Representing Disadvantaged Groups and Individual Career Paths

Descriptive representation refers to the idea that parliament is selected in a way that corresponds to characteristics of the population (Pitkin Reference Pitkin1967). Descriptive representation is manifest when elected officials ‘mirror’ the broad spectrum of ascriptive characteristics of the population (Mansbridge Reference Mansbridge2009). Groups of people can be identified based on sex, language, religion, ethnicity, class, nationality, race, caste, age, expatriation, profession, domicile and (dis-)ability (Krook and O'Brien Reference Krook and O'Brien2010).Footnote ²

Considerable advances toward the goal of a descriptively representative political body can be observed in recent decades. However, parliaments all over the world still are far from mirroring their populations in terms of their descriptive characteristics. For example, in 2016 women constituted about half of the world's population but comprised only 22.6 per cent of all parliamentarians worldwide (Interparliamentary Union 2016). For other groups it is more challenging to assess the level of descriptive representation since the groups in question vary significantly in size and across national contexts (Bird Reference Bird2003, but see also Ruedin Reference Ruedin2013). Scholars generally confirm that most disadvantaged groups are under-represented based on their proportion within society. This assessment is true for ethnic minorities (Ruedin Reference Ruedin2009), immigrants and their descendants (Bird, Saalfeld and Wüst Reference Bird, Saalfeld and Wüst2010), Blacks and Latinos (Preuhs Reference Preuhs2006), and lower social classes (Carnes Reference Carnes2013). In recent decades, parliaments have become more biased in their composition on some features, such as top-share incomes (Carnes Reference Carnes2013; Gilens Reference Gilens2012) and more equal on others, such as migrant background (Dancygier et al. Reference Dancygier2015).

Descriptive representation is a relevant consideration for democracy from a normative perspective as well as for symbolic reasons (Norris and Lovenduski Reference Norris and Lovenduski1995). An equally important question is whether the presence of disadvantaged groups in parliament ensures the substantive representation of their interests – a fundamental dimension of democratic theory. Addressing this question empirically is not straightforward: one first has to define what the ‘group interest’ is and then determine what is meant by policy influence.

Is descriptive representation congruous with substantive representation? As we discuss below, existing evidence is variegated at the aggregate level and can be summarized as follows: the descriptive composition of the political body matters in some instances more than in others. Distinguishable preferences between legislators with and without disadvantaged backgrounds persist, yet these differences do not translate directly into distinct legislative outcomes. Substantive evidence tends to become weaker as one moves from various legislative activities to final decisions, such as roll-call votes, which are structured by institutional factors, such as party discipline, to a high degree.

A wide range of studies examines the link between the presence of certain disadvantaged groups and substantive outcomes for a number of minorities. However, the literature provides mixed evidence on the link between descriptive and substantive representation, especially related to the impact of female presence. Bird, Saalfeld and Wüst (Reference Bird, Saalfeld and Wüst2010), Preuhs (Reference Preuhs2006), and Minta (Reference Minta2009) propound that the representation of ethnic minorities matters substantively, while Kittilson (Reference Kittilson2008), Lloren (Reference Lloren2015), and Bratton and Ray (Reference Bratton and Ray2002), for example, show that women's representation in parliament enhances substantive representation, while Homola (Reference Homola2019) cannot confirm this link. Finally, Carnes and others (Carnes Reference Carnes2013; Carnes and Lupu Reference Carnes and Lupu2016; O'Grady Reference O'Grady2019) demonstrate that lacking MPs from lower economic strata skews attitudes in parliament.

Collectively, the literature offers a number of potential mechanisms and motivations for linking representatives of disadvantaged groups to substantive interests,Footnote ³ including a large volume of work dedicated to gender. Do all disadvantaged legislators advocate group-specific issues to the same degree? If not, what causes a stronger or weaker link to the group they belong to? Previous studies have not been able to sufficiently address this question because their research designs, on the whole, did not allow for individual variation in motivations and interests since they are typically based on an aggregate comparison of numerical presence and legislative proposals or outcomes. Therefore, they were unable to undertake a longitudinal and dynamic analysis of legislators' behavior and at least implicitly see motivation among MPs as uniform and time invariant. As a result, prior studies do not distinguish between group interests and individual MPs’ interests. We know little about the extent and implications of the changing motivations of politicians to engage in the representation of the group they belong to.Footnote ⁴

For example, the so-called presence model (Philips Reference Philips1995; Preuhs Reference Preuhs2006) holds that the enhanced presence of disadvantaged MPs should lead to different policy outcomes based on the idea of shared experiences and the common background of MPs and the disadvantaged group. They should therefore ‘act as stronger advocates for minority group interests than nonminority legislators’ (Preuhs Reference Preuhs2006). Philips herself admits in her book that this connection remains ‘a shot in the dark’ (1995, 83) as she is well aware of the constraints that political institutions pose for the advancement of the interests of under-represented groups, women in particular. Subsequent research has thus further explored how political parties and institutional features condition the link between descriptive and substantive representation (Childs and Krook Reference Childs and Krook2009; Hawkesworth Reference Hawkesworth2003; Lublin Reference Lublin1997; Rocca and Sanchez Reference Rocca and Sanchez2007). All in all, prior research recognizes the contingent nature of the link between descriptive and substantive representation. This contingency connotes that an MP's background will not translate into a persistent and continuous representative effort on behalf of their social groups throughout their career.

We add a twist to this literature and contend that representation activities vary throughout individual MPs’ electoral careers.Footnote ⁵ Building on rational choice approaches in legislative politics, we assume that parliamentarians aim to maximize three goals: reselection, re-election, and party and legislative office (Strøm Reference Strøm, Müller and Saalfeld1997). To achieve these aims, they choose certain roles, which can be understood as ‘strategies for the commitment of scarce resources’ such as their time, attention or money (Strøm Reference Strøm, Müller and Saalfeld1997). While rational choice institutionalists analyze how institutional incentives shape the selection of these roles, we utilize role selection as a mechanism that influences strategic choices during parliamentarians’ career cycles.

At the beginning of their legislative career, parliamentarians consciously decide which activities to focus on. This commitment involves learning certain skills and rules as well as choosing a policy area in which they are willing to invest resources such as time and attention. Their choice of legislative activity is influenced by endogenous factors such as expertise and interest, as well as strategic considerations related to appearing competent and credible as an MP. Parliamentarians engage in activities that they can credibly represent and in which they have personal experience and thus expertise (Butler Reference Butler2014). Personal judgements about their ability to completely represent the issues of disadvantaged groups as well as intrinsic motivation drive newly elected MPs to focus on particular policy areas. As German MP Omid Nouripour, who has a migrant background, pointed out: ‘It is understandable that integration policy is the natural starting point for us. Many of us experienced discrimination and have the strong desire to change something in that area’ (Mutlu Reference Mutlu2016, 122). These individual factors may also be shaped by party group leaders or experienced legislative colleagues who are able to narrow the choice of substantive opportunities available to a newcomer and do not want to share more attractive or established policy areas with newcomers.

Within these constraints, individual MPs at the beginning of their career can strategically choose legislative activities that portray them as particularly credible representatives of a given disadvantaged group. Hence, MPs choose to represent a particular group they belong to symbolically because their innate characteristics transmit credibility to both the public and to their constituents (Best and Vogel Reference Best, Vogel, Martin, Saalfeld and Strom2014). For example, Greene and O'Brien (Reference Greene and O'Brien2016) show that female representatives act as issue entrepreneurs and are able to address new issues. Collet (Reference Collet2008) shows that when campaigning, minority candidates consciously choose to maximize their chances by representing their minority while not offending other sections of the electorate. Moreover, the public and media often ascribe competence to representatives to disadvantaged in the policy area most closely related to their background, as illustrated by German MP Cem Özdemir: ‘I was motivated by my environmental interests to join the Greens and not by migration topics. […] However, when I spoke about […] how to protect mountains from climbers, questions about integration, migration, Turkey and Islam were asked. Thus, I enlarged my policy area’ (Mutlu Reference Mutlu2016, 129).

The influence of party leadership and seniority also affects the type of legislative activities newcomers engage in. New MPs rarely have the opportunity to initiate legislation; they instead tend to focus on activities connected to oversight, such as parliamentary questions. Miquel and Snyder (Reference Miquel and Snyder2006), Schiller (Reference Schiller1995), and Bailer and Ohmura (Reference Bailer and Ohmura2017) illustrate the impact of career stage on parliamentary activities and show that parliamentarians are less effective, sponsor fewer bills and tend to ask more parliamentary questions. Senior colleagues are tasked with weightier parliamentary activity, such as legislative proposals or rapporteurships.

The process of choosing a legislative activity is not only determined by a strategic choice during the course of a career; party colleagues and party group leaders also play a role. Newcomer MPs seldom have complete freedom to choose which area to engage in, since more established parliamentarians do not necessarily want to share their political expertise and policy specializations (Bolzendahl Reference Bolzendahl2014; Fenno Reference Fenno1962; Osborne Reference Osborne2012). However, a party leader may allow newcomers to actively represent the disadvantaged when the leadership expects benefits from these efforts. Established party colleagues accept that newcomers are active in a policy field related to minorities because voters attribute expertise to the newcomers in these policy fields (Celis, Erzeel and Mügge Reference Celis, Erzeel and Mügge2015). A comment by an MP of immigrant origin in the German Bundestag, Ekin Deligöz, illustrates this process:

During their legislative career, the strategic value of substantive representation for a particular disadvantaged group diminishes. Over time MPs are able to acquire expertise and credibility within parliament. They can employ these assets by dedicating more of their time to new policy fields. As Davidson (Reference Davidson1969) suggested, pursuing particular constituency interests becomes less important over the course of legislators' careers. MPs shift their attention towards legislative affairs that require more insider knowledge and professionalization acquired during their mandate. Acquiring new policy expertise is important because it enables MPs with disadvantaged backgrounds to move from representing narrow group interests to making broader political appeals. Cem Özdemir, a German legislator with a Turkish background mentioned above, described this transformation: ‘I was fighting against the role assigned to me […]. If at all I wanted to be a policy expert for all people in Germany, not only for the Germans with migration background’ (Mutlu Reference Mutlu2016, 133). New interests, especially in the core functions of government, enable MPs to enhance their standing within the party and parliament. In short, shifting from a focus on the substantive representation of disadvantaged interests to a broader legislative agenda enables minority MPs to transition into leadership positions. Broadening individual policy portfolios is particularly important for disadvantaged MPs because these legislators differ in their political opportunity structures (for example, access and experience) from their non-minority colleagues (see O'Brien Reference O'Brien2015 for gender).

Taken together, we derive two expectations regarding the substantive representation of disadvantaged MPs. First, parliamentarians from disadvantaged groups engage in more legislative activities in their respective policy field than their colleagues. Second, parliamentarians from disadvantaged groups demonstrate a particularly high level of activity at the beginning of their career in their respective issue area, but this level of activity declines during the course of their career.

Empirical StrategyFootnote ⁷

Our theoretical expectations require a research design that combines information from two major sources: parliamentary activities in policy domains that reflect an MP's substantive concerns and biographical information about MPs. We construct this database for MPs in the German Bundestag for the period between 1998 and 2013 (fourteenth to the seventeenth legislative session). The Bundestag and its MPs offers a useful sample for five main reasons. First, similar to other professional national parliaments, MPs seek long time careers (average time spent in parliament is 10 years). Secondly, interpellations in Germany place only some institutional constraints on individual legislative action. As is typical for parliamentary democracies, most individual legislative activities in the Bundestag are dominated by strong partisan groups, particularly after recent reforms (Ismayr Reference Ismayr2012). Speeches, questions and the signing of interpellations are among the few remaining legislative tools for MPs to represent electoral interests individually (Martin and Rozenberg Reference Martin and Rozenberg2012) and the rights of minorities outside party group pressure (Siefken Reference Siefken2010). Moreover, these legislative tools result in an official document that can be communicated to the media and the public on websites, social media and the press (Siefken Reference Siefken2010), which helps individual MPs claim personal credit for such activities.

Interpellations in Germany provide us with the opportunity to gauge individual effort on a given issue. Interpellations require at least 5 per cent of the members of the Bundestag or a party faction to sign onto a question. Hence, if individual signees sidestep their party faction, they need to assemble the required quota for submission, and may reach across party lines to do so. Circumventing party factions therefore involves substantive costs associated with taking individual legislative action on a particular issue. Although interpellations generally need to be approved by a party group, the lead signatories stand out for taking an initiative and representing a particular group. We therefore can employ individually signed interpellations as a credible tool for signaling an opinion on an issue.

Moreover, interpellations require a government response and force the respective ministry to provide answers. These demands make interpellations and parliamentary questions powerful tools for setting the parliamentary agenda and are thus a springboard for legislation (Green-Pedersen and Mortensen Reference Green-Pedersen and Mortensen2010). In short, studying interpellations helps us capture a substantial number of individual representational activities of MPs.

The third advantage of our sample is that in the German mixed electoral system, we are able to directly assess distinct constituency linkages between voters and representatives and the role of electoral systems. Some MPs are directly elected, while others come from partisan lists. Fourthly, the study period is long enough to control for government–opposition dynamics. Five of the six parties in parliament have been in both the government and opposition during this time. Fifthly, the Bundestag is large enough (709 MPs) to encompass a substantial number of various minorities, which renders analyses in smaller parliaments challenging. Below we detail the dependent variable (Interpellations) and then elaborate on substantive group representation among MPs. A discussion of estimation strategy and model specification concludes the research design section.

Defining Group Interests in Parliamentary Questions

A second core challenge associated with the study of group representation is identifying the relevant policy areas that capture the interests of disadvantaged groups. The appropriate demarcation of policy areas is a controversial issue in the gender literature, and there are multiple definitions of ‘women's interests’ (for a summary, see Childs and Krook Reference Childs and Krook2009). We adopt a simple distinction based on topics that we classify as either being about a topic related to the disadvantaged or not (see Swers Reference Swers2002 for a similar approach regarding gender, or Wüst Reference Wüst2014 for migration). This linkage enables us to pair parliamentary questions with MPs’ descriptive features. Our classification is based on observable, material interests in policy making in the respective areas; that is, issues related to sexual harassment are coded as women's issues, and questions about racial discrimination as migration issues. We thus focus on topics for which the link to the respective disadvantaged group is clear and rather narrowly defined.

Parliamentary questions and their content are part of the German Policy Agendas data (Breunig and Schnatterer Reference Breunig and Schnatterer2016). The Bundestag provides access to all parliamentary activities including detailed information about questions (title and content), authors and processes via the DIP (Dokumentations – und Informationssystem für Parlamentarische Vorgänge (Parliamentary Material Information System)). The German Policy Agendas team coded all parliamentary questions according to the Comparative Agendas codebook. The coding system places each question in a mutually exclusive and exhaustive policy domain using a semi-supervised learning algorithm. Data and topic coding are then verified by human coders. Table 1 summarizes the policy content of each domain studied. We selected all topics that focus on the interests of the disadvantaged group in question.Footnote ⁸ The hierarchical topic coding enables us to categorize all topics related to disadvantaged groups into four policy domains. In a second step, we identified interpellations with individual authors and parsed them from each of those questions. Doing so provides us with a measure of parliamentary activity on a given policy issue for each MP.

Table 1. Descriptive features and policy content according to the comparative agendas coding scheme

Note: all topics are listed according to the German Policy Agendas codebook (Breunig and Schnatterer 2019).

A brief description of our dataset offers some context about parliamentary questions on disadvantaged groups in the Bundestag. The sample contains 1,277 representatives. We measure their legislative activity on a quarterly basis, which generates 39,392 observations. In our sample, MPs vary in legislative activity in general, and their activity related to disadvantaged groups in particular, in three main ways. First, the number of parliamentary questions varies widely across MPs. While some MPs are very active and ask up to 113 questions per legislative quarter, many ask no questions at all. Secondly, the number of disadvantaged-related questions ranges from twenty-eight group-related questions within a three-month period by an MP from the left-wing party Die Linke, Ursula Jelpke, to no questions whatsoever. Thirdly, the degree to which MPs focus solely on particular minority rights varies: some MPs, such as Ms Jelpke, ask 56 per cent of their parliamentary questions on topics related to disadvantaged groups; likewise, MP Sevim Dagdelen asked 59 per cent of her questions on migration. Questions in this policy area include demands for exact statistics on the number of race-related crimes or regular demands for the exact number of refugees living in Germany. In contrast, the previously mentioned MP Ekin Deligöz, who has a Turkish background and joined the Bundestag at the age of 27, refrained from asking migration-related questions and instead concentrated on issues related to young people. Her questions are characterized by a desire to help young people find employment and to support young people with European exchange and education programs. This MP could have chosen to represent women, ethnic minorities or young people, and thus serves as a perfect example of intersectionality (Hughes Reference Hughes2011). Her case also shows that identifying several disadvantaged groups and including all MPs in the sample is an important feature of this study.

Estimation

To estimate the role of descriptive features and seniority on parliamentary behavior, we need to consider four estimation issues: functional form, autocorrelation, heteroscedasticity across units and contemporaneous correlation, as well as model specification. First, our dependent variables consist of the number of parliamentary questions asked by each MP per quarter. Therefore, we utilize a regression model for count data. Specifically, we use a negative binominal regression because of overdispersion (Cameron and Trivedi Reference Cameron and Trivedi2013; Long Reference Long1997). Some initial χ ² tests confirm that a Poisson model is inappropriate in our case.

Secondly, there is a danger of time dependencies in our data because individual MPs are asking questions at regular intervals. Accounting for autocorrelation in count models has received some attention in political science (Brandt et al. Reference Brandt2000; Carter and Signorino Reference Carter and Signorino2010). Using a lagged dependent variable implies a growth rate model and potentially leads to estimation problems due to separation. Therefore, we opt to include a cubic spline for the time dimension in order to abate autocorrelation.

Thirdly, our data structure is essentially in time-series cross-sectional form. Given that MPs might be exposed to similar exogenous shocks that might affect them similarly at the same time, we take this possibility into account and use robust standard errors.

Fourthly, we employ two model specifications in the following fashion. In the first version, all covariates enter the model linearly. The second set of models includes an interaction term between descriptive MP features and seniority. Across different forms of descriptive representation, we use the following model specification:

$$Y_{it} = \alpha + \beta D_{it} + \gamma X_{it} + \delta E_t + \sum\limits_{k = 1}^3 {\theta _k{( t) }^k + \varepsilon } $$

where i is the identifier for each MP and t are quarters. Y is the number of asked questions; D are the descriptive attributes of an MP (and their interaction with seniority in the second set of models); X are controls, including party position, direct mandate and coalition membership; E is an election time dummy, and t^k are the cubic splines.

Our models include four controls that pick up alternative strategies to securing a parliamentary mandate. The first control taps into an MP's electoral connections. We control for parliamentarians who are directly elected in their constituencies, as these MPs might feel more obliged to represent their constituency than those elected via a party list (Ohmura Reference Ohmura2014; Sieberer Reference Sieberer2010; Stoffel Reference Stoffel2014). Secondly, holding a position as minister or in the party administration might reduce the number of questions an individual MP asks; therefore, we introduce the variable Ministerial/Party Position. This variable measures whether the MP held a ministerial position (including junior minister), whether he/she was president or vice president of the parliament or committee/deputy chairperson, or whether the MP was involved in the party leadership (party leader or secretary of the parliamentary party group). Thirdly, we introduce a control for the election cycle (Election Year) to control for campaign dynamics that might also affect MPs’ behavior. A final control, Member of Governing Party, identifies party-specific effects – particularly whether an MP has different means at his or her disposal to influence policy making. We include this control because MPs have been shown to ask fewer questions when their party is in government (Wüst Reference Wüst2014).Footnote ¹⁰

We utilized marginal effects plots based on estimates of the average effect in the population (Hanmer and Ozan Kalkan Reference Hanmer and Ozan Kalkan2013) to illustrate the substantive predictions of our models.