First Advisor

Melody Ellis Valdini

Term of Graduation

Winter 2016

Date of Publication

Winter 3-15-2016

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (M.A.) in Political Science

Department

Political Science

Language

English

Subjects

City councils -- Decision making -- Sex differences, City council members -- Sex differences, Mayors -- Sex differences, City councils -- Government policy, Representative government and representation

DOI

10.15760/etd.2723

Physical Description

1 online resource (v, 94 pages)

Abstract

The literature on descriptive and substantive representation focuses on elected representatives, but overlooks the gender of those who play an integral role in policy process (agenda-setting) and outcomes (implementation): The elected’s chief of staff, senior policy advisors, and, in council-manager systems, the city manager. This thesis examines the role policy staff and city manager gender plays in substantive representation. After analyzing staff composition and agenda priorities — gleaned from State of the City addresses — for mayors of the 50 most-populous cities in the United States, I found substantial evidence to support my hypotheses that the chief of staff’s gender, not the elected’s gender, will drive the overall gender of staff as well as the gender characterization of policy agendas. Mayors — regardless of gender — with female chiefs of staff in this dataset have more female staffers and more neutral policy agendas. Mayors — regardless of gender — with male chiefs of staff have more male staffers and mostly masculine policy. In weak mayor systems, city managers’ gender strongly influences mayoral policy agendas, especially in small cities; since most city managers are male, those policy agendas are more masculine, regardless of the mayor’s and chief of staff’s gender. Thus, I find that staff who are involved in the intricacies of policy process and outcome have a stronger influence on policy than the public-facing elected official.

These results, supplemented by interviews with mayors and chiefs of staff from across the country, could change the importance scholars place on descriptive representation, and alter scholars’ approach to studying both substantive representation for women and American democracy in general.

Rights

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

Persistent Identifier

http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/16976

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