Previous research has argued for the importance of occupational diversity in legislatures, but few have established whether legislators’ occupational background affects their ability to sell policies to the public.
If politicians with professional experience are more effective at persuading voters in their areas of expertise, parties that foster occupational diversity are better equipped to build support for their policy agendas. We examine this argument using an original experiment embedded in the 2022 Cooperative Election Study and document whether legislators are more persuasive in policy areas where they have relevant professional background. Legislators who have relevant expertise (e.g. doctors arguing for restrictions of telehealth) are more effective at persuading voters to support unpopular policies. This result is driven by credibility perceptions. The quality of the arguments put forward can only partially compensate for professional background effects. The study reveals a new mechanism through which descriptive representation can influence policy outcomes and contributes to scholarship on policy communication and representation.
Miguel Pereira is an Assistant Professor in European Politics. His research focuses on inequalities in political representation and the behavior of political elites in established democracies with a focus on causal inference. He is also interested in questions on women and politics, corruption, policy diffusion, and attitude formation. Before working at the LSE, he was an assistant professor at the University of Southern California. He received his Ph.D. in political science from Washington University in St. Louis.
Raluca Pahontu is a Lecturer in Political Behaviour in the Department of Political Economy at King’s College London.