Arguments about the differences between politicians from different social class backgrounds have been a common refrain in American politics. Scholarly research on olitical decisionmakers, however, has largely ignored the possibility that leaders from different social classes might bring different insights, skills, or perspectives to the policymaking process. This study will ask how and why elected officials' social class backgrounds influence their decisions in office.
To address this question, this project will draw on the limited existing data on lawmakers' social backgrounds and a large-scale original data collection effort aimed at gathering and coding numerous markers of social attainment for each of the 788 unique Senators and Representatives who served during the last five Congresses (1999-2008). With the help of research assistants, the researcher will use publicly available materials (e.g. newspapers, biographies, financial disclosures, and legislative websites) to collect information about each Member's parents' occupations, childhood hometown, college experiences, military service, previous occupations, current financial assets, and places of residence. These measures--combined with information about lawmakers' votes and leadership activities as well as data on other factors that are known to influence legislative behavior such as partisanship and public opinion--will provide unprecedented opportunities to explore how the social backgrounds of elected officials affect their policy priorities and their views about economic and social issues.
This study will contribute to what scholars know about congressional decisionmaking and political representation and will answer longstanding questions about the importance of the social composition of America's elected officeholders. This project will also have broader impacts for both the scholarly community and the public. To date, practical challenges related to data availability and collection have seriously hampered research on social class and policymaking. The congressional social background dataset that the proposed research generates will be broadly useful for scholars of legislative decisionmaking, will facilitate studies on topics not examined in this project, and will provide a helpful starting point for scholars interested in collecting social class data for other time periods or political institutions. The proposed research will also help to inform public discourse. Political observers often look to candidates' backgrounds for insights into their preferences and goals. By investigating the relationship between politicians' social class backgrounds and their decisions in office, this project will help to clarify the benefits and limitations of efforts to infer leaders' political priorities from their social origins.
