Rivalry and Reform: Presidents, Social Movements, and the Transformation of American Politics

In short, there is nary a significant regression coefficient to suggest that the poor are represented in the aggregate or by the representatives who serve them. The penultimate empirical chapter of the book turns to testing the hypothesis that the poor receive representation through a surrogate relationship. The theory of surrogate representation, where representatives take up the cause of underserved constituencies outside their own districts, has received few empirical tests as impressive and convincing as the one Miler undertakes. Miler demonstrates that African Americans and Democratic women provide the poor with surrogate representation by championing poverty-relevant legislation. For these representatives, advocacy on behalf of the poor is primarily driven not by district characteristics, but instead by a shared concern with issues relevant to the poor. The sequence of Poor Representation’s analyses leaves readers little room for doubt that the poor are a woefully underserved constituency, aided only by a handful of surrogate champions who advocate on behalf of poverty-relevant issues. However, by taking the literature on policy responsiveness as its primary theoretical frame, Poor Representation misses out on an opportunity to engage with important debates on the nature and evolution of the modern American welfare state and, in doing so, to anticipate some of the book’s central findings. For instance, programs like the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) are mentioned but not clearly situated within the empirical or, more significantly, theoretical inquiries of the book. Yet a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences (2019) suggests that the EITC is possibly the single most important American social welfare program for combating childhood poverty. Although the analyses admirably include a range of poverty-relevant bills, it’s unclear how the American tax code fits into this context and how readers are to understand the growth of this form of poverty policy as one of the cornerstones of the contemporary welfare state. Like other work on policy responsiveness, the book also conceptualizes the millions of Americans living below the poverty line as a largely homogeneous constituency. Yet, poverty in America is highly racialized. How does the legacy of racialized poverty explain the lack of responsiveness to the poor as a constituency? Here, a deeper dive into the racial and sociopolitical contours of American poverty might generate additional testable hypotheses. The book demonstrates that representatives in high-poverty districts are not more likely to consider povertyrelevant legislation. But is this relationship moderated by the race of the representative or the racial composition of those living in poverty? While the analyses stop short of fully considering the intersections of race and poverty, future research may now take up these questions with Miler’s impressive work as a guide. Despite these minor issues, Poor Representation is a significant contribution to the literature on policy responsiveness and will also be of interest to a wide range of social scientists studying poverty policy in America. The book’s analyses are a powerful and persuasive demonstration of just how far short American democracy falls from the ideal of equal representation, especially for the nation’s most needy.