Episode 4: Poor Representation with Kristina Miler

Hello and welcome to Episode 4 of the Policy Agendas podcast. I’m E.J. Fagan.

Today, my co-host is our wonderful research assistant. Emily, when. Hi, Emily. Thank you.

Thank you for joining us. We’re we’re recording at the Southern Political Science Association conference today, and

we’re quite a lot of episodes of the conference. And so we invited Emily to come on here and fill in for one

of our normal graduate students. She’s about to leave us for for greener pastures. We are joined today

by Christina Miller, associate professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland and author of the book

Poor Representation Congress and the Politics of Poverty. Poverty in the United States. Christina, welcome

to the podcast. Thanks so much for having me. We we’re really excited to discuss this book. This is this is our fourth episode of

the podcast and this is the first episode where we’ve really gone into the policy agendas world.

And and this is a really innovative use of of the data that we

produce here. And that’s really what we’re excited talk about. I’m wondering if before we kind of get to that, if you can talk

about the argument, the book and why you wrote it. Yeah, absolutely. And the policy agenda is data

is a huge part of what brings the project together and unites,

you know, a lot of the data in the chapters. So I’m very grateful for having the data

and being able to use it. So the project in general and the book kind of came out

of a sense that there’s been an increase in attention to inequality both

more broadly and also in political science. But we tend to talk about things like the 99 percent

versus the 1 percent or the super rich sometimes who talk about the middle class as well.

But I think it was pretty striking to me how infrequently we talk about the poor.

So for me, the book kind of has two main questions. The first is, are the poor

represented in Congress and then how does that occur? And so those are the two things

I’m really looking to to understand. And for me, this was

an important question that I wanted to ask. There’s kind of the the obvious impact in that. Generally,

there’s agreement that we would like to alleviate poverty is as best as possible.

And so that’s kind of a real world reason that this question is important to try to understand

how we can better do that. And then also thinking about it from a policymaking

perspective about who’s being included, whose voices are there. If we’re trying

to make good public policy, we want to have more ideas rather than fewer ideas.

And so, you know, trying to get into that as well. And then normatively,

as a representative democracy, we would like, you know, to have those who are affected by decisions be

part of it and to address the needs of all constituents. So those

are some of the things I had in mind coming to the project. In terms of kind of the actual

academic part of it, there’s a lot of great work on poverty and there’s

a lot of great work on Congress, but it’s not so often that the two come together. And so that was

a place that I was hoping to contribute to with this book. And there’s other work

there. But I think it’s a smaller piece of what we know. And I’m very

interested in the representation part of it. So thinking about, you know, who’s doing

what for whom in particular, which legislators are active for the poor. So

three things I was really interested in is first, thinking really about interests rather than the opinions

of the poor. And that’s a place where the policy agendas project data is huge. And I know we’re

going to get more into that and also thinking about kind of different stages

in the legislative process. So not just the outcomes, but the bill’s sponsor, the hearings held

all those types of things. And then also thinking about the different types of representation

that we have in political science, but kind of bringing them all together. So

thinking about Congress as a whole, thinking about members in their own district and then thinking about this surrogate

representation that I end up kind of coming round to and of course, to the book. So

I can get more in. Kishore, OK. So mostly studies of representation of the

poor. I’m thinking of much of the work of Larry Bartels. Martin Guillen’s is focusing on

the poorest preferences in a public in a public opinion setting. So what what do you gain by by moving to

elites to look at elite representation? And then how do you actually measure what elites are doing to

represent the poor? Yeah, absolutely. So as you mentioned, there’s some great work,

Martel’s and Gilens, but you know, and also some other work out there that focuses on the

representation of of opinions, expressed preferences. And I think in part this

reflects the broader kind of two schools of thought in the discipline,

in representation in general. Right. We’ve got kind of a representation of opinions, school of thought

and then a representation of interests. And so, you know, just thinking about the congressional literature, you

can kind of see examples of both. So in part because there’s already great work.

Looking at opinion and preferences more and in part reflecting

my own sense of representation and the importance of representing interests,

one of the things I really like about looking at interests inherent thinking about

kind of what are the policies, what are the ways in which government could act that affect the daily lives

of people. And I think one of the really nice things about approaching representation is interests

is that it doesn’t require there

to always be an opinion there. So it’s easier to see. I guess I’m trying to say is it’s easier

to see nonevents because you can identify it and then, you know, if something doesn’t happen,

which is always a challenge in political sciences, those nonevents. One of the other things is that I

think that it is a realistic way to anticipate how legislators

represent because it’s really hard for them to stay on top of all the variations in

public opinion. Public opinion can also change. Scholars have raised concern about the level

of information when we get into certain types of specific public opinion.

And so this is a way that I think is realistic to imagine that a member

of Congress and their staff can really think about addressing the needs of who they represent.

And so those are some of the reasons I went with representation of interests. And so what you did was you defined a

what she did, I should say. I should speak to everybody else out there. You know, you did. You defined a set of sub topics within

the policy Dennis Project Kobuk as poverty related issues. And there there’s a lot of interesting sub

topics in there. Some are very specific to to the poor. And you know that there’s there’s no brainers. I’m curious why you do decide

to include such topics that are closer to just kind of broad economic

idea issues for other people. So our general macro economic sub topic unemployment rate subject to

are job training, some topic, etc. Are these are these popular issues that are the interests

of the poor or are they interests that maybe are more of the poor than other people, but still kind of other people? Yeah. So this

hits I think and it’s a really good question and something I thought a lot about

in the course of the project in that China defined the interests of the poor. Obviously I was going to look at the social

welfare codes and things we normally think about. But it was really important to me to

broaden out how we define the interests of the poor, both because I wanted

to get as inclusive a measure as possible, but also because I want to acknowledge that

different legislators may have different approaches to to alleviating poverty.

And so for some, predominantly for Democrats or liberals, we’ll see it in some of the codes that reflect

social welfare programs in the traditional sense. But it’s also very possible that a

Republican or a more conservative or free market oriented legislator is also trying

to address poverty, but doing it through them through jobs.

Right. Or through providing tax incentives for landlords

to build rent controlled housing or things of that sort. And so I wanted to be able

to include all of that. So that’s one of the reason that in addition to the kind

of standard things that the set of social welfare codes, I also expanded

out, like you mentioned, to look at things like the employment training and workforce development sub codes.

And I think as well some of the macro economic codes. But your question also kind of gets

at this this decision that I made about whether to focus on targeted programs

or more general programs and so on, some of the the work on

policy addressing the poor makes the argument that universal programs are really important

piece of the puzzle. So say Social Security, that as we lift everybody, the

poor are also helped. And I I agree with that completely. But for my

specific questions where I’m really looking at how members of Congress represent the poor, who’s

taking up the cause, that to me wasn’t as good of a match, because

if you see a legislator sponsoring legislation to improve or increase Social

Security, I think it would be tricky to say they’re doing that to help the poor. And so I wanted

to stay narrow enough such that I could say that when you act on these types of issues, it

is with the poor in mind. If if someone like, say,

the present United States decides to act on immigration issues and

says that he’s representing the poor, is he representing the poor in that sense? I mean, can you represent only some of the poor? Can

you represent can you represent the poor in ways that aren’t true, addressing poverty?

He is a hawkish foreign policy in some way representing the poor. So

I definitely think that you can represent or take actions that help

some types of poor people more than others types of poor people and certainly

in the research that I do in this book. More generally, I would argue that that should

be, you know, quote unquote, counted. It doesn’t mean that you have to. You know, there’s a place

for these targeted programs. And so some things are gonna be helping the urban poor more. Some might

be targeting access in rural areas. And I think all of that counts. Certainly,

I think. I’m sorry I lost the. The second question. I guess the better question is, is anti-poverty

specifically the the overriding priority of the poor? I mean, are do the poor

maybe have different preferences for cultural issues or foreign policy issues or other issues that you

a representative from that district? We’re going to transition to that after this. Might want to emphasize, because that’s what

their constituents members emphasize. Yeah, no, I think I think that that is part of the story.

But I think that when we’re talking about Americans living in poverty

and addressing that data, the day to day difficulty

is a top priority. It doesn’t mean that they don’t also perhaps have an interest or preferences

on issues of international relations. And, you know, kind of broader policies.

But I think, you know, if we all think about our own lives, we are very familiar

with how with our day to day troubles and with how we interact with government in a very personal

way. And so I think that’s definitely part of how the poor see

politics and government. But I I agree with a broader point that that’s not that is not

all that they can engage in in terms of political engagement and preferences. But I

think it’s a very important and immediate part of that transition to talk about representation. Emily’s

going to ask most of these questions. But first, I just like your dad to explain. I think the most important and by far

the most shocking, I think finding of your book, which is that dyadic representation

tends to break down for representing impoverished districts. Can you explain what you found there?

And then we’ll move on this. More specific questions. Yeah, absolutely. So

in the after looking at kind of collective representation, which we can

get to if we want to. But the dyadic, I was really interested in this kind of quintessential relationship.

Right. Is does your legislator act in on behalf of you? Right. Do you have a voice

there? And so what I looked at here was I looked at all members of the House going back to the early 1980s.

And I look specifically at Bill sponsorship and then also voting. But I’ll talk mostly about the bill sponsorship.

And so using the policy agendas data, I was able to devise

a count for every member, for every single one of those 30 some odd years as to how many

poverty related bills they sponsored. And again, that encompasses a wide

range. And what theoretically I anticipated finding,

given the literature, is that have you as you have more of one type of constituent, you should

be more active. So even if overall levels of activity in Congress on poverty are pretty low,

you know, there is some movement and I would expect that the people that are sponsoring poverty related

legislation should come from more poor districts. So we think about this, you know, say, for instance,

if you have more farmers in your district, you expect that legislator to sponsor more ag bills.

And that is not what I find. And I shake it every which way and turn it upside down.

You know, I look at do you sponsor legislation at all? How many bills do you sponsor?

I look at kind of serious legislation. So do you sponsor bills that go to that are referred to a committee

on which you sit? And no matter how I do this, there is not

a relationship between poverty in the district and legislative activity on poverty issues.

So what this means is that a legislator with, you know, two or three percent poverty

in the district and a legislator with 20 percent poverty in the district, they look

the same. They’re their activity levels are indistinguishable from one another. And I control for a host

of other factors. And looking at this, so both race

and gender and party of the legislator, I control four district factors. So overall

economic conditions and for national trends. And again,

this this non finding just keeps sticking. Now,

this was the thing that I was not happy to find. Neither normatively or

also because no findings are kind of tricky in political science. But

nevertheless, it was there. And so although members from poor districts

are not more active, I did find some patterns in terms of the types of legislators that

that are more likely to sponsor legislation related to

poverty issues. And so these tended to be Democrats tended to be African-American legislators,

female legislators and also from urban districts. And so then

I kind of pivot to thinking more about who is active. Why is that? And that’s

where I get into this notion of if it’s not dyadic representation, what

is it? And so I come to the surrogate representation part of this, which is

the idea that you represent constituents who are not in your district. And,

you know, we think about this. I think most commonly with race and gender, that minority

constituent who has, say, a white member in their district may feel represented

by a minority legislator who technically represents a different district. And so

the poor also have this type of surrogate representation or or Puerto Rico

gets represented by the Puerto Rican districts in New York City. That’s right. Yeah. So Emily was

going to ask you a bit more about that. Yeah. I thought the theme of surrogate uppers on Haitian

was really interesting in the book. And what I wanted to know is what do you think motivates surrogate

representatives to abdicate for the poor and how do you reconcile that with the obligations

they have to their own districts, which might not be as poverty dense? Yeah, those are really good

questions. So in part what I think motivates these

surrogate representatives for many of them. I think that there is a kind of talk

about these overlapping needs. So for some of the female legislators, what

I find is that the type of poverty legislation they propose tends to have a gendered lens

to it. And so I think partially they come to these issues as surrogates

for the poor, but because it also overlaps with their role as descriptive representatives

and as female legislators. I think that that

reinforces their activity. And I think the same dynamic also occurs for African-American

legislators. There are substantive overlaps in what we would consider perhaps

African-American issues and in poverty issues. And so those overlaps help support surrogate

representation of the poor. But I also think that some of it is that

legislators just carry their own beliefs about this, that this is something that they want

to be active on and that they are committed to.

And I think you don’t and I deal world. You know, it would be great to have

really rich data on kind of their own personal experiences and see how that filters in.

You know, we have a sense that people’s personal experience shapes who they are as legislators.

We think about those personal roots of representation. But obviously, that type of data is really

hard to come by. So that’s that’s only my speculations about it from kind

of reading and looking at the particular cases. But it’s not something I have systematically.

Do you think that surrogate representatives see themselves as advocates for the poor, or do

you think they see themselves more as advocating on the intersectional issues that might relate strongly

to their district as opposed to being an advocate for the poor? That’s a really good question.

I think it varies. I’m thinking about so these what I called champions of the

poor that are that are the surrogate representatives. I think you have a little bit of both

in there. And so for some, I do think that that intersection or overlapping,

I know those are qualitatively different terms and I’m using them somewhat interchangeably here.

I do think that is an important part of it. And in a very so they they might

not as as much focus on their role as representatives of the

poor, despite that behaviorally, that’s what they’re doing. One of the things with surrogate

representation that’s tricky is that there’s no electoral accountability in that relationship.

And so Jane Mansbridge has written a lot about these different forms of representation. And she

tackles this issue in her writings. And one of the things that can

help reinforce what is otherwise kind of a vulnerable form of representation

is some type of shared identity. So when she’s thinking about surrogate representation of African-Americans

or minorities or women, one of the things that helps to buttress that relationship

and that commitment as a representative is a shared identity. And for the poor,

that’s less likely because there are not very many poor members of Congress, as

other studies have shown us. So I do think that that common identity on these other dimensions does

does help buttress the surrogate role. Into your earlier question about, you know,

what does this mean for these representatives as it come at a cost with their representation of their district?

I think that for most of these legislators, that’s not they would not see it that way.

And if we think about legislators taking the lead on certain issues and kind of developing

reputations on certain issues, I think that they are

that prioritization of poverty issues is something that they’re able to balance with their commitment. To their districts,

and some of these legislators do come from relatively wealthy districts, but

they may find support even in their their home constituents for their activity on poverty

issues. Absolutely. What I really appreciate about the book was that you really took a lot of different approaches

to find any kind of representation for the poor. So if I am a poverty advocate,

advocate, what strategy do you suggest to best advance poor issues, whether it be

from lobbying kind of standpoint or through a legislative process of just getting issues either on the agenda

or successfully passed through legislation? Yeah. That is a great question, I think.

So I have a couple of answers. Probably the the least grandiose would be for the

organizations and an advocates that are already out there to

to think broadly about who might be the most advantageous legislators to work with. Because,

you know, convention would be the people who represent high poverty districts. But as

I show, that’s not necessarily the case. And so I think that’s a really important part, both

for the actual lobbyists and practitioners, but also for those of us who study interest groups

and study that question of kind of who do you lobby and who are you partnering with on Capitol Hill

to recognize that there may be some kind of unexpected partners? I guess I would

say I think one of the other. So then kind of saying in the interest

group community, but maybe getting a little bit grander

and aspiration would be to increase the number of groups working on behalf of the poor.

I do think and previous scholars have noted as well that it’s a pretty.

There are some great organizations out there, but there’s not a lot of organizations out there. And so I do

think that that having more advocates for the poor in the greater

policymaking community is really important, too, calling attention to these issues,

also to being able to say, here’s some proposals here, let us work with you

to bring these ideas to fruition or at least to have them as part of the conversation. And that’s a place where not

just interest groups, but also think tanks, you know, producing more policy papers

that legislators who want to be active on this could then use to kind of subsidize their activities

in that way would be an important part of this as well.

Yeah. So I think those are two ways in thinking about kind of the organized interests

as to how we might be able to help increase this. Great. I think I’ll pass it back on to E.J. So

I’m I’m glad you mentioned think-tanks just because it’s you know, I’m an academic. I want to talk. I want to do my own work. The

Democratic think tanks are heavily involved on these issues, on poverty issues. I’m sorry. They measured

their policy agenda using very similar methods. And social welfare policy is by far the biggest issue

for progressive think tanks and maybe other many of the other topics that you’d identify as poverty issues

are up there and less so for Republicans think tanks and Republican think tanks. Although you

find in your work that Republicans aren’t aren’t trying to sabotage poverty, they’re not trying to make poor

people poorer. I’d argue that the think tanks probably are. And Early’s

trying to cut anti-poverty programs. So is there are there are parties per person problem here? Is

there a is is. Are you are you measuring issue ownership ultimately

or are you measuring something else? Yeah. So I I think

this is a case where overall members of Congress are not

particularly active on poverty issues. Right. When I look at it, you know, about

three quarters of members of Congress never sponsor a single bill related to poverty, even given

that pretty broad definition that I use. So, you know, the

first cut of this is to say that neither party is doing a lot.

That said, it would be disingenuous not to recognize that there are party differences that come

up here. And I I think that this is a really interesting

question about what is going on with Republican legislators, particularly from poor districts.

Right. Because there are a number of Republicans who represent

rural poor, mostly in some suburban poor as well. And yet they’re not as

active there. I think as to, you know, whether this is

capturing the the party element to it or a kind of issue ownership

for the Democrats, I think is a really interesting question. And I.

You know, there has been some characterizations and kind of the way we

talk about poverty that that fits more with the Democratic identity,

and that is certainly true, but particularly because poverty is not exclusively urban

or kind of quote unquote Democratic constituencies. It seems a place

that there is space for both parties here. And that

this would be a really valuable place for the parties to be able to come together

in a kind of in a classic sense. Right. Always log roll kind of. You have, you know, urban poor and maybe

more Democratic, rural, poor, maybe Republican. Let’s do something for everybody. And we all, you know,

get the greater good. I mean, there’s I guess there’s a third option to represent the poor here that we don’t talk about, which is I mean,

I hate to say this way, but liberal class warfare, Raymie, is the problem that we don’t have a social cleavage in United States based

upon economic issues. I think about that. That Gilens and Page work.

And there’s a follow up piece by Chris Pleasance, you Soroka and Alex branum. And what they

what they found was that the rich and the poor don’t just agree that much, or at least the middle class. The rich rarely disagree.

And there’s very few issues in which they do. And they’re not anti-poverty issues. So

except there maybe tax issues. So, you know, is is there is there an opportunity

out here for someone to come along, either Republican or Democrat, and really reshape American politics? I mean, are the votes

there? Yeah. That’s a really great set of questions. I’m going to try and keep them all in

my head. No, this is fantastic. I mean, I think this soda to get to this question of whether

there are a lot of differences across the classes. You know, I think that is

a place where, as you mentioned, there’s research that shows there aren’t that much power. There’s also the

other side where some of the scholars, in fact, show that there is pretty significant difference of preferences

across class. And so I think that to me is kind of an ongoing

conversation. And obviously it shapes kind of where you take the research next, depending on

which of those kind of which side of you about you’re on. Yeah, exactly.

But I think, you know, one of the things I would mention in the context of

that is that some of that focuses on kind of general ideology

or general disposition towards government, which is

not what I’m looking at. And so if I take kind of your question in the context

of my research here in thinking about these interests, there is just no way that there’s not

a difference here between interest rates. So the actual policies. You know, school lunch programs

or Head Start or help for the homeless. Those

that they’re that matters differently to the poor and economically insecure than

it does to the middle class or to the rich. So I think I’ll kind of sidestep some of the ongoing

question about whether preferences and ideologies are different across classes and say that I think

there are very real differences in the types of policies that directly affect us.

But based on kind of where in the economic spectrum we we are. The other thing I would say

about this kind of question about class warfare and maybe spin it a little

positively, then you call it populism. I think this is really

interesting. And just you know, in the time I was working on this book, things shifted. So if we think about the 2016

election. Right. You had Bernie Sanders, of course, on the left, kind of talking a much more populist

message. And on the right, if we look at the president’s message when he was a candidate,

it was also very populist. Now, whether or not that plays out

on the actions legislators take is a separate question. But the rhetoric, I would say in the last couple

of years and even going back earlier. Right. If you think about some of the rhetoric in the early days of the Tea Party,

you know, has a populist undercurrent to it. And so there is a real potential here

to to bring focus and for elected officials to see reason

and benefit electorally to engaging these issues. And then if we think now

about the 2018 midterms, you also see this, you know, surge of

of Democratic freshmen coming in, of more progressive Democrats having a louder voice,

at least as the media is, is telling us so far it remains to be seen what actually happens

in Congress. But I think those all have the potential to

shape the conversation and to refocus our attention on poverty

and inequality. The caveat I would give is that I think

if if past is a guide here, sometimes these conversations tend to focus

more on the 99 percent and the 1 percent, and that’s really

valuable. But the 99 percent. Isn’t all the same. Or they

tend to focus on middle class, right. And because as Americans, we

have a tendency to all identify as the middle class. And so

I think the caution here is to make sure that in any questions or debates about

inequality, that the poor don’t fall out of those conversations. And you find

that this is not an insignificant number of people. Right there. There is there there. And voters in fact,

it’s not that the poor don’t vote. It’s not that there aren’t poor people, that people aren’t aren’t representing them. And so there’s

definitely seems to be a missed opportunity there. Yeah, absolutely. There’s tens of millions of

poor Americans. And, you know, that number fluctuates, of course, but it’s a large number of people.

All right. So let’s let’s start wrapping this up. So where is this budget going from here? I mean, you you

mentioned things are changing. So, I mean, I’m assuming that you’re thinking about what what the follow up is here

and and how would you how would you go out and go about measuring and

understanding how things are changing? Yeah, absolutely. So one of the areas in which I’m working

and extending kind of offers some of the ideas that that came about through the book is actually

focusing on the rural poor and focusing also on on party and Republicans.

And so taking a closer look again over time about how Republican activity has shifted

in terms not just of the numbers, but also the types of of bills when they are sponsoring anything, when they are doing

things, focusing attention, a little bit more on that and also thinking much more about

the balance of programs targeting rural poverty, urban poverty, suburban poverty, and

then just the kind of overall poverty. So that’s an area in which

continuing to look. Is it really as I said before, I don’t want to give the impression that some poor are well-represented.

That is not the case, but the rural poor are especially

underrepresented because of this partisan dynamic that we were just talking about. So that’s an area that

I continue to work in right now. The other thing that I think will be

interesting thinking kind of more about the current events going on is how this

new Congress and this this next two year cycle takes up issues

related more broadly to class and to taxation. So thinking about, for instance,

the recent proposal that got a lot of attention about increasing the upper

bracket to 70 percent tax rate. So that’s not directly actually

about poverty. Right? Again, looking at that top 1 percent, but the implications of this

of having these conversations and and also how could those revenues then

be used in other ways and if the purpose of it is to address inequality?

One would think that as that conversation develops, some of the resources and ideas that come

from that could be used to address issues of poverty. You think it’s a coincidence that I was into

rock? Isaiah Cortez represents one of the poorest districts in the country. So,

yeah, I think I think there’s both. Right. So in some

sense, this is there are exceptions to my general results that there

that there is not a relationship. Now, that doesn’t mean that it never happens. Of course, that’s changing. Yeah, right.

So that could be part of it. I also think that this is a place where to the earlier conversation,

one’s own experiences matter. Right. So another place in which she brought attention was

when she mentioned that she was not able to rent a place in D.C. until she got her paycheck because it was expensive.

And that’s true. You know, it really is. And so I think we’re also as

we get greater economic diversity, perhaps whether in this class or in future classes and people bringing

different personal experiences. And that also helps because, you know, that

gives a directness to certain policy is a familiarity with what that means

to not have money, to have two residences and two expensive cities or,

you know, what have you. And so I think that’s also an important part of what could

change the conversation a bit. Well, this has been wonderful. Thank you. Before we go, I just

we’d like you we ask everybody to recommend a work of political science that you think that our listeners should should listen to.

Oh, this is a listen to this is a tough question. There’s a lot

of really great stuff out there. And I hesitate because

I feel like anything I say, then as soon as as we conclude,

you know, it’s it’s been out for a couple of years, but kind of related to some of what we’ve been talking

about. Jim Carrey’s book on Legislating in the Dark on the politics of information

and party control of information, I think is a really important piece for people thinking

about Congress, but also policymaking. And, you know, it comes to mind.

Secularly, in light of the earlier part of our conversation, thinking about

wanting to have more voices at the table. And so it’s really important thinking about poverty that some of the

proposals are going to be free market and some are going to be about world poverty and some are going to be about minority

poverty and some are going to be, you know, progressive or socialist or what have you. But if we think about the quality

of policymaking, having information, having ideas is a really

important part of that. And so his book really speaks to how. Party leaders

have shaped the information flows in ways that I think are really consequential.

Christina, thank you for joining us. Emily, thank you for joining us, everybody for listening. This has been

your Policy Agendas podcast.