With a rapidly diversifying electorate, the United States has the potential to be a truly multiracial democracy. Yet, as the previous decade has made clear, there are a multitude of roadblocks to achieving this ideal. One of those barriers is the systematic underrepresentation of women and people of color, and particularly women of color, in politics. In Nowhere to Run: Race, Gender, and Immigration in American Elections, Dr. Christian Dyogi Phillips develops an intersectional framework to dissect differences in political opportunities across racial and gender groups and uses innovative data to empirically test the book’s assertions.
The intersectional model of electoral opportunity presented in the book emphasizes two central factors that simultaneously shape political opportunities and the subsequent potential for descriptive representation. First, about 80% of electoral districts across the country are majority-white, which limits the number of realistic opportunities for people of color to get on the ballot. This is also an important point in understanding the political overrepresentation of white men. Second, “race and gender simultaneously constrain and facilitate electoral opportunities for Asian American women and men, Latinas, and Latinos” (p. 10). Each group has a unique social position within US society that comes with a unique set of advantages and disadvantages. Thus, the pathway to candidacy will be informed by these race-gender processes.
The model presented in the book moves us away from siloed ways of thinking about identity structures and instead “embraces complexity” by accounting for the power of institutions and context and taking seriously the idea that identities “encompass multiple dimensions” (p. 17). Indeed, the empirical evidence provided in the book makes clear that advantages and constraints based on identity are context specific. This is important both for developing a clear understanding of candidate emergence and for dispelling inaccurate assumptions. For example, the conventional wisdom is that racial minorities are much more likely to get on the ballot and to get elected from districts that have large numbers of co-ethnics. Phillips demonstrates that a relationship between the proportion of co-ethnics in a district and electoral success does exist but is much stronger for men than women across each racial group. Women of color face unique challenges to their candidacy and electoral success, such as political invisibility, lack of resources, and even discouragement from running for office stemming from the development of “male-oriented political networks,” even in districts in which the racial composition should theoretically give them an advantage based on their racial identity.
Women of color also tend to have different reasons for running for office. For example, a key factor cited by many Asian American women and Latinas in their decision to run was having “ties and obligations to a wider community of women, co-ethnic women, immigrants, and non-white groups” (p. 170). Co-ethnic men were much less likely to cite these ties and obligations as a primary reason for their candidacy.
Phillips collects and analyzes an impressive array of original data, including racial and gender identities of state legislative candidates and district information from nearly two decades of elections, a survey of 547 sitting state legislators, and 54 in-depth interviews of candidates and other political elites to test the intersectional model of electoral opportunity. These data allow for robust tests of the individual, structural, and contextual factors that facilitate and constrain women and people of color from running for office. However, a potential drawback of this data could be selection bias. By focusing almost exclusively on candidates, the analysis may be biased toward people who are successfully able to pursue electoral opportunities. What about people who are interested in running for office but who have not made it to the point of being a candidate? By excluding this set of people, the analysis may miss an important set of factors that constrain political opportunities. To more fully identify the factors that constrain candidate emergence, these voices should be included.
The theory and analyses in this book represent a major contribution to our understanding of the factors that influence pathways to candidacy for women and people of color, as well as the prospects for descriptive representation. In the conclusion, Phillips turns to the essential discussion of how to break down barriers to candidacy for people from underrepresented communities. Given the central role of the racial composition of districts, one potential avenue to remove barriers to candidacy is through the creation of more majority-minority districts that would provide a greater number of realistic opportunities for candidacy and electoral success. However, Republicans control the redistricting process in most states and have electoral incentives to restrict the number of majority-minority districts. That, combined with the lack of redistricting reform legislation like the Freedom to Vote Act, makes shifting the racial composition of districts in a way that is favorable to women and people of color an infeasible solution, at least in the short run.
Phillips then proposes two more viable avenues for facilitating pathways to candidacy. First, parties and organizations should shift the risk assessment they use in determining the resources and support they provide for candidate development. There should be a greater focus on supporting women and people of color in Democratic-leaning white-majority districts in which there is a more viable pathway to victory for candidates. This could be an especially helpful solution because Democratic voters are becoming increasingly supportive of candidates of color and women candidates.
Second, there needs to be a focus on marginalized subgroups by parties and organizations engaged in candidate development. By providing support and resources, a pipeline of political leadership among women of color can be created that helps dismantle structural barriers to candidacy. As Phillips acknowledges, however, male-dominant networks and institutions will remain a barrier. Moreover, there is little discussion in the book of the ways that antagonism from the American Right and white-dominant power structures on the Left complicates these potential reforms. Given the importance of finding viable solutions to candidate emergence, and the unique insights Phillips can bring to that process, a deeper discussion on this topic would have been welcome. I hope that future work on the subject by Phillips and others can be vital in improving prospects for descriptive representation.
Past scholarship makes clear that descriptive representation tends to lead to greater substantive representation of the interests and concerns of members of marginalized communities. In a political environment characterized by frequent attacks on minority groups from the Right and inaction from the Left, descriptive representation is more important than ever. The intersectional model of electoral opportunity and the robust empirical analysis of Phillips’s model clarify the pathway to candidate emergence for members of underrepresented communities, while the conclusion provides a helpful starting point for formulating solutions to the many structural and informal barriers to descriptive representation identified in this important book.
