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Income Inequality and State Parties: Who Gets Represented?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2021

Gerald C. Wright Open the ORCID record for Gerald C. Wright [Opens in a new window]  and
Elizabeth Rigby
Gerald C. Wright*
Affiliation:
Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA
Elizabeth Rigby
Affiliation:
The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA
*
Corresponding Author: Gerald C. Wright, Indiana University, 1100 E 7th St., Woodburn Hall 210, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA. Email: wright1@indiana.edu
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Abstract

Recent studies of representation at the national and state levels have provided evidence that elected officials' votes, political parties' platforms, and enacted policy choices are more responsive to the preferences of the affluent, while those with average incomes and the poor have little or no impact on the political process. Yet, this research on the dominance of the affluent has overlooked key partisan differences in the electorate. In this era of hyperpartisanship, we argue that representation occurs through the party system, and we test whether taking this reality into account changes the story of policy dominance by the rich. We combine data on public preferences and state party positions to test for income bias in parties' representation of their own co-partisans. The results show an interesting pattern in which underrepresentation of the poor is driven by Democratic parties pushing the more liberal social policy stances of rich Democrats and Republican parties reflecting the particularly conservative economic policy preferences of rich Republicans. Thus, we have ample evidence that the wealthy, more often than not, do call the shots, but that the degree to which this disproportionate party responsiveness produces less representative policies depends on the party in power and the policy dimension being considered. We conclude by linking this pattern of influence and “coincidental representation” to familiar changes which define the transformation of the New Deal party system.

Keywords

partiesrepresentationeconomic inequalitypublic policyparty organizationspartiesand interest groups
Type
Research Article
Information
State Politics & Policy Quarterly , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , December 2020 , pp. 395 - 415
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2020

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