Experience, Knowledge, and Political Representation

Evidence suggests that increasing the descriptive representation of groups improves their substantive representation. What underpins this link? Many scholars writing on the subject stop short of arguing explicitly that it is “shared experience” within groups. I argue that we should embrace the potential conceptual and empirical benefits of framing representation through experience. To do this, we should think of experience specifically in terms of the epistemic content and capacities gained through subjective experience, which can allow individuals to think about the world in distinct ways. I reframe the idea that experiences might be shared within groups and ameliorate concerns that the concept is essentialist, drawing out the political relevance of my argument. This has the strategic implication that we should be unafraid to argue in favor of political presence on the basis of (shared) experience and the empirical implication that future research should consider subjective experience more closely.

Intersectional Representation Between Gender, Religion, and Nationality

Immigrants who came to Europe in recent decades (work immigrants and/or refugees) grapple with intersectional identities, such as religion, nationality and gender, yet current political research addresses these issues only in part. To address these omissions, I conducted a content analysis of all parliamentary questions Muslim representatives raised in their parliamentary activities in three Western countries. I also investigated whether the representatives' invisibility pertains only to their descriptive representation or whether it affects their substantive representation by analyzing five research hypotheses for differences in the content of the parliamentary questions. I found that male and female Muslim representatives ask parliamentary questions about Muslim men and women. In addition, I developed an Intersectional Representation Index to measure and demonstrate the complexities Muslim representatives face in Western countries. The index shows that such representatives have several identities, some of which have become invisible, as previous studies indicated.

Sweden

The Swedish Riksdag is often regarded as an ideal type for Scandinavian or Nordic parliamentarism. This relates to institutional features and party cohesion, but more often so to descriptive representation in terms of gender—an aspect where Sweden’s parliament has consistently occupied the top position among European parliaments during the last decades. However, and despite an unlikely-case-character, previous research has shown that gender biases exist in Nordic parliaments and the Riksdag in particular. This chapter follows this research and evaluates how gender and seniority determine legislators’ opportunities to speak in plenary debates. Our results show that the gender biases found in previous research persist to date and extend further to the past. Furthermore, low seniority amplifies the effect of gender; junior female legislators have the slimmest chances to speak in plenary debates.

Can Institutional Reform Have a Lasting Impact on the Policy Agenda? Evidence From the 10-1 in Austin, TX

Institutional reforms to districted city councils from at-large systems are typically motivated by the desire to increase geographic and descriptive representation, enriching representation for historically excluded groups. The policy impact of descriptive representation, however, have been found to be conditional and not definitive. In this article, I explore whether institutional reform from at-large to districts has effects on a city council's policy agenda, or whether institutional constraints can quell the reform's impacts. I look to the “10-1” reform in Austin, Texas, implemented in 2015, using an original dataset collected from items in the council's 2009–2019 meeting minutes for a direct measure of the agenda. After coding each item for policy substance and testing the agenda's diversity, I find that the reform had short-term effects on the policy agenda. Instead, local government's agenda is largely driven by external problems and pragmatic needs facing the city. Consequently, the effects of reform are overwhelmed by institutional stickiness.