Decreasing CO2 emissions, a top priority of climate change mitigation, requires moving away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy. Research shows that women tend to exhibit more knowledge about climate change, environmental concerns, and pro-environmental behaviour than men. Theories linking descriptive and substantive representation suggest that women representatives better represent women citizens’ policy preferences. Therefore, do higher levels of women's parliamentary participation increase renewable energy consumption? A time-series cross-sectional analysis of 100 democracies from 1997 to 2017 provides evidence for such a relationship in both high- and middle-income democracies. Lagged modelling demonstrates that high-income states see more immediate effects while they take longer to materialize in middle-income states. These findings contribute to our growing understanding of women's role in policymaking outside of ‘women's issues’ and offer a means of advancing climate-friendly energy policy.

This paper presents the results of a conjoint survey experiment in which Swiss citizens were asked to choose among parliamentary candidates with different class profiles determined by occupation, education and income. Existing survey‐experimental literature on this topic suggests that respondents are indifferent to the class profiles of candidates or biased against candidates with high‐status occupations and high incomes. We find that respondents are biased against upper middle‐class candidates as well as routine working‐class candidates. While the bias against upper middle‐class candidates is primarily a bias among working‐class individuals, the bias against routine working‐class candidates is most pronounced among middle‐class individuals. Our supplementary analysis of observational data confirms the bias against routine working‐class candidates, but not the bias against upper middle‐class candidates.

This study focuses on the exit of MPs of underrepresented groups – that is, women, visible minorities and the lower educated– from parliamentary parties. Research has mostly focused on what brings these politicians into parliament, but not on what determines their survival within parliamentary parties. Based on the economic and sociological literature on organisations, we develop the homophily hypothesis, positing that MPs from underrepresented groups will be more likely to exit their parliamentary party if their share within the parliamentary party is low. Utilising the PATHWAYS dataset, based on 5,889 unique MPs that served during 37 legislative periods across eight Western European countries between 1991 and 2015, this hypothesis is confirmed. These findings have important implications for the literature on descriptive representation and legislative turnover.

Do attacks against politicians exacerbate the political underrepresentation of marginalized groups? Existing research suggests that candidates and officeholders from underrepresented groups are more likely to become targets of political violence, but little is known about the consequences of indirect exposure to political violence for descriptive representation and political ambition. Focusing on the case of women in politics, we study how the prevalence of political violence affects both the descriptive representation and the political ambition of women in Germany – Europe's largest democracy. Combining an analysis of observational data measuring crimes against politicians with evidence from original and pre‐registered survey experiments, we first demonstrate that attacks on political elites are not associated with fewer female candidates on party lists for local elections. Examining political ambitions and underlying microfoundations with different samples of respondents varying in their likelihood of considering political candidacy, we provide survey‐experimental evidence that information about the prevalence of political crime does not reduce willingness to run for office or engage in politics among female respondents with high political interest but may do so among those with low political interest. Taken together, this study highlights the resilience of underrepresented groups in the face of increasing political violence. However, we also show that political violence may create a pipeline problem if it deters the wider population of women from even considering to run for office.

This symposium explores the ways in which women are descriptively represented in political science, by exploring the ways in which they are positioned institutionally in Spain, Finland, Germany and the United Kingdom. The symposium also explores the ways in which structures may serve to disadvantage women, by analysing HE policy and citation practices. Critical theory reminds us that in observing power structures we can seek to change them, and so our conclusion reflects on some more practical suggestions.

A large set of research argues that policy responsiveness towards excluded societal factions such as minorities of immigrant origin improves through the presence of group members in parliaments because they bring forward different perspectives during parliamentary debates. This article challenges the straightforwardness of this relationship by demonstrating that the ability of legislators with immigrant backgrounds to shift the parliamentary agenda closer to the ideal points of citizens of foreign descent is conditional on two factors. First, representatives of immigrant origin need incentives to cultivate a personal vote, and second, their overall proportion of parliamentary seats has to remain rather marginal to influence the policy positions of the majority of representatives. The article's findings thus stress the importance of studying the contextual factors that moderate the relationship between group belonging and the capacity to promote group interests. Empirical evidence from nine European Democracies between 2002 and 2014 substantiates this argument – so that the analysis constitutes the first cross‐country comparison in a research field that has so far been dominated by single country studies. By using policy congruence as a measure for responsiveness, this article shifts the focal point from individual representatives’ attempts to promote the interests of citizens with immigrant backgrounds towards effectiveness of these endeavours.

Almost three decades after its first publication, Anne Phillips reflects on the Politics of Presence in the context of contemporary developments from #MeToo to Black Lives Matter. Granting the importance of a contingent and intersectional understanding of presence, she reemphasizes the necessity of descriptive representation. Phillips reflects on questions of anonymity, essentialism, the multiple self, unconditional equality, and the current role of feminist research in democratic theory. She also opens perspectives toward mending the divide between a politics of recognition and a politics of distribution.

Does increasing descriptive representation enhance substantive representation? While ethnic minorities are generally underrepresented in legislatures worldwide, they are overrepresented in China’s National People’s Congress. We show that overrepresentation of ethnic legislators does not result in greater substantive representation. Compared to their Han counterparts, ethnic minority legislators are less likely to sponsor bills, show no significant difference in submitting policy suggestions, and are reticent to propose legislation on ethnic issues. They face challenges in mobilizing sufficient signatures for bill sponsorship within delegations and in building cross-delegation policy coalitions. Ethnic fragmentation may hinder their ability to advance the policy agenda. Our findings suggest that institutional constraints and collective action problems may hinder ethnic legislators from achieving substantive representation.

A central tenet of democracy is “government of the people, by the people, for the people”, implying that representatives should reflect the citizens they serve. However, ethnic minorities, young people, women, and the working class are often underrepresented in legislatures. Previous literature suggests that increasing representation of these groups can address this bias, both by advancing their interests in policymaking and by providing symbolic value by signaling more inclusive government. To examine whether working-class politicians evoke stronger feelings of symbolic representation, particularly among the working class, I conduct a factorial survey experiment in Germany, in which 1,033 respondents rate five hypothetical political candidates with differing social and political profiles. The results indicate that people favor politicians from modest backgrounds and perceive them to be better representatives of citizens’ interests, more accessible, and more trustworthy. This effect is particularly prominent among respondents self-identifying as working class.

Measuring the relationship between descriptive and substantive representation presents empirical and theoretical challenges. This article makes a distinctive empirical contribution that draws on the latest theoretical developments on the substantive representation of women (SRW). I provide an explorative qualitative analysis of representative claims in French parliamentary debates over a twenty-year period. I focus on three core questions: who is making claims? What are the claims saying? Which women are represented by the claims? The analysis considers the interplay between these questions and finds that SRW is complex and full of contestations. Most SRW comes from women and parties of the left, while most resistance (anti-SRW) comes from men and parties of the right. However, some women cross party lines to work together, while ideological differences emerge between women sharing descriptive traits. Crucially, I find that support for SRW is often restricted to claims that uphold the gendered and racialized status quo.

Research shows that women’s inclusion in decision-making bodies that produce anti-feminist policies can legitimize policies and institutions. When a woman attorney advocates for an anti-feminist outcome in the judiciary, are the courts perceived as more legitimate than when a man makes the same argument? Using a survey experiment where 1,395 participants read about a sexual harassment case argued by a male or female attorney, we find that female attorneys increase the legitimacy of anti-feminist rulings in only one specific instance: when a female attorney represents an employer and wins, and only for female participants who are much less likely to perceive that process as procedurally legitimate in the first place. Our results demonstrate that while there are some instances where attorney gender can legitimize judicial behavior, the courts are different from legislatures, and deploying women to advocate for anti-women outcomes has little impact on feelings of court legitimacy broadly.

Using data from the 2018–2019 National Congregations Study, I explore the relationship between women’s descriptive and substantive representation in American religious congregations. In particular, I examine the relationship between the presence of clergywomen or gender inclusive leadership policies (i.e., congregational policies allowing women to serve as the head pastor or priest) and a congregation’s participation in “women’s issues” political activism. Statistical analysis reveals partial support for my hypotheses. Collective gender representation, as demonstrated through the presence of gender inclusive leadership policies within a congregation, predicts pro-LGBT activism and the number of “women’s issues” a congregation pursues. This project serves to extend understanding of 1) how descriptive gender representation relates to the substantive representation of women’s interests in religious congregations and 2) the comparability of women’s leadership across political and religious contexts.

Research indicates a lack of presence of lower socioeconomic status (SES) individuals in parliament, hindering their representation due to a lack of shared experiences between low SES citizens and representatives. Theorists argue that understanding low SES experiences depends not only on representatives’ own SES but also on those closest to them. However, little is known about whether elected representatives count lower SES citizens in their intimate network. Surveying 1,185 representatives across 13 Western countries, we examine the educational attainment and social class of their parents, partner, and two closest friends. In none of these countries do representatives’ ties mirror the share of lower SES citizens in the population. The results are only slightly better when we examine how many representatives have at least a single lower SES tie. We also find evidence for homophily. High SES representatives tend to associate with high SES individuals, and they tend to do that much more than high SES citizens associate with other high SES citizens. This shows that representatives who could benefit most from lower SES perspectives in their personal networks often lack them.

Ethnicity and race are vital for understanding representation, yet individual-level data are often unavailable. Recent methodological advances have allowed researchers to impute racial and ethnic classifications based on publicly available information, but predictions vary in their accuracy and can introduce statistical biases in downstream analyses. We provide an overview of common estimation methods, including Bayesian approaches and machine learning techniques that use names or images as inputs. We propose and test a hybrid approach that combines surname-based Bayesian estimation with the use of publicly available images in a convolutional neural network. We find that the proposed approach not only reduces statistical bias in downstream analyses but also improves accuracy in a sample of over 16,000 local elected officials. We conclude with a discussion of caveats and describe settings where the hybrid approach is especially suitable.