Representing Equity: Descriptive Representation at the State and Local Level

• In Event: Poster Session: Race, Ethnicity, and Politics

Abstract

Why do some areas in the US have worse racial disparities than other area? While a strong body of research examines the role that racial or ethnic minority (descriptive) representatives play in providing pro-minority public policy (substantive representation), there is little consensus over the aggregate impact of representatives’ race in the outcomes racial minorities experience and the factors determining the size of that impact. In this project I provide a fresh perspective on this relationship in three ways. First, I theoretically expand our understanding of local descriptive incorporation -- the conditions under which minority representatives can affect policy outcomes-- to include multi-level governing constraints. Second, I employ a new method of estimation for local political incorporation allowing for large scale partisan examination of officially non-partisan local bodies, and employ controls for the starting point of racial disparities. Lastly, I examine a newly collected representation dataset of the 500 largest cities in the US, covering race for over 10,000 representatives at the state and local level. Testing my theory of multi-level incorporation on disparities in poverty rates, I find that increased Black descriptive representation does in fact lead to lower disparities for Blacks, but only when racial minorities are incorporated at the city and their political rivals do not control the state government.

Author

• Kevin Roach, University of North Carolina