Working Papers Electoral Competition and Democratic Responsiveness: A Defense of the Marginality Hypothesis ( The Journal of Politics) John D. Griffin Abstract Does vigorous electoral competition help to convert citizens' preferences into government action? No, concludes a series of theoretical and empirical studies conducted over the last 35 years. If these findings are correct, efforts to enhance competition such as depoliticizing the redistricting process and achieving greater equity in campaign spending, while perhaps beneficial in other respects, will not improve government responsiveness. However, these studies are limited by a shortage of data, by biased measures of district competitiveness, and by their conceptualization of responsiveness. Using both cross-sectional and fixed-effects modeling frameworks, this study finds that in recent years elected officials who represent more competitive districts are indeed more responsive to their constituents' preferences. Senate Apportionment as a Source of Political Inequality (Legislative Studies Quarterly) John D. Griffin Abstract Political scientists have long known that the equal representation of states in the U.S. Senate and where state lines are placed might disadvantage politically relevant groups, granting some citizens greater voting weight in the chamber. However, we lack systematic, longitudinal evidence that identifies the groups disadvantaged by Senate malapportionment, points to the sources of this disadvantage, and probes the policy consequences. I compare each state's liberalism and racial composition with its voting weight in the Senate over time. Additionally, I conduct a first analysis of whether roll call coalitions in the Senate map onto these patterns of state ideological/racial composition. Descriptive Representation and the Composition of African American Turnout (American Journal of Political Science) John D. Griffin and Michael Keane Abstract Though many studies have focused on African Americans' turnout levels in descriptively-represented electoral districts, few have examined the composition of African American turnout in these districts, compared to districts that are not descriptively represented. We argue that descriptive representation should conditionally affect African Americans’ political participation, given preference heterogeneity among this group. We then examine the extent to which the ideological orientations of African Americans condition the effect of their Representative’s race in the 104th House on their probability of participating in the 1996 national election. We find that when they are descriptively represented, liberal African Americans are more likely to vote, but moderate and conservative African Americans are less likely to turn out. These findings not only help to resolve prior studies’ disparate conclusions concerning disparate representation’s participatory effects, they show that descriptive representation affects which African Americans’ interests are communicated to elected officials through voting. Race, Political Inequality, and Pluralism: Representation in Black and White John D. Griffin and Brian Newman (Pepperdine) Abstract How does African Americans' political influence measure up to that of whites? We discuss three standards of political equality – egalitarianism, proportionality, and pluralism – and examine the degree to which each of these standards is satisfied in the U.S. Senate by analyzing how the preferences of whites and African Americans relate to the actions of their Senators. We find that across a wide array of policy domains, African Americans have less influence than whites, violating an egalitarian standard of political equality. Moreover, African Americans' influence does not improve in states with larger African American populations, contrary to a proportional standard of equality. However, consistent with a pluralist standard of equality, on issues more salient for African Americans, this group exerts equal and perhaps even somewhat more influence compared to whites. Racial Differences in Information, Expectations, and Accountability (The Journal of Politics) John D. Griffin and Patrick Flavin Abstract Citizens contribute to the process of democratic accountability by acquiring information about their elected officials’ behavior, comparing this information to their expectations regarding substantive representation, and voting in elections based on the result of this comparison. However, citizens possess varying levels of information about, and different expectations of, Representatives’ voting behavior, which raises the possibility that some citizens are more likely to hold their Representatives accountable than others. We find that there are substantial racial disparities in democratic accountability, and that these disparities originate from African Americans’ relative difficulty acquiring information about their Representatives’ voting behavior, as well as from this group's unique expectations of their Representatives. However, consistent with pluralist models of democracy, we show that on issues most important to African Americans, this group is actually more successful than whites at holding Representatives accountable. Policy, Preferences, and Participation: Government Responsiveness and Democratic Citizenship(Forthcoming, Journal of Politics) John D. Griffin and Patrick Flavin Abstract Do government policy decisions impact citizens’ involvement in politics? Using panel data, we assess the extent to which variation in levels of political participation among citizens between 2000 and 2004 is linked to the nexus of citizens’ preferences and government policy. We show that two policy decisions – military intervention in Iraq and the Bush tax cuts – did affect citizens’ subsequent political participation, mobilizing the biggest policy winners and galvanizing the greatest policy losers to increase their political activity. However, the mechanism that explains increased participation differs between winners and losers. We also uncover evidence that policy realization, or citizens’ retrospective perceptions of how well a policy played out, and political knowledge both moderate the effect of policy winning and losing on political participation.