In The Principles of Representative Government (1997), Bernard Manin argues that the means of selection, elections producing representative democracy and drawing lots applied in direct democracy, create fundamentally different kinds of government. I argue that Manin's typology holds firm, but that it needs some modification. First, Daniela Cammack's analysis of the Athenian system for the impact of 'interest' and 'accountability' reveals representative elements within the Athenian direct democracy, further clarified with the distinction between 'synecdochical' (part-for-the-whole) and 'metaphorical' (transformed) representation as defined by Frank Ankersmit. Next, with these parameters, I investigate the multiple offices (archai) at Athens. In the selection of officials, a significant turn occurs from the means and conditions (synecdoche) to the outcome (metaphor), rendering the difference between allotted offices and elected ones arguably one of degree, rather than of kind. This inquiry further suggests that arch & emacr;, the right to act with authority over one's fellow citizens, holds by its very nature an element of representational distance and inequality that even drawing lots from all with high rotation cannot fully undo. This insight is relevant to any analysis of drawing lots for office in a political system in other historical periods as well as today.
Concerns about a potential erosion of political support in established democracies have motivated scholars to study the failure of democratic institutions in realising democratic representation. Yet, we lack evidence documenting that democratic dissatisfaction indeed results from citizens' disappointment with the ways in which democratic institutions realise representation. To address this limitation, we study citizens' preferences for representation and their evaluations of it in the Canadian context. Using an original survey module that was fielded among a sub-sample of respondents in the 2021 Canadian Election Study, we investigate (1) to what extent citizens consider different dimensions of political representation as important, (2) whether their expectations are met, (3) what the correlates of these preferences are, and (4) the consequences of an expectation gap for satisfaction with democracy. Our results uncover four profiles of citizens with different preferences for and evaluations of representation. Additionally, our results show that negative evaluations of political representation correlate with democratic dissatisfaction.
Studies of descriptive representation typically use a percentage 'gap' or 'ratio' to measure under- or over-representation. I discuss this approach and its limitations before proposing an alternative: using measures of disproportionality to measure multigroup representation relative to population benchmarks. I then extend the approach to show how representation along one dimension of identity can be compared across demographic subgroups. I apply these measures to the representation of occupational class in the Australian Parliament (1986-2023) and then expand the analysis to show that women are more likely to represent typically female professions than men are to represent typically male professions. Disproportionality avoids problems with existing measures such as category concatenation, which can mask severe distortions in subgroup representation, and complications in operationalising concepts such as class. The approach supports comparative cross-national study across several areas of descriptive representation from race and ethnicity, to social class, gender, age, religion, or geography.
To what extent do MPs change their constituency focus in parliament when they become more senior? Extant research examines MPs' representational focus mainly by looking at electoral incentives; this study tests if MPs' level of constituency focus shifts because they gain more institutional power in parliament. In the starting phase of MPs' careers, constituency focus is expected to be more intense because it helps build connections and networks that are crucial for career progression. But as MPs become more senior, constituency focus is likely to diminish as it can be a distraction from other roles and responsibilities that come with seniority. To test these claims, the study measures the constituency focus of parliamentary speeches made to the Ghanaian parliament between 2005 and 2024 and uses the original biographical datasets of MPs combined with electoral data to perform causal mediation analyses. The study finds that senior MPs and MPs who gain institutional power (e.g. committee chairs) make fewer constituency speeches. However, countering our expectations, senior MPs do not make significantly fewer constituency speeches because they occupy power positions. The findings highlight the need to further investigate MPs' representational priorities to better understand the trade-offs between roles throughout their career lifecycle.
