power of actual descriptive repre-sentation may be contingent on people’s beliefs about descriptiverepresentation in Congress. To better understand how the variablesblack representative and perception percent House (members) blackrelate to one another and the representative-thermometer variable, wesplit the sample and reestimated the model from Table 1 in terms ofindividuals’ high and low estimates of descriptive representation. Thefirst group included those respondents who were below the average(13.59) on perception percent House black; the second group includedthose who answered above the average value on this question.

The estimations reveal that the coefficient for the black-repre-sentative variable among individuals who thought there were relativelyfewer blacks in Congress was 16.50; the coefficient in the group whothought there was more descriptive representation in Congress was13.1. We found no such differences for congressional approval. Theseresults indicate that perceptions of descriptive representation—in thiscase, estimates of the percentage of House members who are black—moderate the effect of being represented by a black legislator. In otherwords, people with a lower estimate of the number of African Ameri-cans in Congress put more weight on whether or not they have a blackrepresentative; having a black representative has a more-powerfulpositive effect on their feelings toward the representative.

In sum, the race of a representative matters for African Americancitizens’ evaluations of the representative, but not for their approvalof Congress as a whole. In fact, across the board, the variable withmore-consistent leverage appears to be the African American respon-dents’ perception of how many seats in Congress are held by blacklegislators. The fact that this variable matters is not that surprising—African Americans who believe, even mistakenly, that Congress iscomposed of significant numbers of African American members havemore-positive affect toward the institution and the people serving init. This perception is the only significant variable in the congressional-approval model, and it also influences how having a black member ofCongress affects constituent approval of that representative.


Conclusion

Proponents of enhanced black representation, as well as politicalscientists who focus on issues of descriptive representation, presumethat greater representation for African Americans begets positiveoutcomes, including increased legitimacy for the political system. Asa consequence, there has been substantial debate in the redistrictingliterature regarding how best to maximize the representation of AfricanAmerican interests. Some observers maintain that without descriptiverepresentation (that is, black members of Congress), a crucial elementis missing. Others regard packing congressional districts with AfricanAmerican voters, which ensures the election of a black representative,to be a suboptimal solution, insofar as these votes should be spreadaround more efficiently to elect candidates who, while they may notbe black, are sympathetic to the causes of African Americans.(Practically speaking, this logic entails electing white Democrats.)

In contrast to most of the previous research, which involves the“supply” side of the equation (how do different forms of representa-tion affect the representation of minority interests?), this articleexamines the “demand” side of the equation (to what extent are AfricanAmericans satisfied with their representative or with Congress whenthey live in an influence district?). Our findings suggest that all threesubstantive variables we examined positively affect African Americans’support for their representative. Descriptive representation, thepercentage of black voters in the congressional district, and theperception of how many blacks serve in Congress are all positivelyrelated to higher evaluations of a representative. For congressionalapproval, the district-specific factors matter less (black representativeand percent black in district), but the perception variable remains asignificant positive factor.

As discussed earlier in this paper, in 2003 the Supreme Court handeddown its decision in the case of Georgia v. Ashcroft. The Court ruled thatmapmakers need not preserve all existing majority-minority districts perse, but that they can take a broader, statewide perspective of minoritypolitical strength. This “totality of the circumstances” approach openedthe door to dismantling majority-minority districts in favor of creatingseveral influence or coalition districts. Neither Democrats norRepublicans were thrilled with this precedent, and members from bothparties teamed up to insert language into the Voting Rights Act when thelaw was renewed during the summer of 2006.10 New language inSection 5 may overturn the Georgia v. Ashcroft decision, but we donot yet know how the courts will interpret these changes in the law.


Understanding how minority voters feel about their representa-tion in these districts is clearly important. Our results suggest thatsplitting a majority-minority district into two (or more) influencedistricts could have significant negative effects on the voters inquestion, especially if the influence districts elect nonblack membersof Congress. It would seem that those actors addressing the issue of“unpacking” majority-minority districts must consider not only theobjective consequences (the potential to elect black representatives),but also the likely subjective consequences, namely, the alteredsubjective perceptions of African Americans and thus their alteredattitudes toward government.

We have demonstrated how, regardless of the actual levels ofdescriptive representation, subjective perceptions of descriptive rep-resentation influence African Americans’ attitudes toward Congress:voters’ perceptions of the prevalence of black representatives can leadto higher levels of approval for Congress as an institution. Perhaps asimportant for the purposes of this research, we found that the electionof a black representative has no direct effect on voters’ approval ofCongress.

The research reported here advances our understanding of thepower of descriptive representation by demonstrating the mechanismby which it shapes minority voters’ attitudes toward Congress and itsmembers. In particular, our article breaks new ground by measuringdescriptive representation not simply by whether or not citizens arerepresented by African American members of Congress, but by whethercitizens are aware of that representation.

Additionally, we contribute to the understanding of the determi-nants of political attitudes among minorities in America by systemati-cally combining details on political context with individual-levelinformation to construct an explanation of African Americanevaluations of government. In this vein, we argue that we can betterunderstand what and how African Americans think about politicalinstitutions if we combine information about individuals with infor-mation about the nature of the representation they encounter.

Thus, we are able to demonstrate the way in which objective andsubjective forms of descriptive representation combine to shapeminority voters’ views of political institutions and actors. Our analysissuggests a complex relationship between descriptive representationand attitudes toward government among African Americans. Inparticular, we show that such a relationship relies at least as much, ifnot more, upon subjective, as opposed to objective, perceptions ofpolitical representation.


Of course, our analysis also suggests that, in terms of positiveevaluations of Congress, misconceptions regarding descriptive repre-sentation at the national level play a key role. African Americans whofalsely believe there are more African Americans serving in the Houseare likely to have more-positive evaluations of Congress. Clearly, whilethe outcome—greater legitimacy for Congress as an institution—mightbe desirable from a normative democratic perspective, the means bywhich it is attained is questionable.

This research clearly invites greater consideration of the signifi-cance of district demography both in the context of descriptive repre-sentation more broadly and in terms of its influence upon the politicalattitudes and beliefs of African Americans in the United States morespecifically.

Thomas L. Brunell <[email protected]> is Associate Professorin the School of Economic, Political, and Policy Sciences, University ofTexas at Dallas, Richardson, TX 75080. Christopher J. Anderson<[email protected]> is Professor of Government,Cornell University, 308 White Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853-7901. Rachel K.Cremona <[email protected]> is Assistant Professor ofPolitical Science, Flagler College, P.O. Box 1027, St. Augustine, FL32085-1027.

NOTES

A previous version of this article was presented at the 2004 annual meeting ofthe Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago. The survey data are available asICPSR Study #2029.

1. In this context, it is worth noting that the notion of black empowerment isbroader than the issue of African Americans experiencing descriptive representation.Specifically, the term black empowerment connotes the broader context of black repre-sentation and is defined with an eye toward the long-term trajectory of black power inthe United States. As such, it is necessarily more expansive conceptually than the notionof descriptive representation.

2. Frequently, redistricting has created districts whose shapes are incongruentwith existing residential boundaries (towns, counties, and so on), making it much moredifficult for voters to know exactly who is and who is not “the district.”

3. Some studies have sought to ascertain how much power, for example, mayorswithin black-empowerment areas have exerted over various policy instruments (cf.Gilliam 1996).

4. We leave open to discussion the precise mechanism by which district demog-raphy affects feelings of empowerment, but we speculate that the racial composition ofcongressional districts affects citizens’ attitudes both through the social context (thecomposition of neighborhoods located in the district, for example) and the politicalcontext (a feeling of identification with the district within its current boundaries).


5. Not surprisingly, scoring high on the political knowledge scale is positivelycorrelated with knowing the race of one’s member of Congress. If fact, out of the twohighest groups on the knowledge scale (out of five), more than 95% of the respondentscorrectly identified the race of their elected representative.

6. Our dataset includes respondents from 252 congressional districts, 79 witha single respondent and the remaining districts with at least 3 respondents apiece. Tendistricts have 18 or more respondents, and the largest number of respondents in asingle district is 25. Thirty-eight percent of respondents resided in a district repre-sented by an African American (464 respondents).

7. We used the svy commands in Stata 9.0 for our estimates. Using other similarmodels to control for the hierarchical nature of the data, such as gllamm or xtmixed inStata, produced no substantive differences.

8. In the other two models, this variable is just below the .05 level of significance. 9. It is important to note that the coefficients are not that far from traditional

levels of statistical significance when entered singly in Models 1 and 2.10. From the Senate committee report: “The bill’s proposed language codifies

this understanding. It eliminates any risk that the scenarios feared by Georgia v.Ashcroft’s critics will unfold. By focusing solely on the protection of naturally occurringlegislative districts with a majority of minority voters, the reauthorization bill ensuresthat minority voters will not be forced to trade away solidly majority-minority districtsfor ambiguous concepts like ‘influence’ or ‘coalitional.’ Rather, as the House CommitteeReport makes clear, the bill ‘rejects’ the Supreme Court’s interpretation of Section 5 inGeorgia v. Ashcroft, and establishes that the purpose of Section 5’s protection of minorityvoters is, in the words of the bill, to ‘protect the ability of such citizens to elect theirpreferred candidates of choice.’”

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Descriptive Representation, District Demography, and ...tbrunell/papers/Brunell_Anderson... · regarding the makeup of congressional districts. We found that living in a district