Descriptive representation and evaluations of government

A great deal of scholarship has looked at the effect that descriptive representation has on policy-making at the congressional level. Much less work has examined the effect of descriptive representation on individual citizens, and of the work that exists, most of it has focused on turnout. In this research, we look at the linkage between descriptive representation and political evaluations among the public. The theory of descriptive representation suggests that having a descriptive representative at the congressional level should positively affect an individual's attitude toward his or her US House legislator, and may extend to government institutions. We examine support for these arguments using data from the 2008 American National Election Study, which has an oversample of African-Americans and Latinos. We find that having a descriptive representative boosts evaluations of one's US House legislator for both African-Americans and Latinos, but has differential effects on attitudes toward government institutions.