Does the Political Environment Matter? Arab-American Representation and September 11th

Does the Political Environment Matter?Arab-American Representation andSeptember 11th∗

Jeffrey A. Fine, Clemson University

Nadia N. Aziz, Charlotte School of Law

Objectives. Studies of minority representation customarily focus on groups whosesocial position remains steady over the time period in question. We consider whetherand how Arab-American representation shifted following September 11th as thegroup’s social status changed rapidly. Methods. We analyze the determinants ofSenate voting alongside the Arab-American Institute from 2000 to 2008. We employordinary least square (OLS) regression models that account for the time series cross-sectional (TSCS) nature of our panel data. Results. Our findings suggest that Arab-American representation significantly declined in the wake of September 11th, bothamong Democratic and Republican senators. As the political environment improvedover time, representation slowly rose in subsequent years. Conclusions. We show thatthe quality of Arab-American representation declined after September 11th despiteno significant change in either their size or in electoral outcomes. We also show thatbroad theories of minority representation apply to even small ethnic groups, as thedeterminants of Arab-American representation parallel those of African Americansand Latinos.

In the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, the environ-ment toward Arab Americans dramatically changed. The weeks and monthsfollowing the attacks saw a marked increase in anti-Arab opinion and behavior.A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll conducted shortly after the attacks foundthat 49 percent of Americans favored requiring Arab Americans to carry specialidentification cards, and 58 percent favored more intensive security checks atairports for people of Arab descent (Verhovek, 2001). There were widespreadreports of Arab-American citizens being profiled and harassed at places ofpublic accommodation (Nakao, 2001). Furthermore, an alarming spike in vi-olence toward Arab Americans resulted, with hundreds of incidents occurringin cities across the country (ADL, 2001). There were even reports of violenceand profiling against other racial/ethnic minorities that were mistaken for ArabAmericans (Nakao, 2001; Schildkraut, 2002). In short, September 11th had

∗Direct correspondence to Jeffrey A. Fine, Department of Political Science, Clemson Uni-versity, 232 Brackett Hall, Clemson, SC 29634-1354 〈[email protected]〉. The authors wouldlike to thank Mac Avery, Joe Stewart, and the anonymous reviewers and editors at Social ScienceQuarterly for their helpful suggestions and comments.

SOCIAL SCIENCE QUARTERLYC© 2012 by the Southwestern Social Science AssociationDOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6237.2012.00893.x

2 Social Science Quarterly

a detrimental impact on mass opinion and behavior toward Arab Americansin the United States.

Despite the negative shift in mass behavior, the extent to which elite be-havior also changed remains unclear. President Bush condemned attacks onthe Arab-American and Muslim communities.1 While there were reports ofintolerant statements from at least one member of Congress (Schildkraut,2002), both the House of Representatives and the Senate passed a concur-rent resolution (H. Con. Res. 227) “condemning bigotry and violence” towardArab Americans and Muslims (Schildkraut, 2002). Although these resolutionssent an important signal from Capitol Hill, to fully understand the impactof September 11th we need to consider congressional voting behavior ratherthan just its rhetoric. The current research examines the effect of September11th on the level of representation provided for Arab Americans by membersof the U.S. Senate.

Our focus on Arab-American representation is unique in two distinct ways.First, the size of the Arab-American community is much smaller than otherminority groups (especially African Americans and Latinos, the two groups tohave received the bulk of treatment in previous studies). Second, the existingwork on minority representation focuses on four groups—blacks,2 Latinos,Asian Americans, and American Indians—groups that have lived under dif-ferent rule of law at one point or another (see McClain and Stewart, 2006).However, it remains unclear whether the representation of these groups shiftedas the social and political status of the group changed. For example, did Asian-American representation change in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, as publicsentiment and legal action lashed out against this minority group? Did blackrepresentation change during the 1950s and 1960s following various landmarkevents during the civil rights movement?3 By considering the representationof Arab Americans before and after September 11th, we can gain leveragethat will help us understand the potentially dynamic nature of congressionalrepresentation.

1While many people often associate these groups with one another (and use the twogroup identities interchangeably), it is critical to make clear the distinction between the ArabAmericans and Muslims. Arab Americans are U.S. citizens whose descent is tied to an Arabnation. In the Census ancestry data, the following nations are tallied and have been classifiedas Arab nations for the current article: Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco,Palestine, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. Muslims are members of the Islamic religious faith. Thevast majority of Arab Americans in the United States are Christian, while the vast majorityof Muslims in the United States belong to other racial/ethnic groups (and thus are not ArabAmericans). We focus this article on Arab-American representation, and a concentration onMuslims is beyond the scope of this particular article. For a good treatment of the representationof Muslim Americans, see Martin (2009).

2We use the terms “black” and “African American” interchangeably, as both are used widelyin studies of minority representation.

3Although some research has looked at African-American representation over a fairly longtime period (for example, see Bullock and Brady, 1983; Hood, Kidd, and Morris, 1999; Whitbyand Gilliam, 1991) these studies look at how changes in factors such as black electoral strength,mobilization, political empowerment, or partisanship affected representation rather than howrepresentation responded to specific focusing events.

Arab-American Representation 3

Research examining minority representation in Congress typically focuseson groups whose overall social position remains steady over the period inquestion. The swift and dramatic change in Arab-American social status afterSeptember 11th, though, allows scholars to consider the extent to which theconstituency-representative linkage for a small minority group depends onthe context (i.e., external events and forces, the popularity of the group withan electoral majority, etc.). Thus, we explore the extent to which a smallerminority group gets marginalized when the political environment abruptlychanges.

The rest of the article proceeds as follows: we first examine whether thedeterminants of Arab-American representation parallel those of blacks andLatinos, despite the much smaller size of the Arab-American population inU.S. states. We then consider whether the quality of Arab-American represen-tation declined after the terrorist attacks of September 11th.

The Determinants of Arab-American Representation

While we focus on Arab-American representation following the terroristattacks of 2001, the broader goal is to gain insight into the impact of polit-ical environment on minority representation in general. As such, before weinvestigate the extent to which September 11th impacted representation ofArab Americans, we first need to consider whether the representation of thisgroup mirrors the representation of other minority groups. The bulk of studiesof minority representation focus on either blacks or Latinos, the two largestracial/ethnic minority groups in the United States, comprising approximately13 percent and 16 percent, respectively, of the national population based onthe latest estimates.4 Since the theories of representation are broad, it is im-portant to test their application beyond just the largest minority groups in theUnited States. Thus, we must determine whether representation of a smallerminority5 group such as Arab Americans operates in a similar fashion (Cruzand Brittingham, 2003).

The extant literature has demonstrated that representation in Congress isdriven both by characteristics of the elected officials themselves and character-istics of their constituencies (for two recent examples, see Grose, 2005; Smith,Olson, and Fine, 2010). Studies consistently have shown that members’ parti-sanship and race/ethnicity are important determinants of their voting behaviorin accordance with minority groups. Many studies in the literature have ar-gued that elected officials’ partisanship affects the level of representation theyprovide to minority groups (e.g., Hero and Tolbert, 1995; Kerr and Miller,

4Source: Population Division, U.S. Census Bureau. Release date July 1, 2009. These dataare available online at www.census.gov.

5Arab Americans constitute approximately one-half of 1 percent of the U.S. population(www.census.gov).


1997; Swain, 2006). Research has demonstrated that Democratic membersof Congress provide better representation of minority interests (again, mainlyblack and Latino interests) than do their Republican counterparts (e.g., seeHero and Tolbert, 1995; Kerr and Miller, 1997; Swain, 2006). Unlike AfricanAmericans, who identify overwhelmingly with the Democratic Party, par-tisanship is not as straightforward with Arab Americans. In 2000, surveyresearch found Arab Americans’ partisanship to be evenly divided, with 40percent identifying themselves as Democrats, 38 percent identifying them-selves as Republicans, and 22 percent identifying as Independents (Zogby,2000). However, more recent survey research suggests that Arab Americanshave shifted toward the Democratic Party. During the 2004 election, Zogbyfound that a majority of Arab Americans were identifying themselves withthe Democratic Party, with over 60 percent voting for John Kerry specifically(Zogby, 2004).6 While the effect of legislators’ partisanship on Arab-Americanrepresentation remains an empirical question (which we examine below), thegroup’s recent partisan leaning leads us to expect Democratic senators to betterrepresent Arab-American interests.

A second characteristic of elected officials that drives minority represen-tation is their race/ethnicity. Descriptive representation occurs when electedofficials share a characteristic (racial, ethnic, gender, religious, etc.) with theirconstituents, resulting in better outcomes for the minority groups in ques-tion (see Canon, 1999; Mansbridge, 1999; Pitkin, 1967; Smith, Olson, andFine, 2010; Tate, 2003). These shared characteristics give representatives abetter sense of the concerns of “people like them,” meaning that descriptiverepresentation should translate into better outcomes for the group in ques-tion (Pitkin, 1967). However, others argue that descriptive representationshould not automatically translate into higher levels of substantive representa-tion. For example, Swain (2006) argues that we should not necessarily expectan African-American Republican to better represent African-American inter-ests than a white Democrat. In support for her argument, Swain finds thatpartisanship more directly affects minority representation than does race, aswhite Democrats are much more responsive to the interests of African Ameri-cans than Republican members who are African American themselves (Swain,2006). Our research will determine whether descriptive representation leadsto better substantive representation for a smaller ethnic minority group likeArab Americans, taking into consideration Swain’s argument that partisanshiprather than ethnicity may drive such a relationship.

In addition to the characteristics of the representatives themselves, votingbehavior is shaped by the composition of elected officials’ constituencies aswell. Studies of constituency effects on representation either focus on the effect

6This shift in partisanship is consistent with recent work by Cho, Gimpel, and Wu (2006),which finds that Arab Americans were more likely to register as Democrats following September11th, 2001. Thus, there is reason to expect Democratic senators to better represent the interestsof Arab Americans since they would be more likely to be part of a Democratic senators “winningcoalition.”


of public opinion on representation (e.g., see Griffin and Newman, 2007; Kuk-linski and Segura, 1995; McCrone and Kuklinski, 1979; Miller and Stokes,1963), or the impact of the size of a minority constituency on legislative be-havior (see Bullock, 1981; Bullock and MacManus, 1981; Cameron, Epstein,and O’Halloran, 1996; Griffin and Newman, 2007; Hutchings, McClerking,and Charles, 2004; Kerr and Miller, 1997; Whitby, 1997). Despite the vastamount of research on the subject, there remains disagreement over the effectof constituency size on representation of minority interests. Some scholarsassert that larger minority constituencies are better represented in Congress(Combs, Hibbing, and Welch, 1984; Hutchings, McClerking, and Charles,2004; Kerr and Miller, 1997; Lublin, 1997; Overby and Cosgrove, 1996).Others find either no relationship between constituency size and legislativebehavior (Cameron, Epstein, and O’Halloran, 1996; Casellas, 2007; Hero andTolbert, 1995; Whitby, 1997), or suggest that larger minority constituenciesreceive worse representation (Bullock, 1981; Bullock and MacManus, 1981).Building upon this research, we examine whether larger Arab-American con-stituencies translate into better (or even worse) representation of this group’sinterests in the U.S. Senate.

The relatively small size of the Arab-American population might make theeffect of constituency on representation distinct from the representation ofother racial/ethnic minorities. While African Americans (e.g., 37 percent inMississippi) and Latinos (e.g., 46 percent in New Mexico) comprise sizableportions of some U.S. states, Arab Americans make up a much smaller per-centage. The state with the largest Arab-American population in the UnitedStates is Michigan, with just over 1 percent of its population as Arab Amer-ican. Every other state is comprised of less than 1 percent Arab Americans.7

As a result, it is unlikely that elected officials consider the size of this relativelysmall group into their voting calculus. However, the extent to which the size ofthis smaller ethnic minority (or any minority group besides African Americansand Latinos) affects representation remains an empirical question.

Baseline Model

Table 1 presents the results of an initial model on the determinants ofArab-American representation in the Senate from 2000 to 2008.8 Given thatthe data are time serial (eight years) and cross-sectional (each senator), we run

7The average percent of a state’s population that is Arab American is 0.31 percent, witha standard deviation of 0.21. Michigan has the largest percentage of Arab Americans, as thegroup comprises 1.16 percent of the state. Wisconsin and Wyoming have the smallest Arab-American populations relative to their size, with approximately 0.07 percent of their respectivepopulations.

8As Arab-American representation scores are not available for 2005, the sample consistsof votes from 2000 to 2004, and 2006 to 2008 (eight total years). We examine the Senaterather than the House because the time period in our pre- and post-September 11th samplespans the reapportionment and redistricting that occurred in 2002 following the 2000 Census.


TABLE 1

OLS Regression of Arab-American Representation in Senate—Baseline Model

Independent Variable Model 1a Model 1b

Partisanship −16.52∗∗∗ −11.99∗∗∗

(4.58) (3.58)Arab-American senator 27.53∗∗∗ 28.84∗∗∗

(17.34) (6.81)Arab-American constituency pct. 12.55∗ 4.76

(7.05) (6.32)Citizen liberalism — 0.34∗

(0.18)Constant 33.91∗∗∗ 16.59∗

(5.69) (8.55)Number of observations 798 798R2 0.1198 0.1469

Dependent variable: percent voting with AAI (AAI scorecard).Regression coefficients with PCSEs in parentheses.∗p< 0.10, ∗∗p < 0.05, ∗∗∗p < 0.01.

an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression that accounts for the time seriescross-sectional (TSCS) nature by including panel corrected standard errors(Beck and Katz, 1995; Wilson and Butler, 2007).9

The dependent variable for this model is the senator’s support score fromthe Arab-American Institute (AAI), the largest Arab-American interest groupin the United States.10 The AAI scorecards capture the members’ individualvoting behavior on issues of importance to Arab Americans (AAI, 2006).During the time period we examined, the votes tracked by the AAI includeforeign policy votes pertaining to the Middle East (such as the war in Iraq

Examining the House is problematic as some of the panels change in 2002 (and thus are notpresent in both the pre- and post-9/11 period). Also, the composition of the districts themselveschanged for legislators at nearly the same time as the key event we are examining. Focusingon the Senate avoids this problem, and therefore allows us to more cleanly isolate the effect of9/11.

9We considered alternate specifications for dealing with unit heterogeneity besides the useof panel-corrected standard errors (see Wilson and Butler, 2007). One alternative is to the runmodels using feasible generalized least squares (FGLS). Each of the models presented in thisarticle are substantively unchanged using FGLS. Another alternative would be to run a “fixedeffects” model, including a series of dummy variables for each panel. Given our high numberof panels (100), including this many dummy variables would reduce our degrees of freedomdramatically. While Beck and Katz also suggest including a lagged dependent variable, we donot include such a variable. In our subsequent models, we are interested in the nature of thetime trend in the data (if one exists), and including such a lagged dependent variable willobscure this story. We also do not have a theoretical reason to expect the level of representationa senator provides to be affected by previous levels of representation.

10The Arab American Institute asserts that Arab Americans have overwhelmingly cohesivepolitical preferences on the issues being scored by their organization. These issues are bothimportant to Arab Americans, and the preferences of Arab Americans line up well on the issuesthey score (from authors direct interaction with the AAI itself ).


TABLE 2

Arab American Institute Scorecard Topics

While the AAI scores members of Congress on a variety of issues, the mostcommon issues on their scorecards are those related to the Middle East,immigration, and civil liberties. Below we describe several examples ofitems scored by the AAI in each category. The list below is notexhaustive, as there are other issues scored by the AAI (such as hatecrimes legislation). The full AAI scorecards along with a description ofeach item scored can be found on the Arab American Institute’s website(http://www.aaiusa.org)

1. The Middle East:•Notable examples:

• Issues related to the war in Iraq, including sanctions in 2000, theauthorization of the use of force in Iraq, and the implementation ofthe Iraq Study Group’s recommendations

•Issues related to Palestine, including Palestinian statehood, the Wyeaccord, relations with Palestine and the Palestinian Authority, thePalestinian-Israeli conflict (e.g., discussion of a separation wall, orstatements of solidarity with Israel)

•Aid to countries in the region (e.g., Syria and Lebanon)•President Bush’s “Road Map” for peace in the region

2. Immigration and citizenship•Notable examples:

•Border protection, including the border fence•The Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005•The DREAM Act: Path to citizenship for immigrants who were brought

to the United States as children and who have completed theireducation in the United States

•Due process for immigrants who are arrested on suspicion ofterrorism

3. Civil liberties•Notable examples:

•U.S.A. PATRIOT Act•Secret detention sites (black sites)•Habeas corpus for detainees•Wiretapping•Racial profiling in domestic counterterrorism procedures•Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)•Torture and detainee treatment•Due process for immigrants who are arrested on suspicion of

terrorism

and issues related to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict), issues of civil rights andcivil liberties (including the U.S.A. PATRIOT Act and detainee rights), hatecrime legislation, and immigration reform. A more detailed list of issues thatcomprise the AAI scorecard is presented in Table 2.

Each senator’s voting score is the percentage of time in which s/he votedalongside the AAI’s position (calculated as the number of votes consistent withthe AAI’s preference divided by the total number of AAI scored votes cast by


the legislator).11 The independent variables for these models were selected toparallel standard models of minority representation: ethnicity and partisan-ship of the elected official and the size of the Arab-American constituency.12

The ethnicity variable is dichotomous, coded as a “1” if the senator is ofArab-American descent, and coded as a “0” otherwise. There are two Arab-American senators in our sample: Spencer Abraham (R-MI) and John Sununu(R-NH). We expect a positive effect of ethnicity on representation, if Arab-American representation parallels the representation of other minority groups.The partisanship variable takes on a value of “0” for Democrats and “1” forRepublicans.13 If Democrats provide better representation for this minor-ity group (as they do for blacks and Latinos), we should expect a negativerelationship between partisanship and representation. The Arab-Americanconstituency variable is coded as the percentage of the state population thatis of Arab descent.14 See footnote 1 for a list of the nations classified as Arabnations based on our coding scheme.

The results of Model 1a suggest that the broad theories of minority represen-tation apply to Arab Americans as well. The representatives’ ethnicity variableis significant and positive, indicating that the two Arab-American senatorsbetter represented the interests of Arab Americans than did non-Arabs, con-trolling for senators’ partisanship and the state’s Arab-American population.15

The magnitude of this effect is noteworthy, as the two Arab-American sen-ators voted alongside the AAI 28 percent of the time more than non-Arabsenators. As expected, senators’ partisanship exerts a significant, negative effecton AAI support, suggesting that Democratic senators voted alongside the AAIat a higher rate (approximately 12 percent more) than did their Republicancounterparts. This suggests that the recent shift in Arab-American support for

11Given that members of Congress miss votes for a variety of reasons, absences and absten-tions were excluded from the denominator when calculating these percentages.

12We have run models controlling for the percent of the population that is Jewish. Thisadditional control variable is not statistically significant in any model we have run, and ourresults are substantively the same when this variable is included. We do not have a strongtheoretical expectation for including the variable, and thus exclude it from the analyses wepresent here.

13Senators who are identified as “Independents” were grouped alongside the party withwhich they caucused during that year. We have also coded partisanship with Independentstaking on a value of “0.5” and the results are substantively unchanged using this alternatespecification.

14As noted above, Michigan’s Arab-American population is by far the largest of any state,with the group comprising 1.16 percent of the state’s population. The next highest percentageis approximately 0.85 percent. To avoid the possibility that Michigan’s high Arab-Americanpopulation is driving our results with respect to this variable, we have rerun each of themodels presented in this article without Michigan’s observations included. The results of theArab-American population variable, as well as each of the other variables in our models, aresubstantively unchanged when excluding Michigan from the analyses.

15With only two Arab-American senators in our sample, this variable has substantially morevalues of 0 than values of 1. However, such a distribution would make it even harder to findthis variable to be statistically significant in our models. That we find this variable significanteven in the face of such a distribution is especially noteworthy given the bias against findingsuch a significant relationship.


the Democratic Party is well-founded, as the Democratic candidates appear tobetter represent the group’s interests. Finally, the Arab-American populationin the state is significant and positive, suggesting that larger constituenciesreceive better representation in the Senate, holding all other factors constant.Although this finding with respect to the Arab-American constituency size isnormatively appealing, it also deserves further inspection.

While it is possible that senators are responding to larger Arab-Americanconstituencies, even though the group makes up a relatively small percentageof every U.S. state, it also is possible that the significant effect of this variable isdriven by another factor that might be related to the size of the Arab-Americanconstituency and also affecting Arab-American representation. Some studiesof minority representation have included measures of citizen liberalism todistinguish the minority composition of states from the effect of citizen ide-ology itself (e.g., Smith, Olson, and Fine, 2010). To test this, Model 1bincludes the same variables as the previous model but now also includes theBerry et al. (1998) measure of state citizen liberalism (where higher valuessignify a more liberal state). As the results of Model 1b demonstrate, theArab-American population variable is no longer statistically significant, whilethe citizen liberalism variable is significant and positive. These results suggestthat senators who represent more liberal states better represent the interestsof Arab Americans, while larger Arab populations do not translate into betterrepresentation. The lack of statistical significance of the Arab-American pop-ulation variable comports with some of the findings on constituency effectson African-American representation (Casellas, 2007; Hero and Tolbert, 1995;Whitby, 1997). As African Americans do not make up a majority of any state,some scholars have found the constituency size not to affect representationfor this group (Whitby, 1997). Since Arab Americans comprise a significantlysmaller portion of states than do African Americans, this nonfinding is notaltogether surprising.

These initial results underscore that the representation of Arab-Americaninterests is affected by the same factors that have generally been found to driveboth Latino and African-American representation. This represents a contri-bution to the literature on minority representation, as it demonstrates thetheories of racial/ethnic representation apply to other groups beyond AfricanAmericans and Latinos. Establishing that Arab-American representation isaffected by the same factors that affect African-American and Latino repre-sentation provides greater confidence in using this group to make inferencesabout how the political environment influences the quality of representationof minority groups in general.

September 11th and the Political Environment Toward Arab Americans

Following the terrorist attacks of September 11th, mass behavior shifted inadverse ways with respect to the Arab-American community. As we discussed


earlier, the aftermath of the attacks saw a marked increase in anti-Arab opinion(Nakao, 2001; Verhovek, 2001) and behavior (see Cho, Gimpel, and Wu,2006). In addition to the behavior of the non-Arab masses, recent research alsohas shown that mass-level behavior of Arab Americans themselves changedfollowing September 11th. Examining individual-level data, Cho, Gimpel,and Wu (2006) found that Arab-American voter registration and mobilizationincreased after the terrorist attacks. While the non-Arab public lashed outagainst this group, Arab Americans themselves sought to increase their voicein the political system. Our research builds on this literature by testing whether9/11 also impacted the behavior of political elites in relation to this minoritygroup.

Although to date no research has shown how the voting behavior of con-gressmen changed in the wake of the terrorist attacks, there is existing researchthat grapples with the response of elites to September 11th. Schildkraut’s(2002) research suggests that following these events elites (both political lead-ers and members of the media) favored making policy changes in areas suchas immigration and civil liberties with the goal of increased security. At thesame time, these elites advocated tolerance and support to the Arab-Americancommunity. The statements of support for this group send an importantsignal, but it is an empirical question as to how the actions of these elitesimpacted Arab Americans. If policies that run against the interests of ArabAmericans were enacted, the rhetoric is likely to be of little comfort to thisminority group. One study tackled this dimension of elite behavior (Birkland,2004), investigating the effect of September 11th on the agenda of Congress.Birkland (2004) found that the terrorist attacks did open a window of oppor-tunity in which some new issues (such as airline/cockpit security) were addedto the agenda and others (e.g., immigration and intelligence sharing) weremoved up on the agenda from their pre-9/11 positions. While this researchdemonstrated that the agenda did change in a meaningful way, it begs thequestion of whether this agenda change led to better or worse representationof Arab-American interests.

Elite Responses to September 11th—Theory

There are two broad reasons to expect a backlash against the interests ofArab Americans following the terrorist attacks of September 11th. First, it ispossible that, despite the resolutions passed by the House and Senate, membersof Congress responded to the crisis independently of public opinion, but ina similar fashion as their constituents did. The statements of Rep. Cooksey(R-LA), who stated that an individual “with a diaper on his head” was moredeserving of additional searches at airports (Alpert and Walsh, 2001), mighthave been more indicative of the sentiment of elites as well as the masses. Thus,members of Congress may have responded negatively toward Arab Americans


in the wake of the terrorist attacks without any external pressure from thepreferences or composition of their constituencies.

The literature on congressional voting behavior suggests a second reasonto expect a downturn in Arab-American representation following September11th: legislators may have responded directly to the negative shift in publicopinion toward Arab Americans. Research has demonstrated that rationalcongressmen respond to issues based on the nature of public opinion onthe issue and the likelihood that the legislator would be held accountablefor his/her response (e.g., Arnold, 1990). Arnold posits that, among otherfactors, the magnitude and timing of an issue will affect the degree to whichconstituents notice a particular issue and thus exert pressure on congressmento respond. The magnitude of an issue is tied to its salience to a particulargroup. Given the extensive media coverage of September 11th (and the issuesscored by the AAI, such as the Middle East and civil liberties), it is clear thatthe terrorist attacks raised the prominence of these issues among the Americanpeople. The timing dimension is related to the number of steps necessary fora policy to be implemented. Given the rapid passage of sweeping legislationin the immediate aftermath of 9/11, it also is reasonable for citizens to see theshort-term impact of many of the policies scored by the AAI.

Arnold also argues that we should see legislators respond to these issueswhen it is reasonable to believe the public is aware of legislators’ votes on theissue and be willing to reward/punish legislators based on their voting behav-ior. Following September 11th, there was widespread coverage of all aspects ofthe terrorist attacks. Much of the attention was on the government’s response,both on the part of President Bush and his administration, and on the part ofthe U.S. Congress. This ubiquitous coverage heightened Americans’ awarenessof the policies being debated and passed by Congress on a variety of issues,including those issues of importance to the Arab-American community. Assuch, citizens were more aware of these policies than they typically are of leg-islative activity. As terrorism (broadly defined) jumped to the most importantissue for most citizens, it also was plausible for legislators to perceive a tangiblethreat from citizens should the public be dissatisfied with a legislator’s votingrecord. Given this framework, as mass-level constituency preferences shifted(e.g., as the public favored limiting the civil liberties of Arab Americans), it ispossible that these mass-level preferences influenced members of Congress totake similar policy preferences.

Another possibility is that the agenda of Congress (Birkland, 2004) shifted,thereby leading to lower AAI support scores. This shift may have been moti-vated by legislators themselves (tied to the first explanation above), driven bypressure from constituents to change the legislative agenda (fitting more withthe second explanation above), or by some combination thereof. As such, itis possible that members of Congress did not necessarily shift their preferencesin a way that was harmful to the group, but rather that the shift in the agenda


FIGURE 1

Average AAI Support Scores in the U.S. Senateby Party, Before and After September 11th

as a whole was much worse for Arab Americans in the post-September 11thenvironment.16

Does the Political Environment Affect Representation?

Figure 1 presents the average AAI scores for Republicans and Democratsbefore and after September 11th. While the figure shows a marked decline inAAI support from the pre- to post-September 11th period, a more completemodel is needed to determine whether such differences persist once controllingfor other factors.

To test whether Arab-American representation shifted in the aftermath ofSeptember 11th (and if so, whether this shift was positive or negative), werevisit our baseline model of Arab-American representation from the previoussection. As with the baseline model, we examine Arab-American representationin the Senate from 2000 to 2008. All of the votes scored by the AAI in2001 occurred before September 11th, meaning that our eight-year time spancontains two years of data before the terrorist attacks (2000 and 2001), and six

16The current research seeks to demonstrate whether a shift occurred following September11th. Subsequent work will investigate why any such change took place, but that question isbeyond the scope of this particular study.


TABLE 3

OLS Regression of Arab-American Representationin Senate—September 11th Model

Independent Variable

Partisanship −12.88∗∗∗

(3.41)Arab-American senator 27.93∗∗∗

(5.97)Arab-American constituency pct. 6.01∗

(4.94)Citizen liberalism 0.28∗∗

(0.13)Post-September 11th dummy −25.25∗∗

(12.26)Years since 2001 3.42∗

(2.11)Constant 28.37∗∗∗

(8.21)Number of observations 798R2 0.2327

Dependent variable: percent voting with AAI (AAI scorecard).Regression coefficients with PCSEs in parentheses.∗p < 0.10, ∗∗p < 0.05, ∗∗∗p < 0.01.

years of data following September 11th (2002–2004 and 2006–2008).17 Theunit of analysis is the Senate seat, with the AAI support score as the dependentvariable. The independent variables for the models are the partisanship andethnicity of the member of Congress, the percentage of the state populationthat is Arab American, and two variables that allow us to run an interruptedtime series design to test the impact of September 11th, 2001. The first ofthese variables is a dichotomous variable capturing whether the observationoccurred before (coded as “0”) or after (coded as “1”) September 11th, 2001.Since all of the votes scored by the AAI in 2001 occurred before September11th, we treat both 2000 and 2001 as pre-September 11th observations (andthus are coded as “0” for this variable). This variable will capture whetherthe Y-intercept shifted for senators following the terrorist attacks. The secondvariable is a counter variable that captures the number of years after September11th (coded as “0” for 2000 and 2001, coded as “1” for 2002,” and increasingby one for each year until 2008, which is coded as “7”). This variable allowsfor the possibility that the slope of the regression line shifted following theterrorist attacks. Table 3 presents the results of this model.

Given the TSCS nature of our data, we run OLS regression with panel-corrected standard errors (PCSE). As with our baseline model, we do not

17Again, the AAI did not score votes in 2005, accounting for the one-year “gap” in our timeseries.


include a lagged dependent variable. As we are testing whether a time trendexists in the data, we want to observe any such pattern in the data. If weinclude a lagged dependent variable, we will obscure this relationship byeffectively converting the dependent variable from the raw AAI support scoreto the change in AAI scores from one year to the next. We have rerun thisanalysis using feasible generalized least squares (FGLS), and the results aresubstantively identical using this alternative modeling technique.

The results of Table 3 demonstrate that the representation of Arab-Americaninterests in the Senate decreased significantly following 2001. The effectsof the independent variables from our baseline models presented in Table1 are substantively unchanged, with Democratic senators providing betterrepresentation of Arab Americans than their Republican counterparts, senatorswith more liberal citizenries better representing Arab-American interests, andno effect of Arab-American constituency size on representation. As with ourbaseline models, the two senators of Arab descent better represent Arab-American interests than do their non-Arab counterparts, controlling for theother variables in the model. The significant negative effect of the post-September 11th dummy variable model shows that the levels of representationfor Arab Americans dropped significantly following 2001. The magnitude ofthe effect indicates that, holding all other factors constant, representation ofArab-American interests declined by nearly 22 percent in the Senate in thewake of September 11th.

In addition to this intercept change, the counter variable is significantand positive. This result suggests that representation of Arab-American in-terests has slowly climbed in the years following the terrorist attacks. Thus,September 11th introduced a shock to the system, whereby representationof Arab-American interests dropped dramatically. As we get further removedfrom the attacks, senators as a whole have provided slightly higher levels ofrepresentation each year (approximately 3.5 percent), presumably as they be-gin to revert toward their pre-September 11th levels. Over the course of eightyears, the effect of the negative shock imposed by September 11th would havefully eroded, with Arab-American representation among Democrats and Re-publicans returning to approximately their pre-9/11 levels. Thus, the politicalcontext markedly harmed Arab-American representation in the Senate, butas the negative political environment dissipated the quality of representationwas restored.

Conclusions and Implications

The literature on representation in Congress consistently has found thatcharacteristics of elected officials (partisanship and descriptive characteristicssuch as race, ethnicity, gender, and religion) and their constituencies affect thevoting behavior of legislators (e.g., Grose, 2005). The literature on minorityrepresentation has been restricted primarily to the examination of African


Americans and Latinos. In addition to being the largest racial and ethnicminority groups in the United States, one justification for focusing on thesegroups is that at one point each of these groups lived under a different ruleof law in this country (McClain and Stewart, 2006). This distinction is animportant one. In the current article, we investigate the extent to which livingunder a different political or social environment itself might affect the natureof the constituency-representative linkage.

To tackle this important question, we examine the representation of ArabAmericans before and after September 11th, 2001. The choice of this groupover this time period gives us the leverage to investigate the extent to whichthe political environment facing a group affects its level of representation. Wefind that September 11th had a deleterious effect on the representation ofArab Americans, as voting alongside the group markedly declined following2001. This suggests that representation of small minority groups might be di-minished in the face of policy representation for the majority of constituentswhose interests might run counter to those of the minority group. In subse-quent years, we have seen levels of representation slowly rise, presumably asthe “magnitude” and “timing” of these issues have declined, and thus membersof Congress are less threatened by being seen as catering to the interests of thisparticular group.

Studying the representation of Arab-American interests allows us to make asecond contribution to the literature—the determinants of minority represen-tation apply to much smaller racial/ethnic minorities as well. While blacks andLatinos constitute the two largest racial and ethnic minorities in the UnitedStates (approximately 13 and 16 percent, respectively), Arab Americans makeup a much smaller percentage of the national population (less than 1 per-cent). Our results demonstrate that the same factors that largely have beenfound to affect representation of African Americans and Latinos (partisanshipand race/ethnicity of the representative) also affect representation of Arab-American interests. The insignificant effect of the size of the Arab-Americanpopulation fits with some of the existing studies of minority representation atthe state level.

Our finding that Arab-American representation parallels representation oflarger minority groups is important, as it shows that existing theories of rep-resentation apply to settings beyond just a few (large) groups. Our results arenormatively appealing, as they suggest that even the smallest groups may notbe marginalized by elected officials in a representative democracy. However,this is tempered by the fact that representation of minorities appears sensitiveto the external political environment. As the political climate toward a mi-nority group declines, so too does its representation in Congress. If, however,the political environment toward the minority group were to improve overtime, our results suggest that we should anticipate an increase in the level ofrepresentation provided to the group.

The current research suggests the need for future research in a number ofareas. First, the findings with respect to smaller minority groups such as Arab


Americans open the door for similar research on other understudied racial andethnic minority groups that may also comprise a relatively small percentage ofconstituencies. Given that our focus on Arab-American representation afterSeptember 11th was designed to give us the leverage to test the impact of thepolitical environment, future research may try to develop ways to test whetherthe representation of groups like African Americans and Latinos also wereaffected by the external political environment toward these groups duringdifferent periods of American history. A final direction in which subsequentstudies may move is to ascertain why the level of representation for this group(or any group) changed in response to shocks in the political environment.

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Does the Political Environment Matter? Arab-American Representation and September 11th

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