Enduring Impact: A Seat at the Table Still Matters

Kerry L. Haynie, Trinity’s dean of Social Sciences and professor of Political Science and African & African American Studies, recently received the Mac Jewell Enduring Contribution Award from the American Political Science Association. Honoring scholarly contributions to U.S. state politics or policy that continue to shape the field more than a decade after publication, the award was presented to Haynie and co-author Kathleen Bratton of Louisiana State University for their influential 1999 Journal of Politics article “Agenda-Setting and Legislative Success in State Legislatures: The Effects of Gender and Race.”

And it all began with a dissertation. 

When Haynie and Bratton were Ph.D. students at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, they were working separately on dissertations that explored the same question: Does it matter who is at the legislative table? Bratton was focused on gender while Haynie’s research addressed race. “But we shared an advisor who recognized we were following similar paths of inquiry, so he suggested we combine our efforts,” Haynie says.

At the time, political scientists focused almost exclusively on party affiliation and constituency characteristics as the determinants of and explanations for legislators’ agenda-setting and legislative voting practices. For example, if a legislator came from a farming district, he would be more likely to advocate for bills favoring farmers. A representative from a district like Durham, where education and healthcare are important, would prioritize bills addressing those areas.

While acknowledging the importance of constituency and party affiliation for legislative behavior, Haynie realized little attention was given to the legislators in terms of their personal identities. “Growing up in North Carolina — in the South — it was strange to me that race mattered in almost every other walk of life but not when it came to legislation,” he says. “So I began to look at that data closely.” 

What he and Bratton found was that identity does matter. The presence of women and Black legislators influenced the types of legislation introduced, especially on previously ignored issues. In the states they studied, bills addressing spousal abuse or insurance coverage for mammograms weren’t introduced until women were elected. Similarly, Black legislators consistently prioritized criminal justice, not just to protect communities from crime but also to ensure fair treatment for those accused.

“The key takeaway was that as the demographic makeup of legislatures changed, so did their agendas,” says Haynie. “These voices brought forward new priorities that hadn't been addressed before — and likely wouldn’t have been without their presence.”

While their research speaks to representation shaping outcomes, Haynie is quick to point out that he isn’t making claims about race and gender as biological descriptors. Instead, it is about lived experiences and the perspectives shaped by those realities. “Many of the Black legislators we studied grew up during segregation, and women in politics have often navigated systems that excluded them,” he explains. “These individual histories influence what issues make it onto the agenda and how institutions respond.”

Nearly 30 years after publication, the research still resonates — and the article continues to be cited not only in state legislative research but also in business and intuitional contexts. And as those literal and metaphorical tables have expanded beyond legislative chambers, Haynie underscores the continued urgency for inclusion in all spaces. 

“It matters in universities, when decisions are made about what gets taught and who gets hired,” he says, “and it matters in corporate boardrooms, where lived experiences are reflected in the conversations — who is in the room still shapes what comes out as policy and law.”