Representation and Anti-Racist Policymaking in U.S. Cities during COVID-19

Abstract

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic laid bare deep-rooted racial and gender disparities in the United States. The lack of national policy produced an uneven patchwork of local policies. We quantitatively evaluate how descriptive representation translated to substantive representation in 500 cities’ efforts to declare racism as a public health crisis and enact eviction moratoria. We find that representation shapes explicitly anti-racist resolutions on racism, not implicitly anti-racist eviction moratoria, suggesting the descriptive-substantive representation connection is more powerful for explicitly anti-racist policies.