In recent decades, the emergence and development of pan-European civil society organisations have been prominent, including those representing interests of marginalised groups and raising related social issues. Typically composed of national and European level umbrella organisations, some of these organisations have grown as important interlocutors between EU institutions and civil society, and derive legitimacy for their advocacy and lobbying activities by claiming broad representativeness. Through a comparative study of five principal EU-based civil society organisations, the present article analyses how these organisations, operating at multiple levels with their membership based on extensive geographical areas, acquire internal representation of members and beneficiaries.

This article systematically investigates interest group–party interactions in the Netherlands, Denmark and the United Kingdom based on cross‐national surveys with responses from 1,225 interest groups. The findings show that interest groups and parties still interact in the beginning of the twenty‐first century, but that the vast majority of their interaction involves a low degree of institutionalisation. Using fractional logit analysis, it is demonstrated that the strength of interest group–party linkage is primarily affected by systematic differences in state–society structures and organisational group characteristics. Moreover, differences are found in what conditions different types of interaction. Whereas historical legacies and partisan origin influence an interest group's structural party links, group resources make interactions of a less institutionalised, ad hoc nature more likely.

Previous research has shown that citizens tend to be more satisfied with the functioning of democracy when their ideological positions are more proximate to representatives'. This article argues that congruence in policy priorities between citizens and political elites should have a similar effect: citizens whose concerns are shared by elites should perceive them to be more attentive and responsive to public concerns and societal needs. Yet, the relationship might vary with differences in expectations towards democracy and representation. Specifically, it should be stronger in more democratic countries and older democracies. The hypotheses are empirically tested in a multilevel regression framework, where voter survey data from the 2009 European Election Study is linked with candidate survey data. The results indicate that citizens are indeed more satisfied with democracy if elites share their concerns, and the effect increases with democratic experience.

This article explores the conditions under which female members of parliament (MPs) are more likely than male MPs to participate in political debates relating to a range of issues. Building on descriptive representation theory and parliamentary behaviour studies, we examine how the effect of the number of women in parliament, and women's access to leadership positions, on MPs’ issue attention varies across policy areas and parliamentary venues. Looking at oral questions asked by male and female MPs in plenary sessions and parliamentary committees in Spain from 1982 to 2018, we found that numbers and leadership positions significantly affect female MPs’ attention to those parliamentary activities that aim to highlight the merits of government action and in venues that are less open to public scrutiny. Our results also illustrate that the presence of women in parliament and their access to leadership positions have a significant impact on female MPs’ attention to rights‐ and welfare‐related issues, but not issues traditionally linked to high‐profile political areas such as national security, macroeconomic policy, and government affairs. The presence of women in parliaments has increased globally, but inequalities in the gender distribution of issue attention persist, thereby reducing the capacity of female MPs to act on behalf of and stand up for women in political debates on most issues.

This article analyzes the political process leading to the recent legalization of abortion in Uruguay, underlying the multiple strategies resorted to by the women’s movement to create a social consensus around women’s rights—and, more generally, around sexual and reproductive rights—as belonging to the realm of human rights. It seeks to identify the main reasons accounting for the movement’s success, which appear to be connected to the breadth of its repertoire of actions, progressively expanded to include various (and sometimes innovative) strategies operating in both the realm of civil society and public opinion and the sphere of political institutions and political representation. Focusing on the dyad speech action, the article examines the movement’s broadened repertoire of actions as well as its discourse setting human rights as a horizon of legitimacy in the context of a cultural war against a countermovement organized in defense of the status quo. Last but not least, it analyzes the issues pertaining to political representation brought to the forefront by the clashes, discrepancies, and disconnections between social movement and political institutions.

This article examines the trade-offs between social and political integration by analysing migrant political representation on municipal councils in Britain and France. The argument is that social integration may allow migrants to interact with the mainstream population but it also reduces the capacity to form effective group mobilisation. In turn, less mobilisation reduces the likelihood of electing co-ethnics. In comparison, social segregation may increase separation from mainstream society but it also increases effective group mobilisation. In turn, more group mobilisation increases the capacity to elect co-ethnics.

This research note presents the RepResent Belgian Panel (RBP). The RBP is a voter panel survey consisting of four waves fielded to a sample of voters in Belgium around the May 2019 federal, regional, and European elections in Belgium. It provides unique data on about 250 variables for a quota sample of the same respondents, pre-2019 elections (N = 7351), post-2019 elections (N = 3909), one year after the elections (N = 1996), and 2 years after the elections (N = 1119). The RBP panel dataset was designed to analyse voters’ political attitudes and behaviours, notably on different dimensions of democratic representation, and with a specific focus on democratic resentment (e.g. citizens’ attitudes towards democracy such as distrust and alienation, but also behaviours such as abstention, protest, or voting for anti-establishment parties). Its longitudinal structure allows to explore the political dynamics at play in Belgium throughout the lengthy government formation process. Finally, the last two waves of the RBP were fielded during the Covid-19 pandemic, allowing to explore public opinion before and during this global crisis. The RBP should be of interest to scholars of public opinion and electoral studies.

Over time, gender and politics research has made progress in identifying those factors that result in low numbers of women in political institutions and in making evidence‐informed suggestions about how to ameliorate them. These factors include discrimination in party recruitment processes, male‐dominated political culture and broader gender inequalities in society. In contrast, little is known about public opinion regarding these drivers of women's political under‐representation, especially whether to who or what women assign blame for the under‐representation of women in politics differs from men. This article provides the first discussion and analysis of blame assignment for women's numeric under‐representation in politics. In doing so, it outlines and operationalises a framework that distinguishes between meritocratic explanations of women's under‐representation, whereby the blame for women not holding political office in greater numbers is assigned to women themselves, and structural explanations, whereby social forces external to women are seen to result in their numeric under‐representation. Cross‐national data from 27 European countries is used to show that women are significantly more likely than men to assign blame for women's numeric under‐representation to structural factors. The hierarchical nature of the dataset is exploited using multilevel models and significant differences in levels of structural blame assignment between countries is found as well as between‐country variation in the probability of women assigning blame to structural explanations for women's under‐representation. Finally, the category of structural explanations is disaggregated in order to assess their relative prominence and to provide strong corroborative evidence that women predominantly assign blame for women's under‐representation to political culture over other structural blame factors. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of the study's findings for policy makers contemplating the pursuit of gender equality policies aimed at increasing women's political representation and makes suggestions for the direction of future research in this area.

This study examines how party size shapes voters’ likelihood of engaging in protest, moving beyond a simple winner–loser categorization of parties. In European democracies, where coalition governments are prevalent, policy-making often requires compromises among parties with differing issue positions, leading to varying levels of voter representation. Junior coalition parties, overshadowed by majority partners, have limited decision-making influence, which increases the likelihood that their voters will protest to shape policy agendas. However, smaller coalition parties still offer better representation than those in opposition. As a key indicator of a party’s capacity to represent its voters, party size significantly shapes motivations for protest among both government and opposition parties. Using data from eight waves of the European Social Survey (2004–2018), the article finds that voters of junior coalition parties are more likely to protest than those of senior coalition partners. Additionally, smaller party size correlates with a higher probability of protest participation, particularly among opposition party voters.

This paper examines the relationship between feminist manifestos and constituent power, focusing on the Chilean feminist movement. Manifestos have long been an influential political tool in shaping political identities and claiming power. However, they are often overlooked in constitutional law. This paper addresses this gap by exploring feminist manifestos, which have been pivotal in denouncing historical exclusion, forming political groups and asserting constituent power. Drawing on the work of Ruth Houghton and Aoife O’Donoghue, the paper investigates how feminist manifestos challenge traditional notions of constituent power. However, it argues that their performative conception of power overlooks the vital role of political representation. The paper argues that political representation is crucial for a fully realised theory of feminist constituent power, as it enables collective action and democratic participation. By looking at the Chilean feminist movement’s involvement in the 2019–2022 constitution-making process, the paper demonstrates how feminist movements, through strategies such as manifestos and strikes, can influence constitutional change, while also highlighting the limitations of excluding political representation from the conversation. Ultimately, the paper asserts that feminist manifestos can reimagine constituent power, but their full potential is limited without a comprehensive understanding of political representation.

The political representation and agency of young people in international politics is still poorly understood, notwithstanding sustained interest in the pluralisation and diversification of transnational civil society and the ‘opening up’ of IOs in international relations (IR) scholarship. In this article, we put forward a theoretical framework for the study of youth representation in IR that is at once responsive to the specificities of youth and, at the same time, contributes to theory-building on political representation of newly recognised constituencies in international institutions overall. Theoretically, we build on constructivist and performative theories of representation, and we use our empirical insights to extend and qualify these theories. Empirically, we provide the first in-depth study of youth representation in global health governance. Based on an interpretive analysis of policy documents and qualitative interviews with youth participants at three major global health events, our study explores prevalent portrayals of youth as a constituency and problematises the legitimising effects of these portrayals. Moreover, we expose how multiple barriers and intersecting inequalities constrain young people’s encounters with exclusive spaces of global health policy-making and we point to the reflective and ambiguous ways in which young people embrace, enact, and question ‘youth’ as a political category.

Why has political representation by Scheduled Castes in post-colonial India failed to improve the lives of the vast majority of this population? One common answer rests on the assumption that caste inequality is upheld by dominant social groups who effectively resist progressive state policy. Others point to the institution of joint electorates: though constituencies are reserved for Scheduled Caste legislators, Scheduled Caste voters form a minority within them; the representatives thus elected are chosen primarily by others, and precisely because they will not challenge the status quo, it is said. But neither of these explanations, I argue, can adequately account for the minimal effects of Scheduled Caste representation, because both imagine states as confronting a distinct realm—‘society’—with pregiven interest groups that are then represented in legislatures. Instead, an examination of how state actions themselves govern, produce, and reproduce caste groups and intercaste relations is required. The argument is illustrated through episodes from the career of Dr Sathiavani Muthu, who sought to address injustices suffered by Scheduled Castes in Tamil Nadu from the late 1950s through to the 1980s. Muthu’s skill, diligence, and commitment make her an ideal representative, and Tamil Nadu as a state ought to provide a best-case scenario for the success of such an actor, given the scholarly consensus regarding its good governance and the pervasion of its society with a progressive ideology. An analysis of why her efforts nevertheless produced little fruit reveals pervasive deficiencies in current models of political representation.

This study examines how unelected representation, where political activists make representative claims on behalf of self-articulated constituencies, shapes citizens’ feelings of representation. Through a cross-national conjoint experiment (Sweden, Germany, Italy, and Romania, N = 8279), we test three routes to representation: descriptive representation through demographic congruence, substantive representation through issue congruence, and psychological representation through personality-trait congruence and personality-ideology congruence. Results indicate that unelected representation makes people feel represented through these routes. Substantive representation has the strongest impact, followed by psychological representation and descriptive representation. We also find that contextual and individual factors influence how these routes operate. Ultimately, this paper presents a novel perspective on the effects of unelected representation, laying the groundwork for new empirical models of political representation that are firmly rooted in the conceptual innovations of constructivist theories. Unelected representation may have important implications for modern representative politics.

This study examines how racial identity affects legislative responsiveness in Mexico using an email-based audit experiment. Emails from simulated Indigenous, Mestiza, and European-White constituents were sent to all 626 federal legislators to test whether perceived identity shapes replies and their quality. Contrary to expectations, Indigenous-named constituents received significantly higher response rates that were more personalized and helpful than their European-White counterparts, while Mestiza-named constituents showed no significant differences in response rates. We found no coalition-based differences, though power was limited, and responsiveness declined in districts with larger Indigenous populations, revealing how national inclusion norms may be moderated by local demographic and political dynamics.

This article explores the role of representative assemblies in the diverse territories of the early modern Spanish and Portuguese empires spanning the Americas, parts of Asia, and Africa. It begins with a concise overview of the Portuguese and Spanish representative assemblies, commonly referred to as the Cortes. The second section raises some preliminary questions about how the parliamentary culture brought by the Spanish and Portuguese to their overseas possessions shaped, and was shaped by, local understandings of political participation in institutions with a representational character. The third section examines the complex debate over the integration of representatives from overseas municipalities into the Castilian and Portuguese Cortes. The fourth and final section analyses the interaction between Iberian parliamentary culture and a range of Asian, Indigenous American, and African perspectives on participation in representative gatherings. The principal argument is that representative assemblies, the debates they generated, and their varying degrees of prominence, reflect the fundamental changes observed in the political and legal structure of the Portuguese and Spanish empires.

We investigate how sexism and harassment affect political candidates’ preferences for political positions by deploying a conjoint experiment among political candidates in the 2021 Danish local elections. We find that, compared to men candidates, women candidates experience far more sexism and harassment, and assess their risk of victimization as being far higher. Correspondingly, the conjoint experiment reveals that women candidates state stronger preferences for equal working environments in politics than men, while holding similar preferences for formal working conditions like political positions, remuneration, and workload. Substantively, women’s willingness to lower their remuneration and increase their workload to avoid sexism in politics is more than double the size of men’s willingness. Our approach provides us with highly accurate descriptions of candidates’ preferences for political jobs, which are often assumed rather than measured directly. This lets us quantify the magnitude of an important working condition in politics with significant repercussions for women.

Asian Americans are the fastest growing racial group in the US electorate, yet they are significantly under-represented in political office. How do predominantly immigrant groups like Asian Americans close this representation gap? We build on existing theories of minority representation and immigrant assimilation by highlighting the importance of a group’s political incorporation into American society. We argue that the representation of minority immigrant groups in political office requires social integration and the acquisition of civic resources, processes that can take considerable time. Using new data on Asian American state legislators spanning half a century, we find that immigration in prior decades is associated with greater political representation, while contemporaneous population size has either no independent impact or a negative one. Other indicators of immigrant social integration, including citizenship status, language ability, education, and income, also predict the likelihood of co-racial representation in political office. Our results suggest political representation gaps of immigrant groups narrow over time, though this may be a non-linear process. Our findings also imply that the least integrated members of immigrant groups are the most likely to be affected by representational deficits.