Whose equality? Measuring group representation
| Author | Karen Celis,Liza M Mügge |
| Published date | 01 May 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0263395716684527 |
| Date | 01 May 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395716684527
Politics
2018, Vol. 38(2) 197 –213
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0263395716684527
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Whose equality? Measuring
group representation
Karen Celis
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Liza M Mügge
University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Abstract
Presence, of bodies and ideas, is often taken as the primary indicator of political equality and,
hence, democratic health. Intersectionality and constructivism question the validity of measuring
presence. Turning theory into practice, we propose a comparative reflexive design guided by two
research questions: (1) Who are the groups? and (2) What are their problems? This reveals both
prototypical and non-prototypical groups and interests, from the perspectives of politicians (from
above) and citizens (from below). We suggest concrete qualitative and quantitative methodological
strategies to study these questions empirically.
Keywords
constructivism, indicators, intersectionality, measurement, political equality, representation
Received: 11th December 2015; Revised version received: 14th October 2016; Accepted: 18th October 2016
[…] the existence of political equality is a fundamental premise of democracy.
(Dahl, 2006: IX)
Political equality can mean (and can be enacted as) many, overlapping things […]
(Saward, 2003: 164)
Corresponding author:
Liza M Mügge, Political Science Department, University of Amsterdam, Postbus 15578, 1001 NB Amsterdam,
The Netherlands.
Email: l.m.mugge@uva.nl
684527POL0010.1177/0263395716684527PoliticsCelis and Mügge
research-article2017
Article
198 Politics 38(2)
Introduction
Numbers provide the necessary hard evidence to advocate and lobby for political equal-
ity. Measuring the representation of historically underrepresented groups, such as women
and racial and ethnic minorities, is central to activists and scholars when addressing polit-
ical inequalities caused by sexism, racism, and discrimination. Feminists, for instance,
care about gender equality. They may ask, ‘How many women are present in a national
parliament?’ or ‘How many policy bills on women’s issues are accepted?’ When these
percentages are low, the numbers can be foundational in developing an agenda to advo-
cate gender equality. These numbers also form the basis of a broader democratic argu-
ment: namely, that gender equality is a litmus test for political equality, which is in turn
fundamental to democracy. Feminists claim that representative democracy fails without
gender equality in political representation. Similar claims are made about political equal-
ity for other groups, organized on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, social class or
sexual orientation.
Here, scholars and activists are questioned about whose equality they measure and for
whose interests they mobilize. The combined insights of two research paradigms, which
have both been applied to representation only very recently, challenge the validity of tradi-
tional measurements of political equality through crude scoring of group representation.
The first paradigm, ‘intersectionality’, contends that groups are rarely, if ever, homoge-
nous entities. This raises questions about within-group diversity, and the implications of,
inter alia social class, age, sexuality, and ethnicity. It consequently forces us to consider
who we should count in order to measure political equality. The second paradigm, ‘con-
structivism’, reveals that the representation of groups is neither a neutral reflection, nor an
echo of societal groups and their needs in the political arena. In the political process of
representation, politicians and policy makers strategically create, define, negotiate, and
re-define groups as well as their specific needs and interests. The taken-for-granted group
categories upon which researchers tend to rely to measure representation have become
highly problematic through an intersectional and constructivist lens. It challenges us to
rethink the fundamental question: what counts as representation?
In this article, we discuss the implications of intersectionality and constructivist para-
digms for the study of representation. Inspired by intersectionality and constructivism, we
propose a research design to measure group representation. The main objective is to high-
light the importance of producing valid indicators of political equality and inequality for
political scientists and equality activists, and to demonstrate how this can be done.
The following section discusses how group representation is measured in classical
work. There is a rich literature on the representation of lower class or lower educated citi-
zens, sexual minorities, racial, and ethnic minorities (e.g. Hoskyns and Rai, 1998;
Pontusson, 2015; Reynolds, 2013; Ruedin, 2013). However, we focus on feminist studies
of the political representation of women. Such studies provide the most comprehensive
frameworks for the study of group representation, and are collectively diverse enough to
apply our resultant discussion and reflections to group representation in general. Next, we
flesh out the challenges that constructivism and intersectionality pose to the measurement
of group representation. We then turn theory into practice. We place our concerns related
to the study of representation in a broader social scientific academic debate on the prob-
lems researchers face when working with categories and identification from above and
from below. Thereafter, we propose an alternative reflexive comparative research design.
Using qualitative and quantitative methods, our design inductively maps how politicians
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