Diverse Political Representation: Financial Barriers to Running for Office

Principal Investigator(s):  View help for Principal Investigator(s) Joe Wheeler, University of Oregon; José W. Meléndez, Associate Professor, University of Oregon

Version:  View help for Version V1

Name File Type Size Last Modified
Dataset - Diverse Representation.sav application/x-spss-sav 12.9 KB 08/29/2024 09:51:AM

Project Citation: 

Wheeler, Joe, and Meléndez, José W. Diverse Political Representation: Financial Barriers to Running for Office. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2024-08-29. https://doi.org/10.3886/E208766V1

Project Description

Summary:  View help for Summary The percentage of local elected officials who are White is higher than the White share of the U.S. population, and this has been the case throughout our country’s history. Yet, few studies have examined the relationship between compensation and candidates’ racial diversity, specifically in small to midsize localities where local elected positions are often volunteer positions. Our research explored whether mayoral and city council candidates are limited to those with enough funds to volunteer, who tend to be Caucasian identifying? Our a priori hypothesis was that paying mayors and city council members is one salient policy solution to encouraging racial diversity among candidates. We analyzed county-archived election data across a sample of 18 small to midsize cities in Oregon that pay their elected officials, noting changes in racial demographics of candidates in the decade prior to implementation of payment and the decade after. We found that, on average, cities saw substantial increases in candidates’ diversity after payment implementation. This article provides straightforward, practical strategies for cities to elect diverse leaders while expanding both the passive and active representation of elected officials.  

Scope of Project

Subject Terms:  View help for Subject Terms electoral diversity; political representation; small cities; Oregon; Latine
Geographic Coverage:  View help for Geographic Coverage Oregon, United States
Time Period(s):  View help for Time Period(s) 11/1996 – 11/2022 (November 1996 - November 2022)
Universe:  View help for Universe Mayor and city council candidates in small to mid-sized Oregon cities. 
Data Type(s):  View help for Data Type(s) administrative records data
Collection Notes:  View help for Collection Notes The following is a description of the Variable View in SPSS:
  • "Salary" denotes whether the position the candidate was running for was volunteer (unpaid), stipend (<$30k annually), or salary (>$30k annually); 
  • "Nonwhite" refers to the number of non-White candidates running in a particular year; 
  • "After" is a binary variable denoting whether the election year was before (=0) or after (=1) the city started to pay its mayor or city councilors; 
  • "Population" is the city's population; 
  • "Gender" is the candidate's gender; 
  • "Year" is the election year; 
  • "Race" is the candidate's race/ethnicity; for observations where the race/ethnicity was indeterminate, missing values were coded as "111". 
  • "Won" is whether the candidate won or lost; 
  • And "position" is whether it's a mayor or city council seat. 
In SPSS' Data View, each row represents one candidate entry (457 total). 

Methodology

Sampling:  View help for Sampling We collected data on 457 individual candidates, including gender, race/ethnicity, year elected, the city’s population, whether the candidate’s position was a mayoral or city council seat, whether it was unpaid, stipended, or salaried, and the number of non-White candidates who ran that year.

Data Source:  View help for Data Source Among the 18 cities in our study that pay elected officials, we looked at publicly available archived election data (typically found on the county’s website and occasionally on the city’s website).
Collection Mode(s):  View help for Collection Mode(s) web scraping

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Published Versions

V1 [2024-08-29]

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