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Dr. Jie Zhang very kindly invited us to present our research to her class at Ochanomizu University 31 October 2024. We presented work on Britons’ preferences with regard to the sociodemographic characteristics of politicians (Hepplewhite) and multiracial coalition-building in New York City (Silverman) and faced questions from the audience afterwards.

We would like to extend our thanks to Dr. Zhang for providing us with the opportunity to present our research at Ochanomizu University’s Institute for Global Leadership. Extremely well-run and professional, it was a wonderful event that we both thoroughly enjoyed. We also like to extend our gratitude to the staff of Ochanomizu University – Masako Kurawaki, Yukari Hirabayashi, Shizuka Serita, and Isuzu Hosaka – for making it so. Two members of staff from the Japan Foundation – Tsubasa Sato and Kurumi Otake – also attended and we sincerely appreciate their attendance.

Britons’ Preferences with Regard to the Sociodemographic Characteristics of Politicians
Matthew Hepplewhite (University of Oxford and University of Tokyo)

Britons’ views towards the sociodemographic characteristics (e.g., age, gender, sexuality, class, etc) of politicians is both a timely and important topic.

It is timely as the sociodemographic composition of the elected component of Britain’s Parliament – the House of Commons – has undergone dramatic change during the post-war period. The number of female MPs, for example, has increased from 24 – or 4% – in 1945 to 220 – or 34% – in 2019 and the number of ethnic and racial minority MPs from zero in 1951 to 66 in 2019 – from 0% to 10%. There have been other less visible – and much less discussed – changes in the sociodemographic profile of the House of Commons. Where over a hundred MPs in 1951 formerly held manual occupations, by 2015 this number had dropped to just 26; by 2019, not a single MP came directly to Parliament from a manual job.

Some academics have noted this development. Criddle (2010, 328), for example, wrote in 2010 of the ‘virtual eradication of the manual worker MP’ and Childs and Cowley (2011, 11–12), the following year, of the ‘almost total middle-class takeover’ of the lower house.

Some politicians have too. Ed Miliband (quoted in Waugh and Macrory 2013, 23), for example, has stated that ‘Parliament is too middle class’ and Angela Rayner (2022), the current deputy prime minister, that ‘while MPs have become more representative in terms of gender and ethnicity in recent years…there is a large and growing representation gap in terms of social class’.

Particularly prominent among the ever-increasing middle-class MPs are those who worked in politics before their election, the number of whom has swollen from 18 in 1951 to over a hundred by 2015.

The educational profile of British MPs has also changed greatly between 1945 and the present, at both the secondary and tertiary level. With the regard to the former, there has been a fall in the proportion of privately educated MPs. Where 75 per cent of Conservative MPs, 20 per cent of Labour MPs, and 50 per cent of Liberal MPs in 1951 had been privately educated, these figures had fallen to 41 per cent, 14 per cent, and 30 per cent, respectively, by 2019. With regard to the latter, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of MPs who attended university. Where 60 per cent of Conservative MPs and 39 per cent of Labour MPs in 1959 had attended university, these figures had risen to 88 per cent and 90 per cent, respectively, by 2019. There has also been a significant change in the type of university attended by British MPs. Specifically, there has been a decline in the number of MPs educated at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, colloquially known as ‘Oxbridge’. Where 52 per cent of Conservative MPs, 19 per cent of Labour MPs, and 67 per cent of Liberal MPs elected in 1951 attended Oxbridge, these figures had fallen to 27 per cent, 18 per cent, and 18 per cent, respectively, by 2019. Despite – in some cases because of – these changes, the House of Commons does not reflect the sociodemographic profile of the wider country. For example, notwithstanding the aforementioned fall in the number of privately educated MPs, they remain vastly over-represented in the House of Commons. Where 29 per cent of MPs in 2019 attended private school, just 7 per cent of the wider country did so (Sutton Trust and Social Mobility Commission 2019). Similarly, notwithstanding the aforementioned fall in the number of Oxbridge-educated educated MPs, they too remain vastly over-represented in the House of Commons. Where 24 per cent of MPs in 2019 attended Oxbridge, less than 1 per cent of the wider British society did so.

The focus on the sociodemographic characteristics of politicians is also important. Politicians’ sociodemographic characteristics have an impact on the policies they support (and oppose). Studies have shown, for example, that Labour MPs from working-class backgrounds were more likely to rebel against Tony Blair’s welfare reforms than career politicians (O’Grady 2019), that American politicians who have served in the military are less likely to initiate the use of force that those who have not (Gelpi and Feaver 2002), and that funding for child-care services in Norwegian municipalities increases as the number of local female politicians increases (Bratton and Ray 2002).

Further, politicians’ sociodemographic characteristics also affect voters and their behaviour. Studies have shown, for example, that increased representation of ethnic and racial minorities and immigrants is associated with increased electoral turnout among these groups (Geese 2023; Rocha et al. 2010), that government decisions are viewed as more legitimate when they are made by groups that reflect the sociodemographic composition of society (Arnesen and Peters 2018), and that increased representation of women, ethnic and racial minorities and the working class is associated with increased trust in, satisfaction with, and identification with government and politicians among these groups (Barnes and Saxton 2019; Heideman 2020; Rahn and Rudolph 2005).

It is this second set of consequences, concerning turnout, government legitimacy, and trust in, satisfaction with, and identification with government, which is particularly relevant in the British context. In recent decades, Britain has experienced record low levels of electoral turnout and record high levels of disillusionment with politicians and politics. Turnout at general elections has fallen from 77.7 per cent in 1992 to just 59.7% in 2024 (Cracknell and Baker 2024), while the percentage of Britons who trust the government to place the needs of the country above the interests of their own party has fallen from 38 per cent in 1986 to just 17 per cent by 2013 (Phillips and Simpson 2015).

In order to test Britons’ views towards the sociodemographic characteristics of politicians, a conjoint candidate choice experiment and surveys were conducted. In conjoint experiments, respondents are asked to rate or choose between two or more alternatives, the attributes of which vary randomly (among a specified set of possible values). They are thus ideally suited for testing people’s views towards political candidates, who vary in multiple ways (by age, by gender, by occupation, etc). Moreover, they have been shown to be effective at reducing social desirability bias (Horiuchi, Markovich, and Yamamoto 2022) and reflect decisions made in the real world (Hainmueller, Hangartner, and Yamamoto 2015).

The conjoint candidate choice experiment was carried out in May 2023 as part of the British Election Study. The surveys were conducted in three waves: the first in July 2021, the second in June 2022, and the third in March 2023. The conjoint candidate choice experiment asked respondents which type of person they would like to represent them personally (i.e. as their MP) while the surveys asked respondents what type of people they wanted to see in Parliament as a whole.

The combination of a constituency-focused candidate choice experiment and surveys which ask about representatives as a group is a technique which has not previously been utilised and reveals two crucial findings. First, that Britons want their own MP to be like them, but second, that they want Parliament as a whole to be reflective of society. That is to say, while there are various types of people that Britons do not want to be their representative, they do not believe that these people should be excluded from Parliament. Rather, they want all groups of society represented in Parliament, in proportion to their numbers in the wider country; that is to say, they echo the view of John Adams (1776, 9), the second president of the United States, that legislatures should be an ‘exact portrait’ of the societies they represent.

matthew.hepplewhite@politics.ox.ac.uk

References

Adams, John. 1776. Thoughts on Government. Philadelphia, PA: John Dunlap.
Arnesen, Sveinung, and Yvette Peters. 2018. ‘The Legitimacy of Representation: How Descriptive, Formal, and Responsiveness Representation Affect the Acceptability of Political Decisions’, Comparative Political Studies, Volume 51, Number 7, pp. 868–899.
Barnes, Tiffany D., and Gregory W. Saxton. 2019. ‘Working-Class Legislators and Perceptions of Representation in Latin America’, Political Research Quarterly, Volume 72, Number 4, pp. 910–928.
Bratton, Kathleen A., and Leonard P. Ray. 2002. ‘Descriptive Representation, Policy Outcomes, and Municipal Day-Care Coverage in Norway’, American Journal of Political Science, Volume 46, Number 2, pp. 428–437.
Childs, Sarah, and Philip Cowley. 2011. ‘The Politics of Local Presence: Is there a Case for Descriptive Representation?’, Political Studies, Volume 59, Number 1, pp. 1–19.
Cracknell, Richard, and Carl Baker. 2024. General election 2024: Results and analysis. No place of publication: House of Commons Library. Research Briefing: Number 10009.
Criddle, Byron. 2010. ‘More Diverse, Yet More Uniform: MPs and Candidates’ in Dennis Kavanagh and Philip Cowley, The British General Election of 2010. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 306–329.
Geese, Lucas. 2023. ‘Does Descriptive Representation Narrow the Immigrant Gap in Turnout? A Comparative Study across 11 Western European Democracies’, Political Studies, Volume 71, Number 4, 1277–1297.
Gelpi, Christopher, and Peter D. Feaver. 2002. ‘Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick? Veterans in the Political Elite and the American Use of Force’, American Political Science Review, Volume 96, Number 4, pp. 779-793.
Horiuchi, Yusaku, Zachary Markovich, and Teppei Yamamoto. 2022. ‘Does Conjoint Analysis Mitigate Social Desirability Bias?’, Political Analysis, Volume 30, Number 4, pp. 535-549.
Hainmueller, Jens, Dominik Hangartner, and Teppei Yamamoto. 2015. ‘Validating vignette and conjoint survey experiments against real-world behavior’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 112, Number 8, pp. 2395–2400.
Heideman, Amanda J. 2020. ‘Race, Place, and Descriptive Representation: What Shapes Trust Toward Local Government’, Representation, Volume 56, Number 2, pp. 195–213.
O’Grady, Tom. 2019. ‘Careerists Versus Coal-Miners: Welfare Reforms and the Substantive Representation of Social Groups in the British Labour Party’, Comparative Political Studies, Volume 52, Number 4, pp. 544–578.
Phillips, Miranda, and Ian Simpson. 2015. ‘Disengaged and disconnected? Trends in attitudes towards politics’ in John Curtice and Rachel Ormston (eds.), British social attitudes 32. London: NatCen Social Research, pp. 122–145.
Rahn, Wendy M., and Thomas J. Rudolph. 2005. ‘A tale of political trust in American cities’, Public Opinion Quarterly, Volume 69, Number, pp. 530–560.
Rayner, Angela. 2022. The Representation Gap with the Rt Hon Angela Rayner MP, 19 July. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E03N_TvOPeg (accessed 10 September 2024)
Rocha, Rene R., Caroline J. Tolbert, Daniel C. Bowen, and Christopher J. Clark. 2010. ‘Race and Turnout: Does Descriptive Representation in State Legislatures Increase Minority Voting?’, Political Research Quarterly, Volume 63, Number 4, pp. 890–907.
Sutton Trust and Social Mobility Commission. 2019. Elitist Britain 2019: The educational backgrounds of Britain’s leading people. London: Sutton Trust and Social Mobility Commission.
Waugh, Paul, and Sam Macrory. 2013. ‘United nation’, The House, 31 January, pp. 22–31.

Multiracial Coalition-Building in New York City
Ken Silverman (City University of New York and University of Tokyo)

In the second half of our presentation, we ventured across the pond to examine a case study of multiracial coalition-building in a hyper-diverse setting: New York City Council District 26 in the borough of Queens. That our event at Ochanomizu University occurred only days prior to a national election that witnessed an historic multiracial rightward shift in the United States, including among major groups of traditionally left-leaning urban and immigrant-origin voters (and within Queens itself, no less), underscores the enduring bipartisan importance of coalitional politics.

A focus on multiracial coalition-building offers relevant insights for other diversifying democratic contexts as well. At the macro-level, while norms enshrined in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) were designed with least developed states front of mind, it is notable how SDG 16 (peace, justice, and strong institutions) has become relevant for the Global North, where native stock aging and shrinking coupled with international migrant mobility have led to the proliferation of majority-minority electorates.[1] Target 16.7 of SDG 16—to ensure responsive, inclusive, and representative decision-making—not only aligns with the power-sharing and coalition-building goals outlined in the UN’s Agenda for Peace (Boutros-Ghali 1992) but also with other democratic conceptualizations, including consociationalism in plural societies (Lijphart 1977) and Robert Dahl’s (1971) seminal notion of polyarchy, which measures inclusiveness as a core democratic dimension.

Studying local campaign strategies in the hyper-diverse laboratory of Queens also provides an opportunity to deepen our understanding of how democratic inclusiveness is translated into the coalition-building necessary for electoral victories when no constituency group holds a numerical majority. As a quasi-microcosm of New York City’s paradoxical characteristics, District 26 features a knowledge economy-fuelled demographic dynamism (more ethnically diverse and politically active, younger, and faster growing than the city average) superimposed upon obstinate racial segregation and socioeconomic inequality.

Four major waves of immigrants constitute the district population. Wave 1 includes pre-1924 late-generation ethnics (LGEs; mostly Irish, Italian, and Greek); wave 2: post-1950s New York City Housing Authority communities (mostly African American and Puerto Rican); wave 3: post-1965 migrants (mostly East/South Asian and Latin American); and wave 4: post-1980s transplants and professionals (mostly “newcomer” Whites and Asians). Among racial groups, Hispanics are the largest at 35.5%, followed by Whites at 28.3%, Asians at 27.1%, and Blacks at 6.2% (NYCDCP 2015). Declining population replenishment led wave 1 LGEs to lose their numerical majority in the 1990s and there has not been a dominant racial or ethnic group since.

Importantly, racial share of the total district population does not overlap with that of the citizen voting age population (CVAP). Whites (from both waves 1 and 4) are overrepresented with 39.4% of the CVAP, while Asians and Hispanics are underrepresented in the CVAP at 21.3% and 27.5%, respectively; Blacks are the only group near parity (NYCBOE 2019). As such, a clear path to winning elected office in District 26 does not seem to exist without a coalition that includes a significant share of White voters.

Long dominated by an Irish American Democratic political machine that has held most Congressional, New York State Assembly, City Council, and Community Board Chair positions for much of the past half-century, District 26 experienced a watershed year in 2021 when Julie Won, a 1.5-generation immigrant from South Korea, emerged victorious in the June Democratic Primary.[2] Among the 23 total City Council candidates running that year, Won was most successful in mobilizing her base of both Asian and White supporters. I argue that her surprising election in a district that is neither Korean- or even Asian-dominated can be attributed to three key factors: 1) her positionality as a “new majority” candidate; 2) her moderate yet pluralist messaging; and 3) her appeal to a broad coalition of voters through hyper-local, cross-cutting issues.

First, as a “new-majority” candidate, Won built a winning coalition by mobilizing her multiple identities through her personal story as an immigrant, woman, and tenant to engage with likely voters from across constituency groups. Such “new-majority” candidates, who are commonly of immigrant and/or minority backgrounds, may enjoy greater electoral success in pluralistic contexts as voters come to support a candidate even if they do not belong to the same racial or ethnic group (Bhojwani 2021). As an evolved form of Pitkin’s (1967) descriptive representation, “new-majority” candidates may become more appealing as the obsolescence of the traditional majority/non-majority binary grows apparent in diversifying electorates.

Second, Won’s ability to attract a broad coalition of voters was enabled by her moderate yet pluralist messaging and multilingual get out the vote (GOTV) efforts, which energized mostly Asian wave 3 voters without alienating mostly White wave 4 voters, and vice versa. Given that political moderates are more adept than progressives at reaching Whites whilst mobilizing racial minorities, multiracial coalitions built around issues rather than color have proven to be more effective (Sonenshein 2003).

Lastly, Won’s focus on hyper-local, cross-cutting issues helped to garner the support of two highly-mobilized community groups: 1) transportation alternative activists advocating for bike lanes; and 2) families advocating for the protection of the Gifted and Talented (G&T) Program.[3] Her dual support of these issues would form the political glue of her electoral coalition of progressive wave 4 (bike lanes) and moderate wave 3 (G&T programs) voters, which helped set her apart from the crowded field of candidates.

Moreover, factors unique to the 2021 election cycle also benefitted Won: the city debut of ranked-choice voting and social ills exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Housing precarity, infrastructural inequalities, and anti-Asian hate crimes provided the campaign with key issues for priming its target coalition voters. Likewise, the size of the candidate field also appears to have sufficiently fragmented Won’s competition. Although her core support was rooted in election districts with high concentrations of voters of East Asian descent, her relative success among wave 4 Whites and wave 3 Hispanics demonstrates that non-Asians were also drawn to her along other descriptive dimensions. Ultimately, the coalition that carried her to victory consisted of native- and foreign-born Whites and Asians, along with foreign-born Hispanics.

Data for this study drew from New York City Board of Elections (NYCBOE) District 26 City Council Democratic Primary election voting results and semi-structured qualitative interviews of campaign representatives. Because the NYCBOE does not record the race of individual voters, Bayesian Improved Surname Coding, which uses both existing information on the ethnic associations of surnames and geographic location, was employed to predict voters’ ethnicity.

Despite the optimism that such multiethnic hyper-diversity might remedy New York’s “great anomaly” as a city of weak minority political incorporation (Mollenkopf 1986), enduring racial inequalities and structural hierarchies remain, especially along Black/non-Black lines (Flores and Lobo 2013). Given that the political maturation and full incorporation of new immigrant groups can typically take several generations, the transition towards a wave 3 political domination—perhaps with Won’s election serving as an early harbinger—remains in its early phases.

Nevertheless, Won’s surprising victory demonstrates not only the extent to which coalition-building for new immigrant groups to gain political footholds has become sine qua non, but also how obsolete traditional notions of descriptive representation have become in hyper-diverse political arenas. Won’s victory also highlights the need to expand understandings of “deracialization,” given that she did not downplay her race as a strategy to appeal to White voters (Parker, Sebastian, Towler, Collingwood, and Oskooii 2020). As urban areas across country cases move towards a level of diversity in which no group holds a numerical majority, Won’s playbook might serve as a strategic model for building the multiracial coalitions likely needed to win future elections.

ksilverman@gradcenter.cuny.edu

References

Bhojwani, Sayu. 2021. ‘The New Machine: Nonprofits and South Asian Political Incorporation’, In Immigrant Crossroads: Globalization, Incorporation, and Placemaking in Queens, New York, Hum, Tarry, Ron Hayduk, Francois Pierre-Louis, Jr., Michael Alan Krasner, eds., pp. 193-211. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Boutros-Ghali, Boutros. 1992. An Agenda for Peace: Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking and Peace-keeping. New York: United Nations.
Dahl, Robert A. 1971. Polyarchy: Participation and Observation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Flores, Ronald J. O. and Arun Peter Lobo. 2013. ‘The reassertion of a Black/non-Black color line: The rise in integrated neighborhoods without Blacks in New York City, 1970–2010’, Journal of Urban Affairs, Volume 35, Number 3, pp. 255-282.
Lijphart, Arend. 1977. Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Mollenkopf, John H. 1986. ‘New York: The Great Anomaly’, PS: Political Science & Politics, Volume 19, Number 3, pp. 591-597.
New York City Board of Elections (NYCBOE). 2019. ‘Council District’ data.
New York City Department of City Planning (NYCDCP). 2015. ‘Census Demographics at the NYC City Council district (CNCLD) level.’ https://data.cityofnewyork.us/download/ye4r-qpmp/application%2Fzip
Parker, Christopher Sebastian, Christopher C. Towler, Loren Collingwood, and Kassra A. R. Oskooii. 2020. ‘Race and Racism in US Campaigns’, In The Oxford Handbook of Electoral Persuasion, Elizabeth Suhay, Bernard Grofman, and Alexander H. Trechsel, eds., pp. 278-295. New York: Oxford University Press.
Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel. 1967. The Concept of Representation. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Shapiro, Eliza. ‘Adams Commits, With Few Details, to Keeping Gifted Program in Schools’, New York Times, October 15, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/15/nyregion/eric-adams-gifted-talented-nyc-schools.html.
Sonenshein, Raphael J. 2003. ‘The Prospects for Multiracial Coalitions: Lessons from America’s Three Largest Cities’, In Racial Politics in American Cities, Third Edition, Browning, Rufus P., Dale Rogers Marshall, and David H. Tabb, eds., pp. 333-356.

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[1] For more on SDG 16, see: https://www.globalgoals.org/goals/16-peace-justice-and-strong-institutions.

[2] Although Won officially became a City Councilmember via her victory in the November 2021 General election, which is generally regarded as uncompetitive in the mostly Democratic District 26, the June 2021 Democratic Primary election is considered the more important election among the two.

[3] Founded in New York City in 1973 to create a separate learning track for students with “exceptional academic capacity,” the Gifted and Talented (G&T) Program has come to be viewed as a form of institutionalized segregation over subsequent decades. This is due in part to the fact that although roughly 70% of the students in the New York City public school system are Black and Hispanic, three-quarters of G&T students are White and Asian (Shapiro 2021). As then-Mayor Bill de Blasio proposed reforms to phase out G&T programs, it emerged as a salient electoral issue for many Asian voters. For more on G&T, see: https://enrollmentsupport.schools.nyc/app/answers/detail/a_id/3700/~/applying-for-the-gifted-and-talented-program.

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