The Conventional Wisdom (is Wrong)

This chapter has two aims. The first is to do what the proponents of the conventional wisdom about workers never do, namely, test their ideas using actual data on U.S. politics. The second is to begin answering this book's larger research question: Why are working-class people virtually absent from American political institutions? The chapter begins by identifying the stage in the candidate entry process that screens working-class people out. Along the way, it also tests two common ideas about the underrepresentation of workers, namely, that workers seldom hold office because they are not fit to govern and because voters prefer affluent candidates. The chapter shows that these ideas do not hold water: workers are not underrepresented in public office because they are less qualified or because voters dislike them, they are underrepresented because they just do not run in the first place.

Do Institutions and Rules Influence Electoral Accessibility and Competitiveness? Considering the 2014 Toronto Ward Elections

Electoral and campaign finance reforms are believed to improve the competitiveness of elections and the accessibility of the electoral process; however, the interaction between electoral institutions and competitiveness and accessibility in nonpartisan municipal elections remains understudied. This article examines the City of Toronto, which exemplifies many of the reforms proposed in the American context, including a strict campaign finance regime and low barriers to candidate entry. Analysis of campaign finance disclosure data and candidate characteristics for Toronto’s 2014 ward elections reveals that electoral and campaign finance rules increase electoral accessibility while doing little to limit incumbency advantage. We argue that crowded nonpartisan races are low-information environments in which candidates, donors, and voters cannot assess challenger quality, which reinforces incumbent name recognition and access to campaign resources. The Toronto case highlights the limits of institutional and regulatory change as a means of increasing local electoral competitiveness and accessibility.

Race, Resources, and Representation

What explains the persistence of racial or ethnic inequalities in descriptive representation in the absence of strongly politicized racial or ethnic cleavages? This article uses new data to demonstrate a substantial racial gap between voters and politicians in Brazil. The authors show that this disparity is not plausibly due to racial preferences in the electorate as a whole, for instance, deference toward white candidates or discrimination against nonwhites, and that barriers to candidate entry or discrimination by party leaders do not likely explain the gap. Instead, they document persistent resource disparities between white and nonwhite candidates, including large differences in personal assets and campaign contributions. The findings suggest that elite closure—investments by racial and economic elites on behalf of elite candidates—help perpetuate a white political class, even in the absence of racialized politics. By underscoring this avenue through which representational disparities persist, the article contributes to research on elite power in democratic settings.