Until our voices are heard: Black representatives and congressional oversight of federal civil rights and social welfare policy.

Each year federal bureaucracies are given broad authority by Congress to implement public policies that include welfare reform and civil rights enforcement. Despite the importance of bureaucratic decisions on issues that affect minorities, most race and representation scholars have neglected to include this policy-making activity in their analysis of substantive representation. Instead, most have focused on roll call voting as the primary measure of representation. As a result of racial group consciousness, I argue that relative to white legislators, black legislators are more likely to intervene in agency actions relating to civil rights enforcement and social welfare policies. This project consists of a detailed content analysis of congressional oversight hearings on racial and broader social welfare issues from the 107 th Congress (2001-2002). Intensity is assessed by examining the amount of time and energy that legislators spend attending and engaging in the deliberations at the oversight hearings in order to ensure that federal bureaucracies are pursuing policies that their minority constituents favor. In addition to the quantitative review, I conducted a qualitative analysis of the deliberations in order to assess the substance of the interactions between legislators and the federal agency. The results from the analysis of explicitly racial issues show that black legislators were more likely than white legislators to intervene in favor of stronger enforcement of civil rights policies. Similarly, Latino legislators were more likely than white legislators to intervene in favor of stronger enforcement of civil rights policies. However, the effect of the legislators' race was not significant in determining their likelihood to intervene for stronger implementation of broader social welfare policies. The study expands the conceptualization of substantive representation from an exclusive focus on legislators' roll call voting behavior to one that includes their actions in congressional oversight activity. Finally, the research provides insight to policy-makers and scholars by assessing whether racial redistricting measures, designed to get more minorities elected to Congress, translate into enhanced substantive representation of minority interests.PhDPolitical scienceSocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/125450/2/3192729.pd