			Home About us Contact

Substantive Representation (substantive + representation)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	100%

Selected Abstracts

Critical Mass, Deliberation and the Substantive Representation of Women: Evidence from the UK's Devolution Programme

POLITICAL STUDIES, Issue 4 2006
Paul Chaney
This article provides empirical evidence to support recent assertions that the substantive representation of women depends not only on the numbers of women elected representatives in national legislatures, but also who they are. In this case study of one of the UK's devolved legislatures, analysis was undertaken of the transcripts of 327 plenary debates held during the first term of the National Assembly for Wales, where women constituted 42 percent of elected members (1999,2003). The gender dynamics of political debate around key equality topics reveal that the link between descriptive and substantive representation of women is complex. When a ,critical mass' of women is achieved the substantive representation of women is affirmed as ,probabilistic' rather than ,deterministic' for it is shaped by the institutional context, the gender dynamics of debate and, importantly, the actions of individual ,equality champions'. While women representatives exhibited a greater propensity to advance gender equality in debate than their male colleagues, the present findings also show the disproportionate influence of ,equality champions': women who are able to draw upon earlier feminist activism and act as ,strategic insiders' who make a difference to women's issues in a parliamentary context. [source]

Gender-based voting in the parliamentary elections of 2007 in Finland

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, Issue 5 2010
ANNE MARIA HOLLI
In contrast to many other countries, the Finnish open-list proportional representation (PR) system with its mandatory preferential voting provides an opportunity to study gender-based voting empirically. Using the 2007 Finnish national election study, the article presents an analysis of the grounds for same-gender voting, including motivations related to descriptive and substantive dimensions of representation. None of the motivations is able to account men's higher propensity to vote for a candidate of their own gender. The motivations linked to securing the descriptive and substantive representation of one's own gender in politics play a more decisive part on women's vote choice of same-gender candidates. Voting for a same-gender candidate is connected to younger age among both women and men, while the propensity to vote for female candidates increases with support for the Social Democrats, the Greens and the Swedish People's Party. Finally, gender, party choice, and descriptive and substantive motivations seem to be related to gender-based voting for both parliamentary and presidential elections. [source]

Gender, Politics and Policy Change: The Case of Welfare Reform Under New Labour

GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION, Issue 1 2010
Claire Annesley
Politics and gender scholarship is increasingly seeking to understand the relationship between the presence of women in politics and gendered policy outcomes , the substantive representation of women (SRW). Yet its focus remains squarely on the activities of ,critical actors' in parliaments and women's policy agencies and on ,feminist' rather than ,mainstream' policy areas. In contrast, this article investigates the impact of feminist actors in a range of institutional settings on recent processes of welfare reform in the UK. It finds that the gendered welfare reform introduced by New Labour was initiated and pushed through by a coalition of committed feminist actors across a range of institutions. Crucially, the reforms relied on the existence of ,strategic actors' and ,gate openers', defined as feminist actors in positions of significant institutional power. It makes a contribution to the actor-centred SRW scholarship, develops an institutionalist approach to this research and identifies the need for a political economy perspective to understanding how women can shape policy outcomes. [source]

Critical Mass, Deliberation and the Substantive Representation of Women: Evidence from the UK's Devolution Programme

Minority Representation and Majority-Minority Districts after Shaw v. Reno: Legal Challenges, Empirical Evidence and Alternative Approaches

POLITICS & POLICY, Issue 2 2001
Michael A. Smith
One of the most vexing problems of American federalism is the process by which representatives get elected from the respective states. This paper discusses the muddled precedent on gerrymandering established by the U.S. Supreme Court in Shaw v. Reno and upheld in subsequent cases. After conditionally upholding gerrymandering for political purposes in Davis v. Bandemer, the Court now rejects racial gerrymandering if the resulting districts have a particularly contorted appearance on a map. These rulings lack a clear definition of representation, though the Court has hinted that it may be necessary to move beyond the stark procedural view of one-person, one-vote. Although the concept of substantive representation may seem difficult to apply at first, it may be operationalized by considering the chances that a voter or coalition has of influencing an election. Given the obvious preferences of legislators and parties for "safe seats," along with this vague Court precedent, voters may be tempted to refer districting controversies to nonpartisan or bipartisan commissions. [source]

In their own words: New Labour women and the substantive representation of women

BRITISH JOURNAL OF POLITICS & INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, Issue 2 2001
Sarah Childs
Political representation is an essentially contested concept. Contemporary feminist conceptions claim a link between the presence of women and the potential for a feminised transformation of politics. Previous empirical research in the UK, which examined the question of women representatives' attitudes, concluded that women representatives were attitudinally more liberal/feminist than male representatives. This article extends the existing literature through a consideration of how the new intake of Labour women MPs conceptualise political representation. Three different dimensions are explored. First, the article examines constituency-level representation focusing upon the women MPs' perceptions of shared identity, affinity and their relationships with women constituents. Secondly, the question of whether women representatives perceive that women's presence will effect a feminisation within parliament by regendering the political agenda is considered. Finally, the impact of women representatives' presence in and on government is examined in relation to the women representatives' understanding of the role of the minister for women. The research suggests that the new-intake Labour women MPs acknowledge a feminised dimension to political representation, albeit a secondary one. This supports, in a qualified way, theoretical and empirical arguments that women's presence in politics has the potential to transform women's political representation. [source]