scholarly journals Diffusion in Congress: Measuring the Social Dynamics of Legislative Behavior

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 511-527 ◽  
Author(s):  
René Lindstädt ◽  
Ryan J. Vander Wielen ◽  
Matthew Green
Keyword(s):  
Dynamic Process ◽  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Peer Pressure ◽  
Legislative Behavior ◽  
Recent Innovation ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Us ◽  
Rational Evaluation

While there is a substantial literature highlighting the presence of social dynamics in legislatures, we know very little about the precise processes that generate these social dynamics. Yet, whether social dynamics are due to peer pressure, frequency of interaction, or genuine learning, for example, has important implications for questions of political representation and accountability. We demonstrate how a recent innovation can be used to study the diffusion of behavior within legislatures. In particular, we study diffusion within the US House of Representatives by looking at the dynamic process underlying discharge petitions. The discharge procedure shares many characteristics with other forms of legislative behavior, yet it has one important advantage when it comes to studying social dynamics: we can observe when members decide to sign petitions. Based on data from 1995 to 2014, we find that the social dynamics underlying the discharge procedure tend to involve the rational evaluation of information conveyed by the behavior of previous petition signatories.

It Takes a State: A Policy Feedback Model of Women's Political Representation

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eileen McDonagh
Keyword(s):  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Feedback ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Representation Of Women ◽  
Feedback Model ◽  
The Us ◽  
Political Office ◽  
The Public Sphere

American women attain more professional success in medicine, business, and higher education than do most of their counterparts around the world. An enduring puzzle is, therefore, why the US lags so far behind other countries when it comes to women's political representation. In 2008, women held only 16.8 percent of seats in the House of Representatives, a proportion that ranks America lower than 83 other countries. This article addresses this conundrum. It establishes that equal rights alone are insufficient to ensure equal access to political office. Also necessary are public policies representing maternal traits that voters associate with women. Such policies have feedback effects that teach voters that the maternal traits attributed to women represent strengths not only in the private sphere of the home but also in the public sphere of the state. Most other democracies now have such policies in place, but the United States lacks such policies, which accounts for its laggard status with regard to the political representation of women.

Representation

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry M. Bartels ◽  
Joshua D. Clinton ◽  
John G. Geer
Keyword(s):  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Far Right ◽  
The Past ◽  
Multi Stage ◽  
The Us ◽  
Jim Crow Era ◽  
History Of

We examine the history of political representation in the United States using a multi-stage statistical analysis of the changing relationship between roll call votes in the US House of Representatives and the preferences of citizens (as measured by presidential votes). We show that members of Congress have become considerably more responsive to constituents’ preferences over the past 40 years, reversing a half-century drought in responsiveness stemming from the South’s one-party Jim Crow era. However, the House as a whole has become less representative, veering too far left when Democrats are in the majority and too far right when Republicans are.

Sweating the Vote: Heat and Abstention in the US House of Representatives

2012 ◽  
Vol 45 (01) ◽  
pp. 74-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Cohen
Keyword(s):  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
Legislative Behavior ◽  
Voting Turnout ◽  
Mass Public ◽  
Summer Heat ◽  
The Us ◽  
Elite Level ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractSeveral recent studies noted systematic links between weather conditions and voting turnout amid the mass public. This article extends this logic to the elite level by exploring the relationship between summer heat and abstentions in the US House of Representatives. In controlled multivariate regressions, heat is a significant predictor of abstentions across all votes held between 1991 and 2000. This finding provides new insight into legislative behavior as well as the motivation behind some abstentions, which could inform the understanding of the literature on legislative shirking.

scholarly journals Pandemic Injustice: Spatial and Social Distributions of the first wave of COVID-19 in the US Epicenter

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timon McPhearson ◽  
Zbigniew J. Grabowski ◽  
Pablo Herreros-Cantis ◽  
Ahmed Mustafa ◽  
Luis Ortiz ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Social Vulnerability ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Negative Relationship ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Differential Vulnerability ◽  
The Social ◽  
Vulnerability Indicators ◽  
The Us

<p>We examine the uneven social and spatial distributions of COVID-19 and their relationships with indicators of social vulnerability in the U.S. epicenter, New York City (NYC). As of July 17th, 2020, NYC, despite having only 2.5% of the US population, has ~6% of all confirmed cases, and ~16% of all deaths, making it a key learning ground for the social dynamics of the disease. Our analysis focuses on the multiple potential social, economic, and demographic drivers of disproportionate impacts in COVID-19 cases and deaths, as well as population rates of testing. Findings show that immediate impacts of COVID-19 largely fall along lines of race and class. Indicators of poverty, race, disability, language isolation, rent burden, unemployment, lack of health insurance, and housing crowding all significantly drive spatial patterns in prevalence of COVID-19 testing, confirmed cases, death rates, and severity. Income in particular has a consistent negative relationship with rates of death and disease severity. The largest differences in social vulnerability indicators are also driven by populations of people of color, poverty, housing crowding, and rates of disability. Results highlight the need for targeted responses to address injustice of COVID-19 cases and deaths, importance of recovery strategies that account for differential vulnerability, and provide an analytical approach for advancing research to examine potential similar injustice of COVID-19 in other U.S. cities.</p>

scholarly journals The Effect of the Electoral System on Political Representation in Iraq Post 2003

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 149
Author(s):  
Mohammed Abed Hammadi ◽  
Magda Ali Saleh
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
The Political ◽  
Legislative Elections ◽  
The Social ◽  
Invasion Of Iraq

The study discusses the influence of the electoral system on the political representation of the social compositions of the Iraqi people, and the nature of their political participation in the ongoing political process in Iraq, by means of structuring entities and parties on basis of subsidiary identities, aside from the national identity. The study is divided into two research objectives. The first research objective is examining the nature of the political representation of the social compositions after the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, through exploring the religious and nationalistic diversities of the social compositions of the Iraqi society, in addition to discussing the political blocs and parties in the Iraqi system post 2003. The study realizes that these parties and political blocs depend on the sectarian and doctrinal dimension as well as the nationalistic ideology shedding its shadow on the entire political process. In turn, the political process employs quota systems as an approach towards its formation, which also brings about weak leadership and personnel loaded with personal gain against loyalty and citizenship. The second research objective is discussing the development of the electoral system and its effect on the representation of social compositions within the political process, through tracing three legislative elections taking place after 2003. The study reached several points of results, the most important of which is the influence of the electoral system on the political process and its effect on the nature of political representation of social compositions, since this system produces a majority out of a single composition at the expense of other social compositions in the Iraqi society. As a result, it gave rise to a house of representatives unable to fulfill its legislative and inspective functions, and that operates as a field for settling preset agendas and expressing authoritative judgments.

scholarly journals The society as a mimetic field: the dynamics of the social

2021 ◽  
pp. 87-96
Author(s):  
Aleksey I. Pavlovskij ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Dynamic Process ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Mutual Understanding ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Further Development

The article discusses the feasibility and vistas of re-defining the concept «society» in an effort to make it fit for studying the current situation. The constant mobility of actors and the new virtual reality transcend the boundaries between social groups, which calls methodological capacity of any static and especially essentialistic understanding of the phenomenon called «society» into question. The author starts from defining society through communication acts, but at the same time distinguishes between them by the level of mutual understanding attained through communication, which makes it possible to scrutinize the internal structure of the term in question. Understanding of communication acts as a medium of memetic influence that shapes a person’s agency and ensures synchronicity between persons, adequate for a certain level of mutual understanding, enables the author to view society as a dynamic process, as a memetic field amid constantly changing and diverse challenges. The landscape contour of the challenges adds constant disturbing differentiations that guarantee continual social changes. By contrasting practical and discursive minds, the author discriminates non-reflexive mimetic processes of practical knowledge transfer from their reflexive comprehension. Thus, the author distinguishes two levels in social processes, incompatibility between which adds complexity to social dynamics. Using this understanding of the social, the author shows how in certain conditions a person may identify with a certain social group. In conclusion, the paper formulates three main practical questions the answers to which will let us assess the possibilities for further development of society.

scholarly journals Pandemic Injustice: Spatial and Social Distributions of the first wave of COVID-19 in the US Epicenter

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timon McPhearson ◽  
Zbigniew R. Grabowski ◽  
Pablo Herreros-Cantis ◽  
Ahmed Mustafa ◽  
Luis Ortiz ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Social Vulnerability ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Negative Relationship ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Differential Vulnerability ◽  
The Social ◽  
Vulnerability Indicators ◽  
The Us

<p>We examine the uneven social and spatial distributions of COVID-19 and their relationships with indicators of social vulnerability in the U.S. epicenter, New York City (NYC). As of July 17th, 2020, NYC, despite having only 2.5% of the US population, has ~6% of all confirmed cases, and ~16% of all deaths, making it a key learning ground for the social dynamics of the disease. Our analysis focuses on the multiple potential social, economic, and demographic drivers of disproportionate impacts in COVID-19 cases and deaths, as well as population rates of testing. Findings show that immediate impacts of COVID-19 largely fall along lines of race and class. Indicators of poverty, race, disability, language isolation, rent burden, unemployment, lack of health insurance, and housing crowding all significantly drive spatial patterns in prevalence of COVID-19 testing, confirmed cases, death rates, and severity. Income in particular has a consistent negative relationship with rates of death and disease severity. The largest differences in social vulnerability indicators are also driven by populations of people of color, poverty, housing crowding, and rates of disability. Results highlight the need for targeted responses to address injustice of COVID-19 cases and deaths, importance of recovery strategies that account for differential vulnerability, and provide an analytical approach for advancing research to examine potential similar injustice of COVID-19 in other U.S. cities.</p>

Advocating for the profession: Your role in supporting HR 1906, the Access to Inpatient Rehabilitation Therapy Act of 2015

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 9
Author(s):  
Richard Williams, EdD, LRT, CTRS, FDRT ◽  
Thomas Skalko, PhD, LRT/CTRS/FDRT
Keyword(s):  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Inpatient Rehabilitation ◽  
Recreational Therapy ◽  
Treatment Team ◽  
Rehabilitation Therapy ◽  
Rehabilitation Hospital ◽  
Therapy Program ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Us ◽  
Social Security Act

Public policy advocacy is critical to the profession of Recreational Therapy. Currently, HR 1906, the Access to Inpatient Rehabilitation Therapy Act of 2015 has been introduced to the US House of Representatives. Essentially, if enacted into law, the bill will amend the Social Security Act to include Recreational Therapy among the therapy modalities that constitute an intensive rehabilitation therapy program in an inpatient rehabilitation hospital or unit. The designation of RT among the therapy modalities allows the rehabilitation treatment team to access RT services for use in the 3-hour rule.

scholarly journals Pandemic Injustice: Spatial and Social Distributions of the first wave of COVID-19 in the US Epicenter

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timon McPhearson ◽  
Zbigniew J. Grabowski ◽  
Pablo Herreros-Cantis ◽  
Ahmed Mustafa ◽  
Luis Ortiz ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Social Vulnerability ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Negative Relationship ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Differential Vulnerability ◽  
The Social ◽  
Vulnerability Indicators ◽  
The Us

<p>We examine the uneven social and spatial distributions of COVID-19 and their relationships with indicators of social vulnerability in the U.S. epicenter, New York City (NYC). As of July 17th, 2020, NYC, despite having only 2.5% of the US population, has ~6% of all confirmed cases, and ~16% of all deaths, making it a key learning ground for the social dynamics of the disease. Our analysis focuses on the multiple potential social, economic, and demographic drivers of disproportionate impacts in COVID-19 cases and deaths, as well as population rates of testing. Findings show that immediate impacts of COVID-19 largely fall along lines of race and class. Indicators of poverty, race, disability, language isolation, rent burden, unemployment, lack of health insurance, and housing crowding all significantly drive spatial patterns in prevalence of COVID-19 testing, confirmed cases, death rates, and severity. Income in particular has a consistent negative relationship with rates of death and disease severity. The largest differences in social vulnerability indicators are also driven by populations of people of color, poverty, housing crowding, and rates of disability. Results highlight the need for targeted responses to address injustice of COVID-19 cases and deaths, importance of recovery strategies that account for differential vulnerability, and provide an analytical approach for advancing research to examine potential similar injustice of COVID-19 in other U.S. cities.</p>

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