Bill Sponsorship and Intraracial Voting among African American Representatives

Understanding the political implication of increasing minority, descriptive representation through race-conscious redistricting has been of major interest to congressional researchers in recent years. This research departs from past studies by examining intraracial roll-call voting behavior among African American representatives. Utilizing bill sponsorship data over an 8-year period (1991-1998) and event count regression, this investigation reveals that a variety of forces are at work to explain Black legislative behavior. Among them, the party controlling Congress, electoral margin of victory, and tenure in office account for variations in Caucus behavior. The political implications of these findings are discussed in the context of representative democracy.