Descriptive Representation and Innovation in American Legislatures
| Published date | 01 December 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129231186624 |
| Author | Jack Nickelson,Joshua M. Jansa |
| Date | 01 December 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Political Research Quarterly
2023, Vol. 76(4) 2018–2035
© The Author(s) 2023
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DOI: 10.1177/10659129231186624
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Descriptive Representation and Innovation
in American Legislatures
Jack Nickelson
1
and Joshua M. Jansa
1
Abstract
Previous scholarship has linked increased representation of women, racial/ethnic minorities, the LGB community, and
the working class to more representative legislative agendas and roll call voting. But it is unclear if descriptive rep-
resentation of historically excluded groups also affects policy innovativeness. Borrowing from inter disciplinary research,
we argue that diverse legislatures are more innovative, so long as legislators operate in a quality deliber ative environment.
We measure the descriptive representation of seven different underrepresented groups in state legislatures from 1984
to 2016. We find that representation of women is a key predictor of innovation, operationalized as the tendency for
states to adopt new policies early. We also find the effect of women is not dependent on critical mass, is undermined by
high levels of polarization, and helps boost the capacity of legislatures to produce unique policy language. Some models
are suggestive of a relationship between racial/ethnic minority (Black, Latinx, Native American) representation and
innovation, but the results are inconsistent. The study provides insights into how representation of women can enhance
legislative capacity to innovate in public policy.
Keywords
women and politics, state politics and policy, American politics, gender, race & identity, legislative studies
Introduction
U.S. statehouses are more diverse than ever before, even
though they remain unrepresentative of the public on race,
gender, class, and other dimensions. Legislative diversity
is important because people feel better represented when
their legislator and the legislature looks like them (i.e.
descriptive representation; e.g. Harden and Clark 2016)
and because legislators from historically underrepresented
groups tend to act on behalf of the preferences of the
communities they come from (i.e. substantive represen-
tation; e.g. Swers 2005) while also enhancing the insti-
tution’s capacity to deliver for constituents as a whole (e.g.
Anzia and Berry 2011).
Interdisciplinary research shows that greater descrip-
tive representation of diverse demographic groups tends
to increase an organization’s capacity to innovate (i.e. find
new and unique ways to achieve goals; e.g. Gomez and
Bernet 2019), especially if the members of the organi-
zation are able to freely deliberate (e.g. Van Kippenberg
and Hoever 2018). In education, increased racial diversity
among teachers is associated with less discrimination
against racial/ethnic minority students (Rocha and Hawes
2009) and increased performance among all students
(Pitts 2007). In business, increased diversity generates
stronger brand reputation (Miller and Triana 2009), in-
creased firm value (Kim and Starks 2016), and greater
investment in innovation, resulting in more patents (Chen,
Leung, and Evans 2018).
Political theorists have long posited that greater di-
versity will enhance overall legislative functioning
(Mansbridge 1999), and empirical political scientists have
found robust links between increased diversity and
changes in the legislative agenda and distribution of
policy preferences (e.g. Carnes 2012). But, despite the
emerging interdisciplinary work demonstrating a link
between descriptive representation and innovativeness in
organizations generally, no study has examined the
1
Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, USA
Corresponding Author:
Joshua M. Jansa, Department of Political Science, Oklahoma State
University, 233 Social Sciences and Humanities Bldg, Stillwater, OK
74078, USA.
Email: joshua.jansa@okstate.edu
Data Availability Statement included at the end of the article
relationship between these important concepts in state
legislatures across many policies and many dimensions of
descriptive representation over time. What effect does
increased descriptive representation have on a legisla-
ture’s capacity to produce innovative public policies?
Drawing from a rich theoretical and interdisciplinary
foundation, we argue increased descriptive represen-
tation of historically excluded populations (e.g. women,
racial and ethnic minorities, the working class, lesbian,
gay, and bisexual(LGB) community) is associated with
more innovation in state legislatures. In this way, in-
creased demographic diversity among legislators af-
fects the institution’s overall innovative capacity.
However, the division of descriptive representatives
into polarized parties is a fact of the legislative world
that is not readily predicted by the interdisciplinary
literature. Therefore, we also predict the impact of
descriptive representation on legislative innovation
depends on the level of polarization in the legislature, as
polarized legislators are less likely to engage in quality
deliberation over policy innovations.
We measure working class, Latinx, Asian and Pacific
Islander (API), Black, Native American/Alaskan, LGB,
and women’s representation and examine each’s impact
on a legislature’s innovation rate (Boehmke et al. 2020),
or the tendency to adopt new policies early. We find a link
between the representation of women and innovation rate,
especially in low polarization settings. We do not find
support for the effect of racial/ethnic minority, LGB, or
working class representation on innovation. We test the
effect of women on innovation further, finding women’s
representation is also associated with the use of original
legal language when reinventing policies adopted from
another state and that the effect of women on innovation is
not dependent on a critical mass.
Our work opens new avenues for research. By
leveraging differences in descriptive representation across
the states and along multiple dimensions, we can better
explain variation in policy innovation. While we find
convincing results on the impact of women’s represen-
tation on innovation, further work is needed to understand
why some descriptive representatives might affect inno-
vation while others may not.
Innovation in State Legislatures
Very few scholars have examined the impact of diversity
among legislators on innovation in legislatures. Bouch´
e
and Wittmer (2015) find evidence the proportion of
women legislators is associated with states adopting more
comprehensive human trafficking laws, but this study
examines a single policy area, a single dimension of in-
novation, and a single dimension of descriptive repre-
sentation. Souvorova (2011) proposes tying diversity
among legislators and in the general population to in-
novation across five policy areas, but the relationship
becomes tenuous with the inclusion of economic and
political controls.
The lack of scholarship in this area is surprising as
innovation is a key concept in the literature on policy
diffusion and reinvention among legislatures. Legislatures
are considered innovative if they tend to be early adopters
of new policies (e.g. Boehmke and Skinner 2012)orif
they customize policies upon adoption (e.g. Mooney and
Lee 1995). Adopting new policies early-on provides
valuable information to later adopters about policy con-
sequences, while customization can increase the policy’s
comprehensiveness through the addition of new provi-
sions written in original legal language.
We know innovation is shaped by a state’s internal
determinants (Walker 1969), interstate or regional influ-
ences (Berry and Berry 1990), and national interactions
(Gray 1973).
2
Among internal characteristics, legislative
professionalism (Jansa, Hansen, and Gray 2019), ideo-
logical congruence (Parinandi 2020), or other population
and economic characteristics (Mooney 2020) can enhance
a state legislature’s ability to invent, adopt, and seed the
spread of policies nationwide.
We can add to our understanding of the internal de-
terminants model
3
both empirically and theoretically by
examining how diversity among legislators influences the
legislature’s innovativeness across many policies. Theo-
retically, we can draw from previous interdisciplinary
research which has found diverse organizations are more
innovative, conditional on the quality of the deliberative
environment (Hoever et al. 2012;Van Kippenberg and
Hoever 2018;Valls, Gonz´
alez-Rom´
a, and Tom´
as 2016).
From political science, we can build on the theoretical and
empirical literature on descriptive representation in leg-
islatures (Mansbridge 1999;Bratton and Haynie 1999;
Carnes 2012;Preuhs 2007) to understand the role diverse
representation plays in the legislative process, particularly
that diversity does not just deliver policies favored by
historically underrepresented groups, but enhances the ca-
pacity of the legislature as a whole. Together, these liter-
aturescan inform a theory of howdescriptive representation
can be viewed as a keyinternal determinantof the adoption
of innovative policies and provisions, a nd a key ingredient
in increasing legislative capacity for innovation.
Diversity and Innovation: What We Know
from Political Science and
Other Disciplines
Traditional deliberation theory has argued that the crea-
tion of policy should be a process of pure reason, where
representatives engaged in “bracketed”discussion over
Nickelson and Jansa 2019
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