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In the mid-twentieth century, income and wealth inequality was declining, leading to an era of comparative economic equality and a large middle class. But since the early 1980s, income and wealth inequality has been on the rise. The 100-year life describes how increasing life expectancy could transform the course of individual lives in detail – but how does this trend intersect with our age of inequality? And what does it mean for law and policymaking more generally? The dark side of rising life expectancy is that it is unequally shared. The first part of this chapter briefly discusses how age and inequality are connected – that is, that not everyone shares in rising life expectancy equally and that those who are living longer share many common attributes. The second part considers the possible impact of the skew in rising life expectancy on representative government. Inequality skews politics to favor the wealthy; inequality by age will likely do the same. The fundamental problem is that power is held unequally in most societies. The third part, on age and institutional design, outlines some ways in which political structures might be crafted to account for age-related differences.
The chapter starts by outlining the version of direct realism endorsed by Aristotle. I argue that he was committed to uncompromised realism about perceptible qualities and to the view that we immediately perceive the bearers of these qualities without any need of further synthetic acts. These features highlight the difficulty of capturing the explanantia of perception. Two notions key to that endeavour are those of mediation and discrimination. The chapter provides a novel analysis of mediation (for discrimination, see Chapter 6), arguing that, for Aristotle, media are – more or less perfect – qualitative conductors. Furthermore, the chapter addresses the existing debate about what, according to Aristotle, happens in the sense organs when we perceive. I argue that the dilemma governing this debate between spiritualism and materialism (either ‘literalist’ or ‘analogical’) is a false one. Tertium datur, and this alternative turns out to be precisely the view Aristotle embraced: perception consists of a thoroughly material process, but what this process results in must not be a standing material likeness (which would mark the end of perception because like cannot be affected by like), but a dynamic ‘phenomenal’ likeness – the presence of a quality of the perceived object which remains to be precisely a quality of that object.
This chapter examines the various tropes and representational strategies used by writers to depict urban and rural spaces and their dynamics, highlighting the constructed nature of place and the intimate relationship between history, place-making, memory, and representation. Drawing on key cultural theorists and urban geographers, most notably Walter Benjamin, George Simmel, Yi-Fu Tuan, Susan Buck-Morss, Kristin Bluemel, and Michael McCluskey, and literary texts such as Dung Kai Cheung’s Atlas: An Archaeology of an Imaginary City (1997), I discuss different imaginative and creative impulses that underlined the discursive construction of place and space. And with reference to texts published in different cultural contexts and historical moments, such as Charles Dickens’ Sketches by Boz (1836) and The Old Curiosity Shop (1841), George Gissing’s The Whirlpool (1897), and Shen Congwen’s The Border Town (1934), I examine not only the various manifestations of urban/rural dichotomies as invoked in literary works, but also moments when these dichotomies are unsettled or blurred. The last section of the chapter focuses on Alicia Little’s A Marriage in China (1896) and Jean Rhys’ Voyage in the Dark (1934), exploring the ways in which the rural/urban constructs engage with questions of colonial politics, resistance, and the ideas of home and (un)belonging.
How do race, ethnicity, and gender shape a legislator’s approach to bill sponsorship and cosponsorship? This paper examines how institutional marginalization influences the legislative strategies of racial and gender minority representatives. Constrained by systemic barriers that limit their ability to sponsor legislation, minority legislators prioritize cosponsorship to achieve policy goals, build coalitions, and demonstrate responsiveness to their constituencies. Using the quasi-experimental context of the 2016 and 2018 U.S. congressional elections, I apply the synthetic difference-in-differences estimator and find that minority legislators sponsor fewer bills but cosponsor significantly more than their non-Hispanic White counterparts. Additionally, race-gendered effects reveal that women of color sponsor significantly less legislation than non-minority legislators and men of color. These patterns cannot be explained by factors like freshman status or primary election competitiveness. The findings highlight the strategic adaptations of minority legislators to navigate structural inequities and amplify their legislative influence. This study is the first to use a causal inference approach to explore the intersection of race, gender, and sponsorship and cosponsorship of congressional bills, contributing to a deeper understanding of legislative behavior among marginalized groups.
This research note presents the results of audit studies that were conducted with the constituency offices of provincial and federal elected representatives across Canada. We investigate whether individuals from ethnic minority groups, the LGBTQ+ community and French or English speakers are discriminated against when contacting their constituency office for administrative services. Survey experiments administered to both candidates of the 2021 Canadian election and a representative sample of Canadian citizens complement these studies. Our results indicate the absence of discrimination towards constituents from an ethnic minority or who identify with the LGBTQ+ community. We found, however, that emails sent in French were less likely to be answered by Members of Parliament (MPs) than those sent in English. Constituency offices of anglophone MPs and those representing ridings with a small proportion of francophones were significantly less likely to respond to French emails. A similar pattern, albeit more moderate, is observed among constituency offices of francophone MPs in response to English emails. The survey experiments show similar discrimination from citizens but less so from candidates.
Chapter 1 sets the stage by comparing leadership elections in the two major UK parties following the Brexit referendum. While Conservative members of parliament acted swiftly to replace their leader, Labour was unable to follow suit, leading to an unprecedented internal crisis. These divergent paths, Kernell argues, can best be explained by attention to party rules. After briefly extending the comparison to discuss party rules in several other countries, Chapter 1 summarizes the book’s core arguments and the formal model, introduces the evidence, and provides a roadmap for the rest of the book.
This chapter explores the nature of the legislature and its relationship to constitutional government, focusing in particular on the importance of legislative agency and the dynamics that frame its exercise. The chapter begins by reflecting on the objects of legislative action, arguing that authorising a legislative assembly to legislate changes who legislates but not what it is to legislate. The object of legislative deliberation and action should be the common good and securing this end requires agency. The assembly faces many challenges in exercising agency, which it is structured to overcome, partly by way of its relationship to government, a relationship that goes well beyond acts of legislation. The relationship between legislature and government shapes the character of a constitutional order and bears on the relationship between legislature and the people. The legislature’s duty is to represent the people, which makes self-government possible. The legislature should deliberate and act for the people and be accountable to the people, with legislative deliberation taking its place in a wider public conversation. The legislature’s capacity for agency informs how legislative acts should be understood to change the law and helps explain the moral importance of legislative freedom and the limits on that freedom.
Although they are stable, party constitutions are not immutable. Over the past decade, parties have become increasingly decentralized – especially with respect to leadership selection. Chapter 7 concludes by assessing the implications of the book’s findings for strategically motivated party leaders contemplating institutional change. The chapter also considers similarities and differences with US primaries and discusses how decentralized structures may shape candidate quality. Kernell concludes by discussing avenues for future research, arguing party – as well as electoral – institutions should be accounted for in studies of democratic responsiveness.
Chapter 6 shifts the focus from individual voter behavior to party responsiveness. Where decentralized rules foster internal competition, parties should select candidates and adopt positions that are more responsive to their core supporters and less responsive to the general electorate. To test these spatial hypotheses, Kernell employs computational simulations to identify vote-maximizing positions in the electorate and finds that decentralized parties adopt less competitive positions than their centralized competitors. All else equal, the electoral advantage for a party whose leaders select candidates over one whose members play a decisive role is close to 7 percent.
Shifting Allegiances provides a comprehensive analysis of the increasing presence and influence of Latino Republicans in Congress and state legislatures. Contrary to past assumptions, this Element reveals that Latino Republicans are a diverse group, no longer confined to Cuban Americans in South Florida. By examining election data and candidate characteristics since 2018, the authors uncover the factors contributing to the success of Latino Republicans, including district demographics, conservative values, and strategic campaigning. This shift in political dynamics highlights a broader trend of ideological realignment and offers insights into the evolving landscape of Latino political representation in the United States.
Existing research argues that malapportionment primarily favours rural areas, resulting in conservative biases of electoral systems. In this paper, we provide a new perspective on the study of apportionment processes by identifying the institutional design under which malapportionment may favour other regions. Because of the geographical sorting of non-citizen residents, we argue that regions with high shares of non-citizen residents benefit from population-based apportionment, whereas the spatial sorting of non-citizens does not affect malapportionment in the case of citizen-based apportionment. Empirically, we use sub-national data from ten advanced democracies to forward evidence that differences in apportionment mechanisms and district-level shares of non-citizen residents systematically influence malapportionment. Our findings suggest that the impact of malapportionment on political representation and public policies may be more heterogeneous than previously thought.
Different participatory mechanisms for the representation of Indigenous peoples have been proposed across states. Since their creation in 1867, the Māori electorates in the national Parliament have led to dedicated representation for Māori (Indigenous peoples of New Zealand). However, only half of Māori choose to vote on the Māori roll, the remainder choosing to vote on the General roll, illustrating that roll choice is not based simply on group representation. This survey aimed to ask Māori (N = 1,958) in their own words why they made their roll choice. Through a deductive codebook thematic analysis, a range of codes were constructed around the reasoning behind roll choice. Māori on the Māori roll made their choice because they valued Māori representation; as an expression of their identity; to support the electorates; as a strategic choice; or they had been influenced by others or through education. Those on the General roll felt their roll was the default or a more familiar option; the Māori roll had less of an impact; it was a strategic choice, or they appreciated greater candidate variety; or they valued the smaller geographic electorate size. Some felt Māori no longer needed separate representation or felt less connected to their identity as Māori. The results have implications for both Māori and Indigenous representation through dedicated representational mechanisms.
This chapter surveys some of the many types of models used in science, and some of the many ways scientists use models. Of particular interest for our purposes are the relationships between models and other aspects of scientific inquiry, such as data, experiments, and theories. Our discussion shows important ways in which modeling can be thought of as a distinct and autonomous scientific activity, but always models can be crucial for making use of data and theories and for performing experiments. The growing reliance on simulation models has raised new and important questions about the kind of knowledge gained by simulations and the relationship between simulation and experimentation. Is it important to distinguish between simulation and experimentation, and if so, why?
Echoing semanticists’ view on scientific theories, David Wallace has recently argued that physical theories are best understood if we conceive of them as mathematical structures. He supplements this idea by suggesting that they attach to the world by structural relations, e.g. isomorphism. This view, which he calls the math-first approach, contrasts with the language-first approach, according to which physical theories are collections of sentences latching onto the world by linguistic relations, e.g. truth. He then submits the structural realist stance is the appropriate metaphysics for this semantic framework. While agreeing that Wallace’s proposal is semantically and metaphysically tenable, I will argue that it is epistemically incomplete, since it leaves untouched the question “what are cognitive attitudes directed toward a physical theory?”. This issue becomes crucial especially when we notice that physical theories so construed cannot be the vehicle of propositional cognitive attitudes, e.g. belief and knowledge. Drawing on Elgin’s revisionary epistemology, I will suggest an augmentation to the math-first approach by certain non-propositional cognitive attitudes in such a way that both realist and anti-realist stances can be expressed within the resulting augmented math-first approach.
This article provides a critical analysis of the representations of collective memory of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the Asia-Pacific theatre of World War II. The discussion of the “subject debate” over the inscription of the Cenotaph for the A-bomb Victims, politics over the construction of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and the preservation of the A-bomb Dome transpired the memory mechanisms at work with regard to the US responsibility for the A-bomb, the Japanese aggressive war leading up to the A-bomb, Japan's colonial rule of Korea, and denationalization and universalization of the A-bomb experience in Japan as a result. The article analyzes the chronology of the “only A-bombed nation” notion in the post-WWII Japanese “peace” discourses and concludes that it was a process to reconstruct Japanese national victimhood as a reaction to the “discovery” of the Korean A-bomb victims and the DPRK nuclear program. The article overall challenges the notion of “peace” and “pacifism” in post-WWII Japan that revolve around the experience of the atomic bombing.
In contradistinction to totalitarianism, Claude Lefort theorised a democratic form of society as one primarily characterised by indeterminacy, absence of ground, and by extension openness to the event. In maintaining this form of society, Lefort reserved a key role for human rights. The aims of this paper are twofold: first, I argue that, despite the fact that Lefort never developed a theory of constitutions, an important role can nonetheless be ascribed to them. I hypothesise constitutions to be key in democratic society’s symbolic representation of itself to itself. Second, I then examine what the repercussions are for this idea when Martin Loughlin’s account of constitutionalism is taken into account. Loughlin’s argument suggests that, while constitutions may have been important safeguards against totalitarianism, constitutions today threaten to become total themselves. I conclude by indicating the populist response as a point of convergence between Lefort’s and Loughlin’s analyses.
This chapter summarizes the primary explanations for women’s numeric underrepresentation and sets the stage for examining the gender dynamics of the candidate emergence process. Although several factors contribute to men’s dominance in US politics, we argue that the gender gap in political ambition continues to limit women’s full political inclusion. We recognize, of course, that women’s numeric representation has increased throughout the last two decades. But electing more women to state legislative and congressional seats – while certainly an important step – should not be conflated with closing the gender gap in political ambition more broadly. Because patterns of traditional gender socialization are so deeply embedded, socialized norms and behaviors still keep millions of women from envisioning themselves as candidates and perceiving the political arena as open to them. The chapter concludes with a description of our multiwave Citizen Political Ambition Study, our central tool for shedding light on gender differences in political ambition.
In this concluding chapter, we turn to the persistence of the gender gap in political ambition. Why hasn’t it begun to close? How can we reconcile its intractable nature with women’s steadily increasing numeric representation? What do women and men in the candidate eligibility pool believe contributes to the static gap? After providing a brief summary of the book’s central findings, these are the questions to which this chapter turns. Ultimately, we conclude that despite women’s significantly greater – and growing – presence in politics, women continue to be less likely than men to see themselves as candidates for elective office. They also continue to be less likely than men to be seen by others as candidates for elective office. There’s no question that “it takes a candidate” to achieve gender parity in US political institutions. But when it comes to breaking down long-standing beliefs about politics and the very nature of the political domain, this book makes it clear that it takes more than a candidate.
This chapter lays out the book’s central argument and theoretical framework: The enduring gender gap in political ambition results from long-standing patterns of traditional socialization that persist in US culture. More specifically, traditional family role orientations, in which women assume the majority of household and childcare responsibilities, lead many women to conclude that entering politics would restrict their ability to fulfill existing personal and professional obligations. A masculinized ethos in political organizations and institutions that have always been controlled by men continues to promote men’s, not women’s, full participation in the political arena. And a gendered psyche imbues many women with a sense of doubt as to their ability to compete in the electoral sphere. Thus, the enduring effects of traditional gender socialization that transcend all generations pose serious obstacles for true gender equality.
It Takes More Than a Candidate remains the only systematic account of the gender gap in political ambition. Based on national surveys of more than 10,000 potential candidates in 2001, 2011, and 2021, the book shows that women, even in the highest tiers of professional accomplishment, are substantially less likely than men to demonstrate ambition to seek elective office. The gender gap in persists across generations and over time, despite society's changing attitudes toward women in politics. Women remain less likely to be recruited to run for office, less likely to think they are qualified to run, and less likely to express a willingness to run for office in the future. In the twenty years since It Takes a Candidate was first published, the book remains timely and eye-opening, highlighting the challenges women face navigating the candidate emergence process and providing insight into the persistent gender gap in political ambition.