Existing scholarship documents the low levels of political power held by the American poor, and concomitant economic elite domination of Congress. Since the poor seldom elect lawmakers that share their descriptive traits, they necessarily rely on non-poor lawmakers virtually representing their interests. A key part of this virtual representation is...
This dissertation project is one of the first to explicitly study the theoretical and empirical relationship between public opinion and the policies of unelected administrative agencies in the United States. This research addresses two important questions: (1) given the absence of a direct electoral connection between bureaucrats and the public,...