ABSTRACT

Members of the United States House of Representatives disproportionately hire Black and Hispanic staffers into constituent service focussed roles as compared to policy development positions. Minority staffers are also underrepresented in the highest paid (arguably the most influential) positions in Congressional offices. I demonstrate these racial employment patterns using a Dirichlet-multinomial likelihood model to investigate a novel dataset that includes information on all of the staffers employed in the offices of 211 US House Members in the 108th Congress. This research compares the patterns of both Black and Hispanic staffers and draws from a more comprehensive sample than previous studies on staff race. The racial asymmetries found in staffers’ roles and responsibilities are cause for concern regarding the voice minorities have in Congressional policymaking.

摘要

与政策制定职位相比，美国众议院议员不成比例地雇用黑人和西班牙裔工作人员担任以民政部门服务为主的角色。少数族裔工作人员在国会办公室的最高薪水（可能是最具影响力）职位中所占的比例也不足。我使用Dirichlet多项式似然模型演示了这些种族就业模式，以调查一个新颖的数据集，其中包括第108届国会211名美国众议院议员办公室中雇用的所有职员的信息。这项研究比较了黑人和西班牙裔职员的模式，并从比以前有关职员种族的研究中更全面的样本中得出。