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Black Politicians Are More Intrinsically Motivated to Advance Blacks’ Interests: A Field Experiment Manipulating Political Incentives

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  • David E. Broockman

Abstract

Why are politicians more likely to advance the interests of those of their race? I present a field experiment demonstrating that black politicians are more intrinsically motivated to advance blacks’ interests than are their counterparts. Guided by elite interviews, I emailed 6,928 U.S. state legislators from a putatively black alias asking for help signing up for state unemployment benefits. Crucially, I varied the legislators’ political incentive to respond by randomizing whether the sender purported to live within or far from each legislator's district. While nonblack legislators were markedly less likely to respond when their political incentives to do so were diminished, black legislators typically continued to respond even when doing so promised little political reward. Black legislators thus appear substantially more intrinsically motivated to advance blacks’ interests. As political decision making is often difficult for voters to observe, intrinsically motivated descriptive representatives play a crucial role in advancing minorities’ political interests.

Suggested Citation

  • David E. Broockman, 2013. "Black Politicians Are More Intrinsically Motivated to Advance Blacks’ Interests: A Field Experiment Manipulating Political Incentives," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 57(3), pages 521-536, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:wly:amposc:v:57:y:2013:i:3:p:521-536
    DOI: 10.1111/ajps.12018
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    Cited by:

    1. Mansbridge, Jane, 2017. "Recursive Representation in the Representative System," Working Paper Series rwp17-045, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    2. Quentin Lippmann, 2022. "Gender and lawmaking in times of quotas," Post-Print hal-04120482, HAL.
    3. Gaddis, S. Michael, 2018. "An Introduction to Audit Studies in the Social Sciences," SocArXiv e5hfc, Center for Open Science.
    4. Bose, Paul, 2021. "Political (self-)selection and competition: Evidence from U.S. Congressional elections," VfS Annual Conference 2021 (Virtual Conference): Climate Economics 242377, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    5. Mikula, Stepan & Montag, Josef, 2023. "Roma and Bureaucrats: A Field Experiment on Ethnic and Socioeconomic Discrimination," IZA Discussion Papers 16218, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Lippmann, Quentin, 2022. "Gender and lawmaking in times of quotas," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 207(C).
    7. Nikolas Schöll & Aina Gallego & Gaël Le Mens, 2021. "Politician-Citizen Interactions and Dynamic Representation: Evidence from Twitter," Working Papers 1238, Barcelona School of Economics.
    8. Gulzar, Saad & Khan, Muhammad Yasir, 2021. ""Good Politicians'': Experimental Evidence on Motivations for Political Candidacy and Government Performance," SocArXiv z9d3f, Center for Open Science.
    9. Claudia Landwehr & Armin Schäfer, 2024. "Who wants descriptive representation, and why?," Working Papers 2407, Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
    10. Corrado Giulietti & Mirco Tonin & Michael Vlassopoulos, 2015. "Racial Discrimination in Local Public Services: A Field Experiment in the US," CESifo Working Paper Series 5537, CESifo.
    11. Makarin, Alexey & Piqué, Ricardo & Aragón, Fernando, 2020. "National or sub-national parties: Does party geographic scope matter?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    12. Michael Rochlitz & Evgeniya Mitrokhina & Irina Nizovkina, 2020. "Bureaucratic Discrimination in Electoral Authoritarian Regimes: Experimental Evidence from Russia," Bremen Papers on Economics & Innovation 2010, University of Bremen, Faculty of Business Studies and Economics.
    13. Aina Gallego & Nikolas Schöll & Gaël Le Mens, 2021. "Politician-citizen interactions and dynamic representation: Evidence from Twitter," Economics Working Papers 1769, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    14. Köhler, Ekkehard & Matsusaka, John G. & Wu, Yanhui, 2023. "Street-level responsiveness of city governments in China, Germany, and the United States," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 640-652.
    15. Pfaff, Steven & Crabtree, Charles & Kern, Holger L. & Holbein, John B., 2018. "Does religious bias shape access to public services? A large-scale audit experiment among street-level bureaucrats," SocArXiv 9khds, Center for Open Science.
    16. Štěpán Mikula & Josef Montag, 2022. "Roma and Bureaucrats: A Field Experiment in the Czech Republic," MUNI ECON Working Papers 2022-01, Masaryk University, revised Feb 2023.

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