Government & Politics Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2775
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Item FOUR ESSAYS ON HOW PRESIDENTIAL POLICY REPRESENTATION ON THE ISSUE OF IMMIGRATION AFFECTS LATINO POLITICAL BEHAVIOR(2018) Rodriguez, Antonoi; Rouse, Stella M.; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)I bridge the presidency literature and priming literature to develop a new model for understanding how the executive office can prime the public's attitudes. The Executing Priming Theory (EPT) hypothesizes that the president can subtly alter the public's views toward him by responding to the public’s policy demands through the use of his executive powers. These actions will often draw news coverage from the media, taking the president's policy actions directly to the public and raising the salience of these issues. In turn, this affects the criteria that will be used to evaluate the president's performance and influence political behavior. In four essays, based on data from the Pew Research Center, I find an association between Latino approval of President Obama’s policies on immigration and their political behavior. These findings present a new way of thinking about the president's policy responsiveness. Previous presidents have been found to respond to policy demands with symbolic actions (Cohen 1997) rather than substantive policies or motivated primarily by partisan factors (Wood 2009). I demonstrate here that President Obama utilized unilateral actions to provide Latinos with substantive policy representation to improve his standing within this community. Overall, I find that substantive presidential policy representation influences not only Latino but also non-Latino political behavior. The findings presented in these four essays demonstrate that substantive policy representation by the president matters.Item OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND: HOW LATINO SEGREGATION AFFECTS POLITICAL PARTICIPATION AND POLICY OUTCOMES(2009) Pearson-Merkowitz, Shanna Helena; Kaufmann, Karen M.; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation evaluates the intersection of place and politics as it pertains to the effect of residential segregation on the civic engagement and political power of Latino Americans. Famously described by W.E.B. Du Bois as the problem of the 20th century, racial segregation persists in the United States, and while residential segregation has declined marginally for African Americans over the past 15 years, it has increased significantly for Latinos during this same period. Using a variety of data sets and methodological approaches, I investigate the socio-political consequences of this growing residential divide. I argue that segregation not only precludes socioeconomic mobility for Latinos, it also decreases their likelihood of civic engagement and political participation. Latinos who live in residential isolation are more likely to be economically marginalized and less politically powerful than their less segregated counterparts. Further, the marginalization of the Latino community has political consequences. Segregation concentrates Latinos into political jurisdictions where they must compete for resources with more politically powerful groups. As a result, their neighborhoods and needs are ignored by politicians and bureaucrats. To correct their under-representation in the political arena, participation among Latinos is essential. The findings of this dissertation call into question the stability of democracy if Latinos do not start participating at a higher rate, with the fate of the nation resting in part on the political and social mobility of its largest and fastest growing minority group.