Chapter 7 examines how the relationship between working-class representation and positive evaluations of representative institutions varies among citizens who are more or less likely to be aware of working-class representation. Even though voters can learn about working-class representation through political campaigns, news, and paying attention to politics, we show that levels of political interest and news consumption vary dramatically among citizens within the same country – implying that not all voters are equally likely to be aware of working-class representation. Then, using survey data from across Latin America, we demonstrate that the positive relationship between working-class representation and better evaluations of representative institutions is strongest among citizens with high levels of political interest and those who are avid news followers.

Chapter 6 addresses our final question: How do voters know workers are in office? Our theory argues that even though citizens are unlikely to know the exact share of seats workers occupy in office, they are generally aware of working-class representation. Drawing on campaign material, candidate websites, and social media websites, we show that both parties and individual politicians have an incentive to showcase politicians’ class status. Then we present qualitative evidence from publicly available data, coupled with an inventory of government websites, to show that even absent these political incentives, information on candidates’ class background is publicly available and – at least some of this information – makes it into the hands of citizens, thanks to popular press. Then we turn to evidence from two survey experiments from Argentina and Mexico that were designed to evaluate whether citizens can glean information about deputies’ class status from facial images alone. We demonstrate that participants can correctly identify the class background of the national deputies depicted in photographs at a rate significantly better than chance.

This chapter develops our theory of working-class inclusion. The chapter is structured around the three central questions that we tackle in this book: (1) Do citizens – and particularly working-class citizens – want to be represented by members of the working class? (2) Will any worker do? Or, how do citizens evaluate workers who do not represent working-class policy interests? (3) How do voters know workers are in office? In answering these questions, we develop new expectations that we evaluate in the following chapters.

Drawing on examples from across Latin America, Chapter 1 introduces the political exclusion of the working class and the puzzles that motivate the book: (1) Do citizens – and particularly working-class citizens – want to be represented by members of the working class? (2) Do citizens know workers are in office? (3) How do citizens evaluate workers who do not represent working-class policy interests? The chapter previews our theory in general terms and provides an overview of the data and cases we use to tackle these important questions. The chapter concludes by introducing the major implications of our findings.

Chapter 5 turns to an examination of the ties between working-class representatives and constituents, by taking an in-depth look at the relationship between labor unions, political parties, and workers in Argentina and Mexico. We show that the evolution of unions and parties throughout history lead to working-class deputies in Argentina having stronger ties to workers and a better track record of policy representation than working-class deputies in Mexico. Then we leverage an original dataset of working-class representation over time and across states in Argentina and Mexico to show empirically that whereas increases in working-class representation in Argentina are associated with citizens evaluating their representative institutions more positively, the increased presence of working-class legislators in Mexico leads to backlash and more negative evaluations of legislatures and political parties.

Chapter 8 summarizes our theory and central findings, and synthesizes findings from the cross-national analyses, in-depth case studies, and original survey data. We show how the different pieces of evidence from across the five empirical chapters fit together to explain that voters do want to be represented by workers, that voters are aware of working-class representation, and that both numeric and policy representation produced by working-class representation is necessary to engender trust in institutions. We conclude by discussing the broader implications of our theory for growing dissatisfaction with the way democracy functions across the region and the world, and for the political inclusion of marginalized groups.