Abstract
How are intersectional identities represented in politics? Using an original survey of 204 advocacy groups in 14 US states, this research considers how state legislative and lobbying conditions shape interest groups’ inclusion of intersectional issues on their policy agendas. Several aspects of state legislative environments, including the proportion of women in the state legislature and levels of legislative professionalism, affect the diversity of groups’ policy agendas, whereas aggregate measures of lobbying context have surprisingly little effect. A case study of Colorado’s 2011–2012 legislative agenda supplements these findings by considering the extent to which advocacy groups were able to promote intersectional policies within state government. This descriptive analysis shows that intersectionality was represented within Colorado’s legislative agenda but that many intersectional bills died over the course of the policymaking process. Though advocacy groups seem to play a key agenda-setting role within state legislative spaces, their work may not immediately produce laws that employ an intersectional framework in their purpose and implementation.
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Notes
- 1.
Within this project, social justice organizations are defined as those focused on bringing about a more equitable distribution of resources and opportunities for individuals typically marginalized or disadvantaged by and within mainstream institutional practices and structures.
- 2.
Though this framework and many of the examples cited in this section focus on the US context, research on intra- and international organizations in a variety of non-US countries demonstrates connections between political context and organizational behaviour. In addition to those cited here, some of this research is summarized in Marchetti’s (2015) review of the use of surveys in interest group research and has been published in Interest Groups & Advocacy, Comparative Political Studies, and the Journal of European Public Policy (among others).
- 3.
The 14 states are Colorado, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, North Dakota, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Washington, and Wisconsin.
- 4.
Coding of private and advocacy groups based on Gray et al. (2013).
- 5.
The models were estimated using multi-level Poisson and multi-level ordinary least squares regressions, respectively. The multi-level approach accounts for the clusters of organizations at the state level with the organization specified as level 1, the state specified as level 2. The Poisson model is appropriate for a dependent variable that is a count, while the ordinary least squares regression is used for the continuous proportional measure. Coefficients for model 1 are expressed as incidence rate ratios (IRR) for ease of interpretation and can be understood in the following way: an IRR above 1.0 represents a positive change in the dependent variable, while an IRR below 1.0 represents a negative change in the dependent variable.
- 6.
The measure of meeting with legislators ranges from zero to four, with zero indicating that the group never meets with legislators and four indicating that the organization meets with legislators on a weekly to daily basis.
- 7.
Bill movement was measured on a five-point numerical scale: 0 = a bill had not been introduced, 1 = a bill was introduced but died in committee in the legislative body in which it was proposed, 2 = a bill was passed by one legislative body (either the House or Senate) but died after moving to the second legislative body, 3 = a bill was passed by both legislative bodies (the House and Senate) but was not signed into law or vetoed by the governor, and 4 = a bill was passed by both the House and Senate and was signed into law by the governor.
- 8.
Adam, Karla. “Worldwide, people rally in support of Women’s March on Washington.” Washington Post 21January 2017.
- 9.
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Marchetti, K. (2019). Intersectional Advocacy and Policymaking Across US States. In: Hankivsky, O., Jordan-Zachery, J.S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Intersectionality in Public Policy. The Politics of Intersectionality. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98473-5_20
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