Why Aren't They There?: The Political Representation of Women, Ethnic Groups and Issue Positions in Legislatures by Didier Ruedin

Author:Didier Ruedin [Ruedin, Didier]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Legislative Branch, Elections, Comparative Politics, Political Science, Political Process, American Government, General
ISBN: 9780955820397
Google: 6UxwzutN48AC
Goodreads: 18226700
Publisher: ECPR Press
Published: 2013-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

Notes: The distribution (frequencies and densities) of levels of representation in the key policy domains as examined in this chapter. The distributions for the other domains are described in the main text. The number of cases in each domain is apparent in Table 4.1.

In contrast with the previous two domains, levels of representation of environmental issues are significantly lower. Looking at the remaining domains, the distribution of representation scores regarding views on immigration and the role of religion in politics are both characterised by higher variance than for the left–right domain. Very different levels can be found in the countries covered, which might be a reflection of the different salience of the domains. The distribution of representation scores in the domain of deregulation appears to be similar to that of social issues. Also absent in Figure 4.1 is the distribution of representation scores in the domains of nationalism and privatisation. The distribution of the representation scores in these domains resembles that of the social domain, with the exception of the outlier: a concentration towards the upper end of the scale. In none of these additional domains are the highest levels of representation the most common ones, although there is a concentration towards the upper end of the scale. This might indicate that left–right representation is somewhat prioritised, perhaps at the cost of levels of representation in other domains.

Compared to levels of gender and ethnic group representation outlined in the previous two chapters, it seems that levels of policy representation are generally higher than levels of descriptive representation. The relationship between levels of representation in different forms will be examined and discussed in Chapter Five. The remainder of this chapter focuses on the variance within policy domains.

To begin with, bivariate associations are examined as a form of initial hypothesis testing. In the literature, the difference between countries with PR systems and countries with majoritarian systems is often highlighted, but no association can be found in the rich sample used in this chapter. This is the case for all the different domains, including left–right, the social domain and environmentalism. For none of the domains are the observed differences substantively or statistically significant (p>0.1). For some of the domains, the range of representation scores is noticeably larger in PR systems than in majoritarian systems. These results indicate that the lack of difference found in the left–right domain by Golder and Stramski (2010) applies equally to other issue domains. The results outlined here are not substantively different when classifying the electoral formula into majoritarian, mixed and proportional systems; although in this case, the small number of countries in some of the cells becomes problematic.

Looking at the level of vote–seat proportionality, rather than the difference in electoral formulas, does not substantively change the result. Statistically, most of the associations are insignificant (p>0.1). The exception is the left–right domain, where an association can be observed, and higher levels of representation in more proportional systems (r=0.51, p<0.05). The correlation between the two variables is stronger for new democracies (r=0.

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