“Like The People”: Three Essays on Race, Gender, and Political Participation

This dissertation presents three essays, all written with the goal of better understanding mass political behavior in American politics, with a specific focus on experimental approaches and the role of race and gender in political outcomes. The first essay presents the results of a field experiment testing the marginal effects of direct mail on individual vote choice. I fail to find effects of these mailers on vote choice or turnout. The second essay presents the results of the first field experiment to measure the effects of candidate training sessions on political ambition. I find that pre-existing attitudes largely drive the decision to participate in a candidate training session, and that participants started with significantly higher levels of political ambition. The third essay presents a new analysis of a unique dataset of voter registration during and after the Voting Rights Act. I find some evidence of the power threat hypothesis, and a complex interaction between black political agency, white backlash, and institutional barriers.

Author

• Cubbison, William Charles

Language

• en

Keyword

• behavior
• representation
• experiments
• candidates

Date created

• 2018

Type of Work

• Dissertation

License

• All rights reserved

Rights statement

• In Copyright

GW Unit

• Political Science

Degree

• Ph.D.

Advisor

• Sides, John M

Committee Member(s)

• McConnaughy, Corrine M
• White, Ismail K
• Porter, Ethan
• Binder, Sarah A

Persistent URL

•  https://scholarspace.library.gwu.edu/etd/q811kj90x