Book Projects

Working Class Inclusion: Evaluations of Democratic Institutions in Latin America. w/ Tiffany Barnes and Gregory Saxton.

Published November 2023 with Cambridge University Press.

Summary:

This book examines how the near exclusion of working-class citizens from legislatures affects how citizens perceive they are represented. In doing so, we tackle three important questions. Our first question is: Do citizens—and particularly working-class citizens—want to be represented by members of the working class? We argue that yes!—in theory working-class voters want to be represented by working-class representatives. The reason is twofold. One: the presence of working-class legislators may signal a more inclusive policy-making process. That is, simply having more workers’ in office conveys to citizens that policy-makers care about their experiences, preferences, and policy needs. Two: given that working-class legislators have different policy preferences and advance different policy agendas than white-collar representatives from the same political party, working-class representation may also enhance policy responsiveness. Citizens assume working-class representatives will represent the interests of the working class. Using survey data from across Latin America, and original survey data from Argentina and Mexico we demonstrate that voters want to see more workers in office, that the presence of workers in office is associated with better evaluations of legislatures and political parties, and that many voters believe workers are better suited to represent the policy needs of working-class citizens.

However,  the presence of workers in office can only foster better perceived representation via policy responsiveness if working-class legislators advocate on behalf of the working class. That said, legislators face a number of competing incentives and demands. Not all working-class legislators have the same motivations or opportunities to represent the working class. Consequently, we ask: Will any worker do? Or, in other words, how do citizens evaluate workers who do not represent working-class policy interests? We explain that even though workers all come to office having unique lived experiences that better position them to represent the needs of working-class citizens, once in office workers are faced with a range of competing incentives and opportunities that sometimes preclude their desire and ability to represent working-class interests. We argue for working-class legislators to effectively improve evaluations of representative institutions they should have strong relationships with the disadvantaged group they represent and be committed to advocating for their policy interests. Where working-class politicians enter office and defect—prioritizing their party or other economic interests instead of the working class—we anticipate working-class representatives will invoke backlash and decrease trust in their representatives. In contrast, where workers strive to cultivate working-class support and represent workers’ policy interests, we posit that working-class politicians will increase trust. Drawing on an original dataset on the class backgrounds of Argentine and Mexican national deputies over a 20-year period, survey data from the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP), and original survey experiments in Argentina and Mexico, we demonstrate that where representation of the working class is accompanied by policy representation of workers’ interests, working-class representation engenders trust in representative institutions. Absent policy representation, however, workers in office are met with distrust and generate backlash.

For workers’ presence in office to signal a more inclusive policy-making process, citizens must be able to identify members of the working class in office. Yet, working-class status is arguably more difficult for citizens to observe than characteristics such as race, ethnicity, or gender. Thus, we ask: Do citizens know workers are in office?  We argue that even if voters do not have perfect information, there are a number of ways that citizens learn about working-class representation. Since parties and candidates have political incentives to make politicians’ working-class status known, news sources and governments make information about legislators available and digestible, and people are surprisingly adept at inferring class status from readily available heuristics such as facial images and speech patterns, we explain that citizens have a number of opportunities to learn about the presence—or absence—of workers in office. Leveraging examples from news sources, surveys of government websites and a unique experiment in Argentina and Mexico that tests voters’ abilities to classify the class status of deputies based only on facial images, we provide strong evidence that voters are capable of detecting workers’ presence in office. Furthermore, using survey data from across Latin America we demonstrate that the relationship between working-class representation and positive evaluations of institutions is strongest among those voters who are most likely to be aware of legislators’ class status—i.e., voters with high levels of political interest and avid news followers.

Gendered Policy Priorities and Legislative Effectiveness. w/Sergio Bárcena Júarez. Under contract with Cambridge University Press as part of the Elements in Gender & Politics Series.

Are women more effective legislators than men, and if so, why? There is a growing literature that explores sex-based differences in legislative effectiveness, which consistently indicates that women are more effective legislators than men. From this body of research, there are two major theoretical explanations that have emerged to explain women’s greater legislative effectiveness. The qualifications theory suggests women are more effective than men because of the hurdles women face in the electoral process from securing nominations to winning elections. Thus, women need to work harder and be better qualified to be elected, and once in office, their superior qualifications relative to men lead women to be more effective lawmakers. This theoretical perspective suggests that women legislators must navigate a more demanding path to reach office, and their success is contingent on their dedication and qualifications.

A separate, although not mutually exclusive explanation, posits women’s marginalization within legislatures may enhance their legislative effectiveness. Within the framework of this marginalization theory, women collaborate more to overcome institutional disadvantages faced in the legislature. Since compromise across party lines and collaboration are key to passing legislation, women’s greater propensity to collaborate may explain why women are more effective lawmakers than men.

However, this existing literature has largely ignored the large body of research that demonstrates men and women often have different policy priorities, both inside and outside the legislature. The policy domains that legislators focus their time on is likely to have a strong effect on their legislative effectiveness. We argue in this book that research on men and women’s legislative effectiveness needs to account for the gendered policy priorities of lawmakers. If women legislate in policy areas that are less polarizing than policy domains in which men legislate, one might expect women to be more effective lawmakers. However, if women primarily sponsor bills in polarizing policy areas more so than men, then one might expect women to be less effective.  We argue and find that sex-based differences in policy priorities Our argument, grounded in empirical evidence from Mexico, supports the idea that gendered policy priorities help explain why women are more effective lawmakers, while there is much less empirical support for either qualifications theory or marginalization theory.

One of the primary goals of this book is to advance a theoretical framework of gendered differences in legislative effectiveness that is generalizable to all democracies where individual legislators have the capability to advance their own legislation. Existing work on women’s legislative effectiveness has generally not considered how different institutional and electoral contexts may alter our understanding of differences in lawmaking behavior between women and men. Moreover, since existing work has not accounted for gender policy priorities in advancing explanations of women’s legislative effectiveness, our book provides a framework to reconsider prior empirical findings and further explore the causal mechanisms that lead to gendered differences in lawmaking.

The Power of Opposition: Legislative Effectiveness in Mexico's Multiparty Democracy. w/ Sergio Bárcena Júarez. Under contract with Lexington Books.

What explains legislative effectiveness in multiparty presidential systems? In most presidential democracies, the president is the primary lawmaker and agenda-setter, yet we know very little about the relative significance of bills produced by individual legislators, nor their ability to advance these bills through the legislative process. In most legislatures in presidential systems, there is no majority party, committee chairs are shared across multiple parties, committees do not function as gatekeepers, and legislative careers are often short. Thus, seemingly obvious explanations that might suggest legislators from the majority party, or those with more experience, are more effective, may hold little explanatory power. A few prior studies suggest that while opposition parties in legislatures without a majority party are somewhat more effective, members of the largest party and presidential co-partisans are often the most successful at getting bills passed. However, existing work is limited to a focus on legislative productivity, and has not examined the salience of bills produced by legislators. We seek to understand which legislators are more or less likely to be able to draft and pass bills with significant policy content.

Drawing upon substantial original data from Mexican Chamber of Deputies from 1997-2024, and a new measure of legislative effectiveness, we argue presidential co-partisans are often constrained in their behavior as the executive branch has an overarching interest in ensuring co-partisan legislative proposals fit within the president’s agenda and bargains with the opposition to gain passage of executive bills. In addition, legislators from the president’s party also need to work to shepherd through presidential initiatives while blocking legislation from the opposition contrary to executive interests. Thus, legislators from governing parties are generally less effective when it comes to their own initiatives. In contrast, opposition deputies do not face these same restrictions, while at the same time provide crucial votes to pass the president’s legislative agenda. Thus, opposition deputies are generally more effective at navigating their own proposals through the legislative process since they face fewer constraints and can exchange votes for passage of their initiatives.

In addition, in the book we focus on several other understudied factors that influence variation in legislative effectiveness. First, we examine the role of electoral and legislative institutions in shaping individual legislative effectiveness. Second, we study several additional background characteristics of legislators, including their prior legislative experience, prior experience in public administration, their occupational and class background, and the role of prior formal education plays in shaping legislative effectiveness.