3 - Do Citizens Want to Be Represented by Workers?

Summary

Chapter 3 empirically addresses the question: Do citizens want to be represented by members of the working class? We demonstrate, using novel survey data from Argentina and Mexico and publicly available cross-national data from LAPOP, that citizens do prefer to be represented by legislators from the working class. To do this, we first examined patterns of support for working-class representation using a series of original survey questions in Argentina and Mexico. We asked citizens about their preferences for working-class representation and show that the average citizen in Argentina and Mexico both want more working-class deputies to occupy seats in congress. Then we introduce data on the class background of legislators obtained from elite survey data, and present descriptive information about the occupations, gender, and race/ethnicity of working-class deputies. Finally, using cross-national survey data and these data on legislators’ class background, we demonstrate that citizens have better evaluations of representative institutions when working-class deputies hold a higher share of seas in the national assembly.