Political Parties and Representation of the Poor in the American States

Abstract

Motivated by recent work suggesting that low-income citizens are virtually ignored in the American policymaking process, this article asks whether a similar bias shapes the policy positions adopted by political parties much earlier in the policymaking process. While the normative hope is that parties serve as linkage institutions enhancing representation of those with fewer resources to organize, the resource-dependent campaign environment in which parties operate provides incentives to appeal to citizens with the greatest resources. Using newly developed measures of state party positions, we examine whether lowincome preferences get incorporated in parties' campaign appeals at this early stage in the policymaking process-finding little evidence that they do. This differential responsiveness was most pronounced for Democratic parties in states with greater income inequality; it was least evident for Republicans' social policy platforms. We discuss the implications of these findings for representation in this era of growing economic inequality.

Economic Inequality and Campaign Participation

“…A number of recent works have documented how legislators are much more responsive to the preferences of richer Americans than they are to those of their poorer constituents, both in Congress (Bartels 2008;Gilens 2012) and in the statehouses (Rigby and Wright 2011). And, as Rigby and Wright (2013) have found, this attentiveness to the views of the affluent begins early in the policymaking process, with the policy positions taken by state political parties. This line of scholarship has surmised that higher levels of inequality work to strengthen the relationship between income and responsiveness by making politicians increasingly dependent on the campaign support of fewer, wealthier donors (e.g., Gilens 2012, 252;Rigby and Wright 2013, 563-564).…”

Personal Economics and Political Ideology

“…As a response, the Democrats have moved to be more fiscally conservative in order to gain the support of wealthier voters and donors (Frank 2004 Van Der Waal, Achterberg, and Houtman (2007) Gilens 2012). Rigby and Wright (2013) note that Democrats are mostly responsive to the wealthy, while Republicans respond to the wealthy and middle class. On the other hand, Bartels (2008) finds that poor and middle class families have improved economic outcomes under Democratic presidents, but could not find the same under Republican administrations.…”

“…Still, neither party seems to explicitly represent the needs of the poor over either the middle or wealthy class. Rigby and Wright (2013) suggest that the reason Democrats are responding to the wealthy more is because they have traditionally not been in their base and since they need to raise large amounts of money for campaigns they must respond to the demands of the wealthiest in society. What this paper suggests is that the dispersion of poor and working class between the two major parties weakens their political power on a class level, and one of the reason that poor working class conservatives vote Republican is because they believe they will have future economic success.…”

“…However, recent work that examines the responsiveness of elected officials demonstrates that both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party neglect the needs of the poor, in favor of responding to wealthy constituents (Gilens 2012). While the Democratic Party becomes more responsive to the wealthy, the Republican Party actually broadens their responsiveness to the middle class (Rigby and Wright 2013). Nevertheless, when economic classes show divergent policy preferences, both parties tend to side with the wealthy.…”

“…Those from lower economic classes may vote at lower rates than the wealthy because they are not able to take time off of work as easily, because they are less interested in politics, or, perhaps most importantly, because they feel like voting is a waste of time because they cannot discern real differences between the competing parties. Rigby and Wright (2013) argue that campaign platforms leave out issues that are of most concern to the poor. If both party's candidates exclude the concerns of the poor and the working class from their campaign promises, there is little reason for those groups to vote.…”