When I was in college, I signed up for an internship to work in the office of the Mayor of Binghamton, New York. My job was to answer mail from the constituency who complained about potholes in the streets or the drunks who poured out of local bars and puked on their front lawns. The mayor took these letters very seriously, so I put a lot of time into writing sensible and caring responses.
It was a fascinating experience. I learned that politicians must be concerned with keeping their constituency happy, and since then I've never hesitated to write an e-mail to my representative when I disagree with his voting record. These sorts of hands-on experiences are an excellent way to gain insight into politics that can't be gained from a textbook. I hope that you take advantage of such opportunities at your school.
As part of the internship, I had to discuss certain assigned readings with a professor and complete a research paper. My paper was on the governing style of women, since the mayor was a woman. At that time, there were very few women in government, so the paper consisted of mostly case studies and theoretical work. Twenty years later, I'm still pleased that I received an A for that paper.
Since then, more women have leadership positions in government. We have Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, Hilary Clinton, Secretary of State, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotormayor on the Supreme Court. There are 17 women in the Senate and and 75 women in the House of Representatives.
While women still do not comprise 50 percent of Congress, their numbers have increased substantially enabling researchers to gain further insight into their governing style. Recent research finds that women congressional leaders are more likely to sponsor pork-barrel legislation than male congressional leaders. The authors conclude:
We find that congresswomen secure roughly 9 percent more spending from federal discretionary programs than congressmen. This amounts to a premium of about $49 million per year for districts that send a woman to Capitol Hill. Finally, we find that women’s superiority in securing particularistic benefits does not hurt their performance in policymaking: women also sponsor more bills and obtain more cosponsorship support for their legislative initiatives than their male colleagues.
Pork-barrel legislation are laws that contain a benefit that goes directly to one location. It might mean funding to build a bridge in a community or to support a local army base. The people in the community like it, because it provides jobs for locals. Congressional leaders like to pass these bills, because they can go back home and tell the people who vote for them, their constituency, that they took care of them. Their tax money is going to benefit them and not somebody thousands of miles away.
So, why are women more likely to sponsor pork-barrel legislation? Other research may provide the answer.
One of the authors that I read for that internship so many years ago was David Mayhew. Mayhew argues that all congressmen engage in three activities: credit-claiming, advertising, and position-taking. (My undergraduate mnemonic device for memorizing those activities was CAP.) These activities are necessary to get reelected.
Some speculate that women have to work harder than men to get re-elected and therefore have to spend more time taking credit for sponsoring legislation with their constituency. They can tell their constituency that they were responsible for that bridge, which they use every day and was built by contractors in the community. Men have to take credit for legislation also, but they just don't have to do it as much as women do.
Is this a positive development? Many people believe that pork-barrel legislation is not the best use of government money. On the other hand, people reward congressional leaders that sponsor this legislation by re-electing them. People like pork-barrel legislation when it means benefits for themselves; they just don't like it when other people get it.
Do you believe that women have a different leadership style than men? Is it important to increase the number of women in Congress? Will women change their governing style if they don't have to work so hard to be re-elected and if there is a larger group of women in Congress?
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