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Political Representation (political + representation)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	85%
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	9%

Selected Abstracts

Political Representation in Leader Democracy1

GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION, Issue 3 2005
András Körösényi
The essay focuses on the neglected problem of democratic politics, i.e. on the role of leadership. Although in democracies public office holders are controlled to a certain extent, leaders still have wide room for political manoeuvre and decide without any ,instruction' of the citizens. Re-working Weber's and Schumpeter's theory, the author aims to build the model of leader democracy. He highlights the major traits of it in a comparison with the deliberative and the aggregative,utilitarian concepts of democratic theory. The theory of leader democracy is applied to the problem of representation, which, in contrast to mechanical mirroring, gains a new, dynamic and qualitative meaning. [source]

Judicial Independence and Political Representation: Prussian Judges as Parliamentary Deputies, 1849,1913

LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY, Issue 4 2000
Kenneth F. Ledford
The outrageous history of German judges during the Third Reich should not so structure historical research as to distract historians from examining their role in the nineteenth century. Prussian judges played an important role in electoral politics by serving as parliamentary deputies between 1849 and 1913. This essay poses and answers two questions: What was the political, legal, and social setting that led to judges sewing in parliament? And, why did their number decline after 1877? Theoretical discourses of separation of powers, construction of a Hegelian "general estate," and independence of the judiciary converged with administrative-legal-constitutional developments in Prussia begun under the absolutism of the eighteenth century and professional and personal interests of judges to bring them into parliament, often as members of the liberal opposition. But success in the liberal project of building a national state, including legal reform, professionalization, and the advent of mass politics, reduced the need and attraction for judges in parliament, resulting in a decline after the 1860s. [source]

The Paradox of Voting and the Ethics of Political Representation

PHILOSOPHY AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS, Issue 3 2010
ALEXANDER A. GUERRERO
First page of article [source]

Retrospective Voting and Political Representation

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 2 2009
Seok-ju Cho
This article develops a theoretical model of political representation under the single-member district system. I establish the existence of equilibria in which legislative voting of each legislator depends only on her preference and her electorate's preference and voters sanction badly behaved incumbents and retain well-behaved ones based solely on their own representatives' roll-call records. In equilibrium, voters achieve a partial representation with respect to representatives' behavior in each district. However, with respect to representation of the social majority, my findings are indeterminate. On the one hand, there exists an equilibrium in which the majority-preferred alternative is the outcome guaranteed, except in very special circumstances. On the other hand, this equilibrium is not generally the unique equilibrium, and, for some parameter values, there is an equilibrium in which the majority-preferred alternative is less likely than the alternative preferred only by the minority to be the outcome. [source]

Thinking for Thousands: Emerson's Theory of Political Representation in the Public Sphere

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 1 2005
Hans Von Rautenfeld
This article develops Emerson's theory of representative democracy as it applies to a deliberative public sphere. By highlighting the democratic content of Emerson's thought, this article challenges tradition readings of Emerson that claim his thought to be elitist or antipolitical. According to Emerson, the public sphere is structured by representative individuals who are analogous to those representatives found in electoral institutions. These representatives make public the beliefs and values present in their "constituencies." They deliberate in the name of their constituencies, saying what their constituencies could and would say, were they to also directly engage in such deliberations. Representative individuals are tied to their constituencies through bonds of "sympathy and likeness." The moral consequences of a representative public sphere include the development of a sense of deliberative justice on the part of the citizenry and the reduction of the possibility of domination and oppression by ideologically oriented elites. [source]

Political Representation and Gender in Brazil: Quotas for Women and their Impact

BULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH, Issue 2 2008
LUIS F. MIGUEL
In the 1990s, Brazilian Congress approved an electoral quota for female candidates in parliamentary competition (with exception of the Senate). The reticence of the law and the peculiarities of the Brazilian open lists electoral system have given rise to concern that the quotas will fail. In fact, there has been no great increase in the number of women in Brazilian legislatives , there has been some change in the municipalities, a little less in the states and almost nothing at the federal level. Analysing in detail the results of four elections to the federal Chamber of Deputies, two before and two after the quotas, it becomes apparent that, in Brazil, the impact of quotas is mediated far more than in other countries. Quotas provide, above all, an incentive to party elites to support an increase in the number of female political leaders, and the results may appear only at mid term. [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]

Political Determinants of Intergovernmental Grants: Evidence From Argentina

ECONOMICS & POLITICS, Issue 3 2001
Alberto Porto
This paper explores the determinants of federal grants allocation across provincial states in Argentina. Our analysis suggests that the redistributive pattern implicit in the federal system of intergovernmental grants cannot be explained on normative grounds exclusively. In order to understand the rationale behind federal grants distribution, a positive approach could render better results. Specifically, we claim that the distribution of federal grants could be associated with political variables such as the political representation of jurisdictions at Congress. The econometric analysis suggests that the significant disparity observed in the per capita representation across different provinces is an important factor explaining the allocation of those transfers. In this respect, overrepresented provinces, both at the senate and at the lower chamber, have received, on average, higher resources from the national government compared to more populous and less represented states. These results are consistent with those observed in other countries. [source]

Growth in women's political representation: A longitudinal exploration of democracy, electoral system and gender quotas

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, Issue 1 2010
PAMELA PAXTON
The expansion of women's formal political representation ranks among the most significant trends in international politics of the last 100 years. Though women made steady political progress, substantial country-level variation exists in patterns of growth and change. In this article, longitudinal theories are developed to examine how political factors affect women's political representation over time. Latent growth curve models are used to assess the growth of women in politics in 110 countries from 1975 to 2000. The article investigates how electoral systems, national-level gender quotas and growth of democracy , both political rights and civil liberties , impact country-level trajectories of women's legislative representation. It is found: first, national quotas do affect women's political presence, but at a lower level than legislated by law; second, the impact of a proportional representation system on women's political representation is steady over time; and third, democracy, especially civil liberties, does not affect the level of women's political representation in the earliest period, but does influence the growth of women's political representation over time. These findings both reinforce and challenge prior cross-sectional models of women's political representation. [source]

Prostitution: Collectives and the Politics of Regulation

GENDER, WORK & ORGANISATION, Issue 2 2000
Jackie West
The regulation of prostitution is changing as rapidly as its organization and sex workers have had more influence on this than usually recognized in either theory or research on prostitutes' rights. Using examples from the UK, Australia, the Netherlands and New Zealand, the paper shows how elements of prohibition, legalization and decriminalization are variously adopted in response to specific interests and their political representation. With the focus on law reform, the impact of collectives is compared to that of other contemporary players in the politics of prostitution, including community groups, councils, the police and the sex industry itself. But attention is also paid to health and occupational initiatives, and the conditions promoting the self-regulation of sex work both by prostitutes and employers. The paper also argues that the role of collectives, together with changes in the wider regulatory context, reflect and reinforce increasing differentiation within prostitution. [source]

Brussels between Bern and Berlin: Comparative Federalism Meets the European Union

GOVERNANCE, Issue 2 2003
Tanja A. Börzel
In the current debate on the future European order, the European Union (EU) is often described as an "emerging federation." This article claims that federalism is not exclusively useful in deliberating about the future of the EU. Non-statecentric conceptions of federalism provide a better understanding of the current structure and functioning of the European system of multilevel governance than most theories of European integration and international relations do. We combine political and economic perspectives of federalism to analyze the "balancing act" between effective political representation and efficient policy-making in the EU. Drawing on the examples of Germany and Switzerland in particular, we argue that the increasing delegation of powers to the central EU level needs to be paralleled by strengthened patterns of fiscal federalism and an empowered representation of functional interests at the European level. Without such "rebalancing," the current legitimacy problems of the EU are likely to intensify. [source]

Implementing Affirmative Action: Global Trends

IDS BULLETIN, Issue 5 2010
Julie Ballington
This scoping article gives a global picture of dynamics, trends, policies and mechanisms for engaging with women's representation in political office. It discusses the kind of affirmative action introduced, and where it features vis-à-vis electoral cycles. It describes and compares candidate and reserved seats quotas and shows how electoral systems influence the possibilities of challenging power hierarchies in politics. The second part of the article reflects on the extent to which implementing quotas have been effective in engendering political representation and the conditions that allow or inhibit this. [source]

Reassessing Legitimacy in the European Union

JCMS: JOURNAL OF COMMON MARKET STUDIES, Issue 4 2002
Andrew Moravcsik
Concern about the EU's ,democratic deficit' is misplaced. Judged against existing advanced industrial democracies, rather than an ideal plebiscitary or parliamentary democracy, the EU is legitimate. Its institutions are tightly constrained by constitutional checks and balances: narrow mandates, fiscal limits, super,majoritarian and concurrent voting requirements and separation of powers. The EU's appearance of exceptional insulation reflects the subset of functions it performs , central banking, constitutional adjudication, civil prosecution, economic diplomacy and technical administration. These are matters of low electoral salience commonly delegated in national systems, for normatively justifiable reasons. On balance, the EU redresses rather than creates biases in political representation, deliberation and output. [source]

Cultivating small business influence in the UK: the federation of small businesses' journey from outsider to insider

JOURNAL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, Issue 4 2003
Grant Jordan
Abstract This case study charts the classic transformation of a small business organisation from being a vehicle of protest that attracted a reasonable but transient membership into a much larger group with a more stable membership and a group with an effective insider policy style. The paper asserts that the change in style and the change in recruiting success are not causally linked, and, indeed, it claims that an insider style may harm recruiting. In the case of the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), however, any potential damage through adopting an insider style was more than offset by the separate decision to market the group door to door with a package of selective material incentives (Olson 1965). The paper describes the predominant insider politics style of political representation and finds that while the FSB has moved in that direction, it does not fully fit the stereotype. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications [source]

EQUALITY, FREEDOM, AND/OR JUSTICE FOR ALL: A RESPONSE TO MARTHA NUSSBAUM

METAPHILOSOPHY, Issue 3-4 2009
MICHAEL BÉRUBÉ
Abstract: This essay is a reply to Martha Nussbaum's "Capabilities and Disabilities." It endorses Nussbaum's critique of the social-contract tradition and proposes that it might be productively contrasted with Michael Walzer's critique of John Rawls in Spheres of Justice. It notes that Nussbaum's emphasis on surrogacy and guardianship with regard to people with severe and profound cognitive disabilities poses a challenge to disability studies, insofar as the field tends to emphasize the self-representation of people with disabilities and to concentrate primarily on the aesthetic and political representation of physical disability. The essay concludes with an account of a recent exchange with Peter Singer on the question of our social expectations of people with Down syndrome. [source]

The Limitations of Heuristics for Political Elites

POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 6 2009
Kristina C. Miler
Despite the extensive literature on citizens' use of cognitive heuristics in political settings, far less is known about how political elites use these shortcuts. Legislative elites benefit from the efficiency of the accessibility heuristic, but their judgments can also be flawed if accessible information is incomplete or unrepresentative. Using personal interviews and a quasi-experimental design, this paper examines the use of the accessibility heuristic by professional legislative staff when assessing the importance of natural resources issues to their constituents. Staff members recall only a small subset of the relevant constituents in the district, and this subset is biased in favor of active and resource-rich constituents over other, equally relevant constituents. This paper provides a new application of cognitive psychology to political elites and addresses important normative questions about the importance of information processing for political representation. By drawing on the psychology literature on heuristics, this paper identifies the cognitive mechanisms of congressional representation and provides new evidence of old biases. [source]

Re-founding Representation: Wider, Broader, Closer, Deeper

POLITICAL STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 2 2010
Lucy Taylor
This article challenges conventional understandings and methodologies associated with the study of political representation. It imagines representation as a power relationship and shifts attention from elections to a closer examination of the interface between representatives and those they claim to represent. It argues for the need to make representation studies wider, moving our focus to study polities beyond the confines of prosperous, established democracies. Secondly, we should broaden our understanding of representation agents in two ways. We should consider how non-voters are represented and we should include diverse forms of social organisations, problematising relationships of representation within these groups and taking their political-representational role seriously. Thirdly, we should move closer, conducting not only macro-level analyses but also micro-level studies, exploring representation among and between individuals and groups in order to understand the complex relationships, motives and dynamics of power at work. Finally we need to go deeper, looking at our own subject positions as scholars critically and challenging the neutrality of the ideas and assumptions that we use as intellectual tools. Moreover, we should promote deeper relationships of representation, reconnecting it to ideas and practices of participation, and promoting the role of accountability in ,closing the loop' and enhancing democracy. [source]