Introduction

Feminist Criticism ◽

Gender And Politics ◽

Account Giving

Chapter 1 makes a defense of representative democracy even as it acknowledges long-standing and contemporary feminist criticism and surveys the appeal of more fashionable non-representative alternatives. As part of this, the authors consider the failure of political parties to “do good by women.” Adopting a problem-based approach, they remake the case for women’s group representation, reviewing the 1990s politics-of-presence literature in light of criticism based on women’s ideological and intersectional differences. Instead of regarding this as undermining the possibility of women’s group representation, the authors hold that these differences should become central to its successful realization. A second observation is the tendency of gender and politics scholars to disaggregate the concept of representation. Eschewing this approach, they instead hold that political representation is better understood as indivisible: a mélange of its many, overlapping, and connected dimensions. The final section of Chapter 1 introduces the structure and component parts of the book’s argument, introducing the reader to the “affected representatives of women,” and the authors’ twin augmentations, group advocacy and account giving.

Lasting Political Structures

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199639748.013.034 ◽

2014 ◽

Author(s):

Isser Woloch

Keyword(s):

Political Parties ◽

Final Section ◽

Vantage Point ◽

Military Conscription ◽

Political Structures ◽

Post War ◽

Administrative Structures ◽

Looking Back

This chapter uses the 1940s—the Resistance, the Liberation, the post-war moment—as a vantage point for looking back at the French Revolution’s projects of representative democracy, decentralization, and recentralization. Among other things it considers the initial re-division of the national territory, changing administrative structures, the uses of elections, the strictures against political parties, and the permutations on these matters across successive post-revolutionary regimes. A final section offers a more conventional chronological account, from 1789 onward, of one of the Revolution’s most consequential innovations: systematic military conscription.

Feminist Democratic Representation

10.1093/oso/9780190087722.001.0001 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Karen Celis ◽

Sarah Childs

Keyword(s):

Group Representation ◽

Political Agenda ◽

Democratic Representation ◽

Starting Point ◽

Marine Le Pen ◽

Account Giving ◽

Women's Dress ◽

The Ideal

When are women well represented, politically speaking? The popular consensus has been, for some time, when descriptive representatives put women’s issues and feminist interests on the political agenda. Today, such certainty has been well and truly shaken; differences among women—especially how they conceive of their “interests”—is said to fatally undermine the principle and practice of women’s group representation. There has been a serious loss of faith, too, in legislatures as the sites where political representation takes place. Feminist Democratic Representation responds by making a second-generation feminist design intervention; firmly grounded in feminist empirical political science, the authors’ design shows how women’s misrepresentation is best met procedurally, taking women’s differences as their starting point, adopting an indivisible conception of representation, and reclaiming the role of legislatures. This book introduces a new group of actors—the affected representatives of women—and two new parliamentary practices: group advocacy and account giving. Working with a series of vignettes—abortion, prostitution, Muslim women’s dress, and Marine Le Pen—the authors explore how these representational problematics might fare were a feminist democratic process of representation in place. The ideal representative effects are broad rather than simply descriptive or substantive: they include effects relating to affinity, trust, legitimacy, symbolism, and affect. They manifest in stronger representative relationships among women in society, and between women and their representatives, elected and affective; and greater support for the procedures, institutions, and substantive outputs of representative politics, and at a higher level, the idea of representative democracy. Against the more fashionable tide of post-representative politics, Feminist Democratic Representation argues for more and better representation.

An Essay on Women’s Political Representation

Feminist Democratic Representation ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190087722.003.0001 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 1-27

Author(s):

Karen Celis

Keyword(s):

Political Parties ◽

Political Institutions ◽

Good Representation ◽

Gender And Politics ◽

Academic Scholarship ◽

Marine Le Pen ◽

Established Democracies ◽

Elected Representatives ◽

Women's Dress

The Introductory Essay asks readers to consider four vignettes—on prostitution, Muslim women’s dress, abortion, and Marine Le Pen. The vignettes illustrate what the authors term the poverty of women’s political representation, representational problematics experienced by women in established democracies. These are also core issues identified in contemporary gender and politics research: of women’s ideological and intersectional differences, skewed political and parliamentary agendas, and disconnect from political parties and electoral politics. The vignettes adopt a dialogical style to clarify and magnify core concerns of the book, highlighting the contemporary relevance and importance of the book to academic scholarship and democratic practice. The discussion of the vignettes weaves through reflection on “representation as it should be,” what women’s good representation might be. There would be significant change to political institutions, political representatives, political parties, and parliaments; elected representatives would be institutionally and systemically required to represent women.

Electoral Engineering in New Democracies: Strong Quotas and Weak Parties in Tunisia

Government and Opposition ◽

10.1017/gov.2020.34 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-18

Author(s):

Jana Belschner

Keyword(s):

Political Parties ◽

Party System ◽

Group Representation ◽

State Funding ◽

New Democracies ◽

Local Elections ◽

Gender And Politics ◽

Electoral Quotas ◽

Varying Compliance ◽

Do So

Abstract Bridging the literature on gender and politics, democratization, and political parties, this article investigates the causes of parties’ varying compliance with electoral quotas. Whereas research has so far focused on parties’ willingness to comply, this article sheds light on their ability to do so. It suggests that the more quotas parties have to comply with, and the more complex the quotas’ designs, the more difficult implementation becomes for the organizationally weak parties that we often encounter in new democracies. The argument is developed and substantiated in a comparative analysis of parties’ quota compliance in the 2018 Tunisian local elections. Although the Islamist party was able to comply fully with all quotas (for women, youth and people with disabilities), small secular parties lost a number of lists and state funding due to non-compliance. While the quotas were highly effective in securing group representation, they had repercussions on party and party system consolidation.

Introduction

10.1093/oso/9780190875374.003.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Sylvia Bashevkin

Keyword(s):

Foreign Policy ◽

Early Modern ◽

Women Leaders ◽

Early Modern Period ◽

Diplomatic History ◽

Gender And Politics ◽

Modern Period ◽

International Responsibility

Chapter 1 situates the study in the context of feminist diplomatic history. It shows how women leaders in positions of international responsibility have been evaluated since the early modern period. The discussion then considers how the gender and politics field evolved within political science in recent decades, demonstrating the emphasis of that literature on institutions and especially legislatures, rather than on the actions of individuals in executive office. It examines a key theoretical pivot of the field, political representation, and suggests ways in which the concept can be reconceived for contemporary research on foreign policy leaders. The chapter concludes with an overview of the book.

An Introduction to Gender and Representation in Latin America

10.1093/oso/9780190851224.003.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Leslie A. Schwindt-Bayer

Keyword(s):

Latin America ◽

Latin American ◽

Gender Inequality ◽

Latin American Politics ◽

Gender And Politics ◽

Women's Representation ◽

Political Crises ◽

Women’S Representation ◽

And Gender

In this introductory chapter of Gender and Representation in Latin America, Leslie A. Schwindt-Bayer argues that gender inequality in political representation in Latin America is rooted in institutions and the democratic challenges and political crises facing Latin American countries. She situates the book in two important literatures—one on Latin American politics and democratic institutions, the other on gender and politics—and then explains how the book will explore the ways that institutions and democratic challenges and political crises moderate women’s representation and gender inequality. She introduces the book’s framework of analyzing the causes and consequences of women’s representation, overviews the organization of the volume, and summarizes the main arguments of the chapters.

Searching for Political Parties in the Past

10.1093/oso/9780198735854.003.0002 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Piero Ignazi

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Political Parties ◽

Political Party ◽

Ancient Greece ◽

Political Community ◽

Democratic Politics ◽

The Political ◽

The Past ◽

The Common

Chapter 1 introduces the long and difficult process of the theoretical legitimation of the political party as such. The analysis of the meaning and acceptance of ‘parties’ as tools of expressing contrasting visions moves forward from ancient Greece and Rome where (democratic) politics had first become a matter of speculation and practice, and ends up with the first cautious acceptance of parties by eighteenth-century British thinkers. The chapter explores how parties or factions have been constantly considered tools of division of the ‘common wealth’ and the ‘good society’. The holist and monist vision of a harmonious and compounded society, stigmatized parties and factions as an ultimate danger for the political community. Only when a new way of thinking, that is liberalism, emerged, was room for the acceptance of parties set.

Can Mandated Political Representation Increase Policy Influence for Disadvantaged Minorities? Theory and Evidence from India

The American Economic Review ◽

10.1257/000282803769206232 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 93 (4) ◽

pp. 1132-1151 ◽

Cited By ~ 259

Author(s):

Rohini Pande

Keyword(s):

Policy Making ◽

Indian States ◽

Basic Premise ◽

Policy Influence ◽

Disadvantaged Groups ◽

Institutional Features

A basic premise of representative democracy is that all those subject to policy should have a voice in its making. However, policies enacted by electorally accountable governments often fail to reflect the interests of disadvantaged minorities. This paper exploits the institutional features of political reservation, as practiced in Indian states, to examine the role of mandated political representation in providing disadvantaged groups influence over policy-making. I find that political reservation has increased transfers to groups which benefit from the mandate. This finding also suggests that complete policy commitment may be absent in democracies, as is found in this case.

European Constitutions as sources of Party Law and the Fundamental Law of Hungary = Las Constituciones europeas como fuentes de la Ley de Partidos y la Ley Fundamental de Hungría

Revista jurídica de la Universidad de León ◽

10.18002/rjule.v0i4.5286 ◽

2017 ◽

pp. 51

Author(s):

Peter Smuk

Keyword(s):

Political Parties ◽

Political Regime ◽

System A ◽

Constitutional State ◽

El Sistema ◽

Election System ◽

Fundamental Law ◽

Sociedad Civil ◽

The Relationship

<p>La regulación de los partidos políticos parece un tema ligeramente descuidado en la literatura constitucional húngara. Así, a pesar de que hay un gran número de cuestiones que deben analizarse y entenderse en los ámbitos de la democracia representativa, en el sistema electoral y en la financiación de los partidos, derivadas de las particularidades del cambio del régimen político, y que hace necesaria la interpretación de nuestro sistema político actual. Un análisis sustantivo de estas cuestiones en términos de derecho constitucional (y desde las ciencias políticas) podría contribuir a una mejor comprensión de la democracia representativa húngara, el estado constitucional, así como la relación entre la sociedad civil y el Estado. En este documento voy a ofrecer una visión general de las normas constitucionales relativas a los partidos políticos europeos y comparar la redacción de la Ley Fundamental de Hungría con las normas constitucionales creadas en 1989.</p><p>The regulation of political parties seems a slightly neglected topic in the Hungarian constitutional literature. It is so despite the fact that there are a large number of questions to be analysed and understood in the fields of representative democracy, election system and party financing arising from the particularities of the change of the political regime, the recent constitution-making or the necessary interpretation of our current political system. A substantive analysis of these questions in terms of constitutional law (and political science) could contribute to a better understanding of the Hungarian representative democracy, constitutional state as well as the relationship between civil society and the state. In this paper I will provide a rough overview of constitutional rules relating to European political parties and compare the wording of the Fundamental Law of Hungary with the constitutional rules created in 1989.</p><div> </div>

Politicians and political parties’ use of social media in-between elections

Journal of Applied Journalism & Media Studies ◽

10.1386/ajms_00017_1 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 9 (2) ◽

pp. 91-103 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Todd Graham ◽

Julia Schwanholz

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

Political Parties ◽

Relevant Literature ◽

Digital Transformation ◽

Special Issue ◽

Pros And Cons ◽

State Of Research ◽

Use Of Social Media ◽

The Relationship

Digital transformation changes the relationship between citizens and politics. The observation of this nexus is highly relevant for representative democracy. After the successful 2008 Obama campaign, a vast body of research that explores how and why politicians use social media has emerged. However, we still know very little about how social media are being adopted and used in-between elections, and still less yet about what this means for political representation. Therefore, this special issue brings together innovative research that focuses on how the use of social media is impacting upon the relationship between politicians and political parties, and citizens. First, we discuss some pros and cons of this transformation in the context of the relevant literature and, especially, in relation to Stephen Coleman’s concept of ‘direct representation’. Finally, we discuss the findings and merits of the contributions and what the issue adds to our understanding of the phenomenon to the state of research.