In Representing the Disadvantaged: Group Interests and Legislator Reputation in US Congress, Katrina McNally considers the representation of disadvantaged groups, defined as “groups that face additional societal barriers, particularly a history of discrimination” (pg. 22) in Congress. Unlike studies of descriptive representation that consider the representation of individual groups, such as racial/ethnic minorities or women, McNally develops a generalizable theory of legislative reputations which can be used to analyze representation more broadly.

McNally defines legislative reputation as what members of Congress are known for prioritizing and working on while serving in Congress. Members build their reputations based on their legislative behavior and their interactions with their constituents and the media. McNally argues reputations are not based on individual actions but have an emergent property such that they are based on more than the sum of their individual actions. Finally, reputations are based on observations and interpretations from others such that members cannot pretend to have reputations at odds with their past actions.

McNally uses member profiles from Congressional Quarterly’s Politics in America for the 103^rd, 105^th, 108^th, 110^th, and 113^th Congresses, to classify representatives and senators as being either non-advocates, superficial advocates, secondary advocates, or primary advocates for eight different disadvantaged group. McNally classifies these groups based on the extent to which voters perceive them as being worthy of government assistance. Two groups, veterans and seniors, are perceived as deserving of government assistance and two groups, racial/ethnic minorities and the LGBTQ community, are perceived as underserving of help. The remaining four groups, the poor, women, immigrants, and Native Americans, are mixed when it comes to perceived deservingness. McNally considers these classifications to be important because members of Congress are motivated by reelection, and it would be less risky for them to develop a reputation as an advocate for a deserving disadvantaged group compared to less deserving groups.

McNally assumes not all members of Congress will set out to develop a reputation as being an advocate for a disadvantaged group(s). Instead, members will determine whether to develop such a reputation based on two primary factors. First, as a group makes up a larger proportion of a member’s constituency, the member should be more likely to become an advocate for that group. Second, this effect will be mitigated by the extent to which voters in the constituency have negative feelings about the group. McNally argues these considerations form a member’s advocacy window, which is the potential amount of additional work a member can do on a group’s behalf without damaging their electoral prosects (pg. 29). The floor of a member’s advocacy window is the proportion of voters in the constituency who are members of the disadvantaged group, and the ceiling of their advocacy window is determined by the negative feelings toward that group within the constituency. Overall, once the size of a disadvantaged group within the constituency is considered, members of Congress with larger advocacy windows will have greater freedom in developing a reputation as being an advocate for the group.

In chapters 4 and 5, McNally considers which members of Congress are most likely to develop a reputation for being an advocate of a disadvantaged group. While there are some complexities for specific groups, McNally finds strong support for the theory of an advocacy window. Members of the House are more likely to become an advocate for a disadvantaged group when they represent a district with a large percentage of group members and when public opinion of the group in the district is positive. In the Senate, the size of each disadvantaged group in each state is helpful in explaining when senators develop reputations as being advocates for disadvantaged groups, who are perceived as being deserving of government assistance, but there are essentially no floors to senators’ advocacy windows when considering groups perceived as being less deserving. Additionally, senators are more likely to develop these reputations when other senators are also developing reputations as being advocates for disadvantaged groups. Finally, when considering whether descriptive representatives are more likely to become advocates for disadvantaged groups, McNally finds a conditional relationship. In the House, descriptive representatives are more likely to develop these reputations when they have large advocacy windows, but in the Senate descriptive representatives are more likely to develop these reputations when they have smaller advocacy windows.

In chapter 6, McNally considers how members of Congress work to reinforce their legislative reputations by analyzing sponsorship and co-sponsorship patterns. While there is variation depending on whether a member is a superficial, secondary, or primary advocate, and depending on which disadvantaged group is being considered, members with reputations for being advocates are more likely to sponsor and cosponsor legislation pertaining to the groups they represent than other members.

Representing the Disadvantaged provides a novel approach to studying representation in Congress and draws its conclusions based on thorough empirical analyses. I will highlight three of what I believe are the book’s major contributions. First, McNally shows that Congress still has a long way to go in fully representing disadvantaged groups. While 37 to 57 percent of representatives had some form of reputation as being an advocate for a disadvantaged group from 1993 to 2014 (pg. 58), Democrats were more likely than Republicans to obtain such reputations, senators were more likely than House members to only have superficial reputations because their constituencies are normally less homogeneous meaning they are less reliant on the support of individual groups, and racial/ethnic minorities lacked representation in many ways. Second, McNally’s conceptualization of legislative reputations driven by advocacy windows provides a powerful new approach to studying representation. This approach means multiple groups can be studied at one time and in comparison to each other, and going forward, scholars will have better expectations of who is most likely to provide representation to underrepresented groups without having to rely solely on descriptive representation or district demographics. Finally, McNally offers several exciting new avenues for future research. McNally argues future research should consider the relationship between legislative reputations and members’ legislative effectiveness, campaign promises, and progressive ambition. Additionally, I think future research could consider whether McNally’s conceptualization of legislative reputations can be expanded to consider the representation of other groups and whether there are factors other than the advocacy window that cause members to work toward specific reputations. McNally only considers actions taken by members once elected to office in constructing their legislative reputation scores, but future research could consider how members’ experiences prior to being elected influence the reputations they pursue. Overall, I believe Representing the Disadvantaged should be of interest to scholars of American politics broadly and will likely become required readings for classes on Congress and representation.