Replication Data for: How Descriptive Over- and Under-Representation Impacts Citizens Evaluations of Decision-making across Policy Domains

This paper demonstrates that the impact of descriptive representation on citizens’ perceptions of democratic processes varies with levels of representation and the nature of the issue being decided. In a survey experiment, a committee decides on three policies that disproportionately impact women, but which vary in whether individuals perceive them as touching on morality or conferring targeted benefits. Our findings show that citizens associate descriptive representation with fairness and are more amenable to decisions made by a representative body. However, perceptions of some decisions, e.g., regarding abortion, strongly improve with women’s equal and over-representation on the committee. On other issues—ones that could be perceived as offering women a targeted benefit—women’s over-representation reduces perceptions of fairness. These findings highlight the importance of exploring the interaction between decision-making body composition and the policy agenda when seeking to understand citizens’ views of democratic policymaking.