Electoral and Legislative Drivers of Policy Expertise Change

Recent scholarship stresses the importance of descriptive representation for attaining substantive one. Yet, while the literature has mainly focused on representation of gender and ethnic minorities, the link between descriptive and substantive representation occupational classes has gone rather overlooked. In this paper we investigate the interplay of ascriptive and self-declared policy expertise and their impact on a variety of legislative behaviors. Using observational and survey data on 1,676 candidates and Members of Parliament in Japan, we can show that self-declared policy expertise predicts legislative behavior better or at least as good as ascriptive expertise infered from occupational backgrounds. Additional analyses explore how candidates and incumbents change their self-declared policy expertise as a function of their electoral circumstances and their legislative exposure to different policy fields. Our findings challenge the often made assumption on the link between descriptive and substantive representation.