Abstract
Does bringing a marginalized group into the state raise its members’ trust in democratic institutions? Uruguay’s 2013 Ley 19.122, reserving eight percent of public-sector hires for Afro-descendant citizens, offers a rare test on the dimension representation theory names. Using the Uruguayan household survey and eight waves of the Latinobarómetro, we document a genuine but small first stage, Afro-Uruguayan public employment rose about 1.3 percentage points, a composition shift rather than a net gain, against a target the state met only fractionally. In addition, as second stage delivered a precise attitudinal null, with equivalence tests rejecting effects larger than roughly 0.15–0.20 standard deviations. The result establishes a scope condition rather than a refutation: at this level of exposure, bureaucratic inclusion produces no measurable attitudinal return. How much inclusion is required before the representation mechanism fires remains an open and newly quantifiable question.
Jorge Soler-Lopez
International Consultant & PhD in Political Economy
I am a Fellow at Bocconi University and an International Consultant at the World Bank (ECA Poverty and Equity team). I hold a PhD in Public Policy and Administration from Bocconi University. My research covers migration and democratic attitudes, economic hardship and political outcomes, minority political behavior, and poverty measurement.