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8. Political Representation
- Temple University Press
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8 Political representation Joni Lovenduski Marila Guadagnini F eminist empirical and theoretical work on representation has largely proceeded along separate paths.1 the rngs project offers a corrective , as it permits the simultaneous consideration of the effects of formal and informal channels of participation, patterns of women’s presence in decision-making arenas, movement activities, and policy outcomes. thus, it provides a rich source of data that can be analyzed to illuminate both substantive and descriptive representation, a distinction that is central to current feminist debates. We find evidence that feminists should not give up on presence, that women’s substantive and descriptive representation are linked through the critical acts of women legislators and agency officials. our findings challenge various aspects of previous research on women’s representation, four of which are contentious. First, they raise questions about the relationships between descriptive (procedural) and substantive representation. second, they suggest a model of effective policy advocacy that does not quite correspond to the idea of the policy triangles of movement , agency, and legislature, or of autonomous and integrated women’s movements and agency or legislature. third, they suggest that the debate over critical mass–critical actor–critical acts should be revisited and respecified . Fourth, they raise important questions about accountability. in this chapter, we first examine the varying dimensions of political representation found in recent feminist research and summarize these concerns into a series of nine researchable questions. second, we show how we draw on rngs concepts and data in an attempt to refine and provide initial answers to these questions. third, we use the rngs data to answer the questions. We conclude with a discussion of the relationships between different kinds of representation and different actors in contemporary policy debates. Political representation / 165 Dimensions of Political representation: theory and research Questions Much of feminist political representation scholarship that we address here draws heavily on pitkin’s four-part typology of representation (1967) and attempts to develop it theoretically for the analysis of instances of representation in particular, usually legislative, settings (Bratton and ray 2002; celis et al. 2008; dovi 2002, 2007; Lovenduski 2005; Lovenduski et al. 2005; Mansbridge 1999, 2003; phillips 1995; schwindt-Bayer and Mishler 2005; Wängnerud 2000; Weldon 2002a). such scholarship implies that the gender-blind standard operating procedures of research on representation mask the exclusion of women and women’s interests from authoritative political deliberation and decision making. this feminist scholarship is largely driven by a common concern to characterize representation in such a way as to allow a systematic assessment of contemporary experiences of women’s representation. For example, recent studies include work that highlights the neglected interconnections among all of pitkin ’s categories (schwindt-Bayer and Mishler 2005), studies focusing on the relationships between substantive and descriptive representation (Bratton and ray 2002; Lovenduski et al. 2005; Weldon 2002a), reformulations of pitkin’s categories in the light of feminist theories of representation and the requirements for research (especially on the united states; dovi 2007), and proposals for new categories that consider the requirements of deliberative democracy particularly in an american political setting, but also in great Britain (campbell , childs, and Lovenduski 2010; Mansbridge 2003). a central problem is the measurement of the extent to which the interests of particular groups of voters (normally more or less differentiated groups of women) are represented in legislative decisions. since phillips (1995) argued so effectively for a “politics of presence,” feminists have contended that a necessary condition for the representation of women’s interests is the presence of women in decision-making bodies. phillips contends that interests are realized in the course of deliberation and decision making as various options, implementation strategies, and competing concerns are discussed. only those who take part in the deliberation can benefit from such realization and insert their interests. Leaving aside the vexing question of identifying “valid” group interests , the logic of phillips’ claim is inescapable. however, it has proved difficult to demonstrate empirically that the representation of women’s interests necessarily follows from the presence of women representatives in legislatures, although a great deal of circumstantial evidence that this is the case has been assembled and presented (chaney, alvarez, and nagler 1998; childs 2004, 2005, 2007; childs and krook 2006; Lovenduski 2005; Mateo diaz 2005). repeated demonstrations of a strong association between increases in the presence of women legislators and enhanced agenda status of variously described women’s issues or preferences does not convince some scholars, who insist [44.212.50.220] Project...