Critical Qualitative Inquiry: Examining the Influence of Changing Voices and Bodies on Legislative Spaces

Abstract

Gender, race, and ethnic demographics have shifted and emergent policymakers are entering state legislatures. My work seeks to extend the role of critical qualitative research by examining emergent policymaking spaces and the new actors. I illustrate how praxis is witnessed in action in policymaking spaces to create change. I propose critical methodologies can be used as analytic anchors to offer an understanding on how progressive policymakers resist and succeed in policymaking spaces. Critical qualitative methodologies offer ways to explore spaces of praxis, insider/outsider in policymaking spaces, critical consciousness, and actors’ policy ways of knowing.

Introduction

Nowhere is power and hegemony more at play than in U.S. policymaking spaces. Historically, these are spaces where the privileged people have gathered to legitimize their knowledge, power, and reign over others (López, 2015). Their interests and ideologies are further codified into public policy through policy discourses and resource allocations. Policy language and spaces are used to manifest values, beliefs, and views on who and what is worthy of public discourse and investments (Crenshaw, 1991). Policy analysis and policymaking frameworks have approached these forms of inquiry primarily from positivist and constructivist approaches (Fischer, 2003). New policymaking frameworks are necessary (Brown, 2014; Marshall, 1999). As the U.S. gender, race, and ethnic demographics have shifted in the last couple of decades, emergent policymakers are taking up space, to make space, in state legislatures; the emergent policymakers, typically in politically contested spaces, are progressive, young, female, and racially and ethnically diverse (Hardy-Fanta et al., 2016). My work seeks to extend the role of critical qualitative research by examining emergent policymaking spaces and the new actors that occupy these spaces.

Using critical methodologies in this article, I seek to illustrate the many ways praxis as theorized in critical theories is witnessed in action in policymaking spaces to create change. I demonstrate how critical methodologies can be used as analytic anchors to offer an unparalleled perspective and understanding on how progressive policymakers face political battles, resist, and succeed in policymaking spaces. Importantly, critical qualitative methodologies offer fundamental ways to explore central elements in policy and policymaking, including (a) the spaces of praxis, (b) insider/outsider status in policymaking, and (c) actors’ policy ways of knowing. Coupled with the use of critical methodologies, it is within these spaces we can disentangle the relationships between politics, power, domination, resistance, and agency among progressive policymakers cast as marginalized others in policymaking spaces, but now commanding space and recognition for their bodies, bodies of knowledge, and those whom they represent.

Emergent Voices and Bodies in Policymaking Spaces

State Legislatures and Sustaining Diverse Democracies

American democracy is being threatened; imperfect as it may be, democracy in the United States is an idea that has been under development for centuries and policymakers have made progress on many fronts only to see them dismantled. Critical pillars for sustaining American democracy are state legislatures and the legislators that occupy these governing bodies. Undoubtedly, the legislative role on social policies related to education, reproduction, voting rights, infrastructure, economic development, and workforce influence the overall social, political, and economic well-being of its nation.

Nowhere was the role of state legislators clearer than during the 2021 presidential election. Trump called on republican-led legislators to overturn presidential election results based on claims of voter fraud. GOP state legislators did not endorse his claim and refused to intervene on Trump’s behalf (Cheney, 2020). Yet, the following year, 19 states enacted 34 laws to restrict access to voting, from omni-bus laws with multiple restrictive provisions to single-subject laws that create less obvious burdens, these laws impose voter suppression measures that impact the most policy underserved populations (Wilder & Baum, 2022). Much of these anti-democratic laws are targeted at communities of color; as the nation continues to diversify racially and ethnically, fearmongering intensifies calls to “save our country” from invaders and undeserving people. The Brennan Center for Justice warns, “The substance of these laws and the processes used to enact them should raise a red flag for anyone concerned about the health of our democracy” (Wilder & Baum, 2022, para 5).

The Changing Faces and Voices of State Legislatures

While there are intentional efforts by state legislatures to dismantle U.S. democracy, the state legislator demographic is changing. The National Conference of State Legislatures reports that from 2015 to 2020 more than ever before women and people from racially and ethnically diverse background are being elected to state legislatures (Zock, 2020). The National Conference of State Legislatures reports that while the average legislator remains White, male, and a boomer, significant shifts can be seen at the state levels. Consider that by 2020 women held 29% of state legislative seats, up from 25% in 2015. During this period, 40 of the 50 states saw an increase in the number of women legislators. In Michigan, women made the biggest strides, from 21% representation in 2015 to 36% in 2020. In the same year, Nevada was the only state where women comprised the majority of state legislators. Colorado held second place, with 47% women. Oregon, Vermont, and Washington all had between 40% and 42% female legislatures. African American representation also increased from 9% in 2015 to 10% in 2020. Half of all states saw the percentages of Black lawmakers increase. Maryland had the largest percent of Black legislators at 29%, followed by Mississippi and Georgia 27% and Louisiana 26%. The percentage of Latino legislators has remained at 5% since 2015; however, 21 states had slight increases, according to the 2020 data. New Mexico had the most Latino legislators with 35%, and Arizona was the only other state with more than 28%, followed by California at 24%, Texas 23%, and Nevada 15% (Zock, 2020).

The actors in these changing policymaking spaces are younger, racially and ethnicity diverse, politically progressive, and more likely to be first in their family to enter politics (Hardy-Fanta et al., 2016). They are entering contested policymaking spaces not intended for them, overcoming barriers, and focusing on creating and upholding progressive social policies, many which have been slowly dismantled in the last three decades.

This phenomenon is not new since progressive actors have been a part of U.S. history, politics, and policy. However, what is new is the increase of a multiracial, younger populace, one of the most educated generations in the history of the nation (largely due to the progressive education access policies at federal and state levels). At the same time, the nation has witnessed a period of increasing wealth and social inequities among historically minority groups (Levy, 2022). This convergence has created an “us/them” mentality among the historically overrepresented populace which has intensified political polarization. This shift has served as a motivation for new policy entrants, both progressive and right-wing, to enter policymaking spaces.

An Example of Local Critical Qualitative Policy Research

My critical research on state legislators has focused on Nevada, which offers a “real-time” and “witness in action” examination of how new policy actors engage in the work of agenda-setting, creating coalitions, and legitimizing new knowledge-generating practices in policymaking spaces (Martinez, 2022a). Since 2016, I collected individual interviews from state legislators, attended multiple legislative meetings, followed legislators’ social media accounts, collected news stories about legislators, and interacted with many of them in formal and informal settings. Nevada is a site where scholars can examine how states on the tipping point of Latina/o and Black political coalition building and agenda-setting are taking place. The state is a minority majority state and home to the “entertainment capital of the world,” Las Vegas. The city, also known for counter-cultural practices, is home to more than 70% of the state’s population and its residents of color have been historically underrepresented in legislative policy and resource allocation.

By 2013, due to term limits, a new cohort of Latina/o and Black legislators entered politics and shifted the narrative of who was deemed worthy of policy and public investment. In Nevada, the 12-year term limits (six terms of assembly and three terms for senators) helped make the legislature more racially diverse (Gonzalez, 2017). The progressive legislators, primarily from low- or working-income and immigrant backgrounds, brought with them critical perspectives to policymaking and drew from their lived experiences and their urban communities’ experiences to inform how they coalesced with other groups, the bills they championed, and how they shaped a policy agenda. The new generation of legislators use their most important medium—their policy discourse—to counter anti-democratic policies in their state legislative houses. As a researcher, critical methodologies offered me important tools and anchors during this period of policy transformation (Delgado Bernal, 1998; Marshall, 1999).

Positivist theories and frameworks dominate the academic framing of policy and policymaking (Fischer, 2003). Yet, the exclusive use of these approaches seldom yields a meaningful understanding of how policies are conceived and the process of policymaking. We are reminded by Denzin (2017) that

[A]s global citizens, we are no longer called to just interpret the world, which was the mandate of traditional qualitative inquiry. Today, we are called to change the world and to change it in ways that resist injustice while celebrating freedom and full, inclusive, participatory democracy. (p. 9)

Nowhere is the commitment to resist injustices more important than in policymaking bodies. The focus on social justice in research methodologies necessitates a transformative framing. Denzin states,

[T]he pursuit of social justice within a transformative paradigm challenges prevailing forms of inequality, poverty, human oppression, and injustice. This paradigm is firmly rooted in a human rights agenda. It requires an ethical framework that is rights and social justice based. . . . It encourages the use of qualitative research for social justice purposes, including making such research accessible for public education, social policy making, and community transformation. (p. 6)

In my critical qualitative research, I am interested in how new policy actors are transforming policymaking spaces and creating spaces of praxis, how they were negotiating their insider/outsider status in policymaking, and how their policy ways of knowing shape policy priorities and agendas (Martinez, 2022a, 2022b). Critical qualitative methodologies provide a lens by which to understand policymaking, actors, and policy through a social justice paradigm. In the following sections, first I describe the qualitative methods I employ, followed by a discussion of critical policymaking frameworks as analytic anchors.

Qualitative Data for Critical Policymaking Research

Critical scholars agree that one of the strengths of critical methodologies is the inter- and trans-disciplinary approaches to data collection, framing, and analysis (Cannella et al., 2016). At the same time, there is no universal agreement on what constitutes critical methodologies (Cannella et al., 2016). Kincheloe et al. (2017) and Denzin (2017) offer guidance on what makes qualitative inquiry critical. Citing Bloom and Sawin (2009), Denzin agrees that critical qualitative inquiry should focus on creating an ethically responsible agenda that places the voices of the oppressed at the center of inquiry, uses inquiry to reveal sites for change and activism, and further that activism is an instrument to help people. Importantly, such inquiry should shape social policy and should be acted on by policymakers so it can serve as a model of change for others. Empirical inquiry of policy change and activism historically has been understood through the lens of non-policymakers (i.e., Ginwright et al., 2006); my research extends this approach by asking how activists for social change transform policymaking spaces when they enter policymaking spaces as policymakers. To pursue this line of inquiry, I use qualitative data sources and critical frameworks serve as analytic anchors.

Qualitative methods and sources are the tools for data collection. Interviews, focus groups, artifacts, observations, and primary and secondary documents, for example, are not by its very nature critical data sources or collection tools. Rather, the researcher’s epistemological orientation shapes how these qualitative data collection tools are deployed. For instance, in my research, I employ interviews, artifacts, observations, and primary and secondary data sources. Because I focus on high-profile individuals, policymakers, I typically collect an abundance of primary and secondary data sources before I reach out for interviews. Before I interview, I want to have a profile of individuals’ personal and professional background, their policy priorities, bill draft histories, and social media discourse practices, including sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube channels. Moreover, legislative hearings and deliberations are important sources of data in my research. Greater reliance on technology has made legislative data sources easily accessible, including complete bill histories, agendas, meeting minutes, and video recordings. These sources comprise a significant part of my data sources; 30-to-60-minute interviews are necessary data but limited when attempting to understand past and present pivotal experiences that shape policy actors and their policy agendas. Knowing and understanding the topics policymakers care about helps build trust and can increase the likelihood of gaining access to legislators. Moreover, I also attend committee meetings, community events, and when appropriate testify during public comments or as an invited guest. For instance, I have testified on issues related to Latina/o college access, need-based community college scholarships, Hispanic-serving institutions, parental involvement, and education governance. In doing so, I gain an in-depth understanding of the policymaking spaces, actors, politics, and how these intersect with gender, sexism, race, racism, and power dynamics. The abundance of sources necessitates careful and thoughtful management of qualitative data; for instance, I use a computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software program for large data management and initial coding purposes.

My researcher positionality shapes the data sources I collect, interactions with individuals, and data analysis. Centering Delgado Bernal’s (1998) cultural intuition, which she extends from Glaser and Strauss’s (1967) theoretical sensitivities, I draw on five sources of cultural intuition during the research process: personal experiences, academic and existing literature, professional experiences, the analytic process itself, and collective and community memories of having lived, learned, and navigated the communities I study for over two decades. Personal experiences include my personal background, as a woman, Chicana, daughter of immigrants, first-generation college student, and first-generation American. My academic training and existing critical literature inform how I plan, collect, and analyze my data; yet I am also reflective about the ways that technical (e.g., peer-reviewed research, theoretical understandings), non-technical (e.g., public and personal documents) materials, and localized knowledges (i.e., community cultural wealth) inform my understanding of a particular phenomenon. My professional experiences, in and outside of higher education, give me insights into how power, discourse, policy, and politics intersect. And finally, the collective and community histories and memories of the place, people, and contexts which have shaped and sustain unequal political and policy structures are important sources of cultural intuition. Because policymaking is a complex process that involves multiple actors, coalitions, and is contingent on macro- and micro-social, political, and economic structures, as well as internal and external timing and events, centering my cultural institution helps situate and center critical aspects to my data collection process.

Policymaking, Critical Theories, and Creating Spaces of Praxis

Research and analysis on policymaking are dominated by post positivist methodologies. Represented as a process that unfolds in linear, predictable stages, policymaking is a human activity complicated and shaped by individual, societal, structural, and historical influences and injustices. The reality of policymaking, of course, is much more complex. The identification of policy problems and solutions, the nucleus of policymaking, is a dynamic process that intersects multiple actors, contexts, and activities. Policy problems and solutions are based on ideas that are constructed and reconstructed throughout the policy process; furthermore, ideas represent political power struggles over what and whose policy problems and solutions are legitimate. To be sure, ideas and politics are interwoven, and in practice nonlinear, irrational, and represent struggles over influence between policy actors’ goals, beliefs, and values (Fischer, 2003; Martinez, 2021b; Stone, 1997; Zittoun, 2014). Furthermore, how, when, and where facts, symbols, and information are presented in support of (or against) policy solutions are, to a large degree, manifestations of goals, beliefs, and values of policy actors and communities (Yanow, 2000).

Using qualitative methodologies, education policy researchers illustrate how mainstream policy discourse is used to maintain status quo power and further disadvantage communities of color and children (Apple, 2013; Gillborn, 2005; Martinez, 2021a, 2022a, 2022b). These policy forces of conservative modernization threaten to further dismantle public education across the globe (Apple, 2013). In one example, Apple (2013) draws out how conservative policy coalitions move to privatize and undermine public education. My research examines the other end of this continuum, the spaces where progressive legislators of color are entering policymaking spaces to offer counter arguments on the role of public education by centering their lived experiences and employing critical discourse about existing policy and political structures. These less examined policy actors, women of color in U.S. state legislatures, deploy their policy rhetoric and agenda-setting to disrupt the normalcy of whiteness in education policy and sustain a diverse democracy. In education policy research, “little attention is given to the formative role of the actors in the policy process” (Ball, 2015, p. 467).

In my critical policymaking research, I have employed intersectionality, Black feminist theory (Martinez, 2022b), Chicana feminism (Martinez, 2022a), feminist borderland theory (Martinez, 2022a), and critical race theory (Martinez, 2020a, 2020b), which have expanded our epistemological knowledge on how new policy entrants exercise their agency to transform politics and shape agendas that advance both their communities and policy priorities. Notably, using critical qualitative methodologies, I illustrate the ways that new policy entrants create spaces of praxis in historically excluded policymaking governing bodies and spaces, navigate insider/outsider spaces, and embody their policy ways of knowing.

Praxis in Education and Policymaking

Praxis, in education, is described as a form of critical thinking, reflection, and action. In this framing, people can come to a critical awareness of their own condition and, in the context of classroom teaching and learning, can work toward liberation. Freire (1972) described praxis as “reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it” (p. 52). He argued that it was not enough for people to study the world; they also had a responsibility to act to create a more just world. In policy analysis and policymaking literature, praxis is an underdeveloped construct. In their book, Public Policy Praxis, Clemons and McBeth (2020) offer a critique of the dual tracks of policy analysis and policymaking, the positivist and postpositivist track that rarely intersect. They agree that positivist methodologies limit our ability to understand subjectivity, values, and interests that are often front and center in policy analysis and policymaking, yet they also agree that postmodern methodologies do not offer practical tools for analysts and researchers. Their solution was reflecting on the best of the discipline, then and now, and pragmatically combining the best from positivism and postpositivist. The result, they posit, is praxis or a mixed-methodology approach.

While I agree that mixed methods offers a robust approach to understand policy analysis and policymaking phenomenon, I also find it unsatisfactory given the growing critical literature, especially in the education policy literature, and instead in my own research create a third track. A track that asks, how do we understand praxis, or the translation of critical awareness, reflection, and action embodied, in policymaking spaces; who do the policymaking spaces assist or hinder; and how do critical actors champion policy agendas that serve their respective underrepresented constituents. In my research, I examine the ways that policymakers are at the intersection of praxis or policy change; that is, how they reflect upon the world and attempt to change it through policy. I agree with Deborah Stone (1997), who argues that policy ideas and policymaking are about “the struggle over ideas” and ideas reflect values, beliefs, and action over what is important:

Ideas are a medium of exchange and a mode of influence even more powerful than money, votes and guns. Shared meanings motivate people to action and meld individual striving into collective action. Ideas are at the center of all political conflict. Policymaking, in turn, is a constant struggle over the criteria for classification; the boundaries of categories, and the definition of ideals that guide the way people behave. (p. 7)

Furthermore, policymaking spaces have historically excluded the voices, ideas, and values of people of color, low-income, and marginalized groups; the same individuals who I study and are now in policymaking roles.

Diverse Voices and Bodies, Policymaking, and Praxis

As newcomers, progressive women of color, enter policymaking spaces, we need novel frameworks to understand how they approach spaces created intentionally to exclude their voices, experiences, bodies, histories, and priorities. In my research on Black women state legislators (Martinez, 2022b), I sought to understand how they embodied their identities in policymaking spaces. For this research, I drew from Nadine Brown’s (2014) work on Black women legislators. Brown proposes that “examining Black women’s identities requires a marked departure from traditional hegemonic and exclusive practices of social and behavioral research and going beyond feminist or Afrocentric sensibilities” and proposes that we incorporate critical frameworks and methodologies to “offer new insights about how identity mediates both representation and the role of intragroup differences among African American women elected to public office” (p. 5). Brown argues that neither linked fate nor Black feminist consciousness can adequately capture Black women’s policy preferences and policymaking practices. Rather, Black women’s policy preferences and policymaking practices are shaped by their collective race and gender identities and their individual experiences as Black women. This involves an understanding of the relationship between the multiple systems of oppression as experienced by Black women legislators. To be sure, legislative actions are not exclusively determined by a legislator’s identity, yet Brown posits, Black women’s legislative choices are often influenced by the intersection of their multiple identities and contextual experiences. In this way, their policy priorities and discourse in policymaking spaces, as filtered through their multiple identities, become their lived experience praxis.

Moreover, the mere presence of their Black bodies in the legislative buildings signifies a shift from objectification to active agents in policy spaces. In my research, the women recognized the power and objectification of their Black bodies in policy spaces and sought to occupy it in novel ways. In one example, the then-assemblywoman Dina Neal reflected on the role of women in policymaking spaces (Martinez, 2022b):

The whole idea is to be able to shift the policy conversation and to deliver a policy conversation that’s centered around what we’re missing in it. If you know that you were a single mom who raised kids and you’re sitting on the Health Committee, you ought to be able to offer a narrative through the lens of those mothers and those women who don’t have a voice in this space and be able to deliver some significant content in how programs are run.

Assemblywoman Neal recognized the intersectionality of people’s experience and the role of public policy as a tool toward greater equity. Deploying their policy discourse was not the only way policymaking spaces were being transformed by progressive women of color legislators. They embrace their multiple identities and embody them through their choice of clothing and how they choose to portray themselves physically. For instance, after one interview with a 29-year-old Latina legislator, I wrote in my field notes (2017):

What stood out was the embracing of her Latina identity. I want to describe what she wore because this will not be captured in the text of her interview, and I think how she dresses is also reflective of who she is and who she embodies and the identity that she embraces. She wore jeans with sandal heels, a very bright blouse with geometric shapes. She wore her hair down, and of course every time I’ve seen her, she has worn her signature red lipstick. I think it symbolizes her willingness to embrace femininity, not just femineity but Latina femineity, as a way to say, “Yes, I am Latina, and these red lips are like the red rose I would wear in my hair if I had one.” It feels like she is embracing these stereotypes and turning them on their head, as if to say, “Yes, I am Latina, smart, and capable to legislating.”

This is a marked difference from when women policymakers sought to conform their appearances to the dominant masculine norms by downplaying their gendered identities. Critical qualitative inquiry purposefully facilitates the need for, and recognition of, such changes as well as the counter actions that may demonstrate them as captured in the field notes here.

Resisting and Surviving in Policymaking: Navigating Insider/Outsider Status

As more women are elected, researchers have found that elected men become increasingly aggressive and controlling of policy discourse and agendas. Kathlene (1994) argues policymaking bodies are spaces where “gender is present in the processes, practices, images, and ideologies, and distributions of power in the various sectors of social life” (p. 446). Like physical appearance, male behavior is perceived as the norm in legislative institutions and often women feel pressure to adapt to those expectations. As an example, a female legislator shared with me how she has witnessed aggressive male legislators during a committee hearing “trying to make [a female legislator] cry as a strategy” to delegitimize her testimony. Although Nevada’s legislature was female majority, the women did not feel the policymaking culture has shifted, rather women continued to be treated differently, “I just feel like everything that we go through generally, it doesn’t change, being elected.” For women of color, the women faced compounded resistance and barriers to governing. One Black woman legislator shared,

All black women, specifically—are always working against that idea of “the angry Black woman,” which I always want to respond to people, why don’t you ask her why she’s so angry? . . . We have to watch how we come across. There’s also less people to—when it comes to being a Black woman, you’re always expected or perceived to be strong, so there’s no one there waiting to rescue you. When you see the responses of other groups of women, how they’re treated or perceived, that doesn’t happen with Black women.

Straddling the insider/outsider paradigm required significant financial, emotional, and physical work. Their lived experiences, however, provided a compass on how to navigate spaces not intended for them:

Strength isn’t the hard part, not for me, because I really feel the strength came from everyone before me who fought, who sacrificed, who were imprisoned, who lost their lives, who were beaten. They had the strength so that I could live the life that I live today. The very least I can do is avenge their sacrifice. That’s where it gets on those moments where you want to give up, where you want to stop those moments, where you get tired, those moments where it’s like, why do I have to carry this weight? Why do I have to be an example? That’s where I always go back to. I’m just always focused on everyone that fought before me so that I could live the life they couldn’t even dream of, and so that’s where I draw my strength from. It doesn’t mean I don’t get frustrated or hurt or angry, but I think that’s what keeps me going.

Through intersectional anchorings of Black feminist theory, Chicana and borderlands feminisms, and critical race theory as specific critical methodologies, my research extends our knowledge on how new policy actors move, resist, and survive policymaking spaces. Using critical methodologies, my research centers the raced and gendered experiences of policy actors and goes beyond the descriptive to understand how their lives outside policy making spaces have shaped their policy ways of knowing. Even in a state where the majority of legislators were female and a significant percent of color, the women had to traverse centuries of exclusion once in the policymaking halls of their state legislature.

Leveraging Outsider/Insider Status in Pursuit of Just Social Policies

Undeterred by the male-dominated structural barriers and culture of the legislature, the progressive women of color legislators in my research pursued social policies that sought greater equity. Notably, the women of color legislators held a personal understanding of education policy that emerged from their lived experiences and their constituents. For example, drawing on qualitative data and raced-gendered frameworks, I (Martinez, 2020a) have examined how teachers of color, who were elected state legislators, leveraged their teaching experiences to shape their education policy priorities. Specifically, they created policies to broaden education, social, and economic opportunities for students and communities. They prominently narrated their teaching experiences and were driven to run for the state legislature because of the injustices they witnessed in their public schools. Once elected, their understanding of how race, gender, and politics played out in the classroom and on their campuses prominently informed their legislative priorities. In another study (Martinez, 2021a), Latina/o legislators straddled multiple policy and political worlds to challenge, resist, and succeed in policymaking spaces and higher education policy. Specifically, I used Latinx critical race theory (LatCrit) to examine how legislators drew from their multiple identities, including their families’ immigration histories, faith, and Latina/o community narratives to illuminate the social, economic, and political structural inequalities. LatCrit challenges claim of meritocracy, colorblindness, and race neutrality and argues that analysis of the experiences of Latina/os should also consider “the intersectionality of racism, sexism, classism, and other forms of oppression” (Solórzano & Delgado Bernal, 2001, p. 312). Moreover, the legislators in my studies believed that Latina/o representation in state policymaking was essential to countering racial, gendered, and economic inequities faced by their Latina/o communities. As legislators who were often “on the other side” of advocating for equity or were on the receiving end of negligent policies, they understood their outsider/insider status and how public policy language operated to exclude—while on its face policy rhetoric would not be overtly racist or sexist, nonetheless the embedded assumptions about target communities of policy interventions always influenced how legislature members made decisions on who was worthy of public investments and who was not. For instance, in an interview, a Latina legislator explained, “I think to me, I’ve had enough life experiencing how public policy, and how different systems affect vulnerable individuals, so I think a lot about it.”

Finally, because of their insider/outsider roles, the progressive legislators were more likely to challenge knowledge-generating practices in policymaking and reimage the social compact between society and its residents. The Latina/o legislators’ discourse on reimagining of the social compact represented more than political rhetoric; through their language use and counter-narratives, they redefined and challenged taken for granted assumptions about Latina/o constituents and communities. In policymaking, arguments and discourses do not merely reflect the stated problem, but also espouse deeply held values and assumptions in the democratic process of governing—specifically about the role of power, who participates, and who does not (Martinez, 2019). Notably, the legislators in my study were responsible for sponsoring and helping to pass unprecedented policies related to decriminalize abortion; allocate funds for English learner students; legalize driving privileges for undocumented residents; and eliminate taxes for feminine hygiene products, also known as pink taxes.

Possibilities: Employing Critical Qualitative Inquiry as an Avenue for Diverse Policy Knowledges and Transformations

The use of critical qualitative inquiry opens a window to diverse policy knowledges and a deeper understanding of the agenda-setting that is a pivotal component of all the levels of the political process and key to understanding how and which bills come to pass. Agenda-setting, or bill sponsorship, is an institutional tool that lawmakers use to gain legislative influence, shape what information is considered, and achieve electoral success (Baumgartner, 2016; Rouse, 2013). Through agenda-setting, legislators can also create opportunities, which may not exist at the other stages of the legislative process, to shape policies specific to their own interests and to the interests of their constituencies (Bratton, 2006; Rouse, 2013). From a rational perspective, agenda-setting is a linear process disconnected from individual values and preferences. From a critical policymaking perspective, qualitative research can capture the complexities and nuances of agenda-setting and policymakers’ ways of knowing. In the simplest terms, ways of knowing refers to how human beings make sense of reality (Van Manen, 1977). Although there is a body of research on ways of knowing (e.g., Belenky et al., 1986), limited literature exists on policy ways of knowing. Schneider and Ingram (2007) suggest that a policy “way of knowing is how one interprets the elements in a policy space and makes sense of the relationships among them. It is a narrative or story that holds all of the pieces together in a relatively coherent way” (p. 2). This constructivist approach to policy ways of knowing avoids essentialist explanations, yet a limitation is that it excludes the analysis of pre-existing structures of oppression, such as the role of race, ethnicity, whiteness, and power. In my research, however, I hope to go beyond this constructivist limitation to always acknowledge the ways that critical perspectives unmask the embeddedness of power, oppression, and privilege as described in this article.

For instance, in a study about Chicana and Latina legislators (Martinez, 2022a), I used feminist borderland theory to understand the ways that Latina legislators voiced their agency through their policy work and agenda-setting. They embodied their ways of being and knowing that simultaneously served as their compass as they traversed political and policymaking spaces. The Latina legislators centered their lived experiences as an important lens to critique neoliberal policies and countered deficit-oriented policy narratives about children of color and women. They voiced their agency through their agenda-setting, thus transforming the site of exclusionary political power and influence, the state legislature.

Drawing on the structural dimension of borderlands theory, the Latinas’ critical consciousness of the racist and sexist structures translated in material ways to introduce and champion policy priorities that redefined who was worthy of public investment and policy formation. While many elected officials of color shy away from “identity politics,” the Chicana and Latina legislators countered that it was important to talk about race, gender, class, and representation in the context of policy priorities and preferences. At a Latina legislators’ program at UCLA, Senator Cancela noted:

The constitutions of our states were written at a time where people who look like us didn’t have representation. They are not systems designed for people like us to operate in, and have power in. And to fundamentally change those systems, we need our teams to be as big as possible.

As a collective moving in the spaces of White, male-dominant policy culture, the legislators of color amplified their voices and policy priorities by cosponsoring bills, testifying for each other’s bills, or simply publicly restating points by their fellow legislators that had previously been ignored or sidestepped. Their policy priorities were as diverse as their backgrounds and experiences, yet there were two common threads: (a) redefining who was worthy of public policy and investment; and (b) a focus on expanding equity policies with attention on underserved communities, including education funding, women’s reproductive rights, and immigration issues.

My research confirms that while policy activities are a collective process, how legislators come to prioritize an issue and make decisions are grounded in their localized knowledge and experiences that shape how they construct and understand the world, policy problems, and solutions or policy ways of knowing. State legislative agenda-setting, in my research, served as an opening for historically minorized legislators to exercise individual and aggregate influence on pivotal education policies, for instance, policies related to English language learners (Martinez, 2020b) and community college need-based funding (Martinez, 2021a).

My use of qualitative research and critical theories have been used to gain a deeper understanding of policy actors, their ways of knowing, and their strategies to change state policy. This work represents an example of how critical theories can be translated into action or praxis and illustrates that critical theories are relevant and timely at a time when ethnically and racially diverse women are remaking American politics.

Nevada has become a microcosm for the remaking of America and changing political dynamics. Importantly, critical qualitative methodologies offer fundamental ways to explore central elements in policy analysis and policymaking. Policymaking and policy resource allocations are about power. Who has the power to shape, influence, and decide is central to understanding the political policymaking process and outcomes. Critical perspectives question how dominant structures and discourses perpetuate inequities, and how power unfolds in politics and continues to privilege dominant ideologies.

Critical qualitative policy research can also extend our understanding of how historically marginalized actors engage in politics, the resources they bring to bear on the process, and what issues ignite their agency and collective voice. Seamster (2015) advocated for a race-conscious analysis of how whiteness is embedded in our political analysis: “politics has granted even less attention to other racial minorities, in particular Latinos and the ways that issue of representation, access, and citizenship intersects with the study of urban politics” (p. 1050). Indeed, western states is where the growth of emergent policy entrants is most pronounced; Nevada was the first in the county to have a female majority legislature. Western states, such as Nevada, can be sites of analysis to understand how policymaking ways are evolving as new entrants, who are more likely to be younger, of color, female, and connected to an immigrant experience, are changing state political landscapes and the implications for sustaining a diverse democracy.