Institutionalization of Ethnocultural Diversity and the Representation of European Muslims

Abstract

We seek to explain variation in the descriptive representation of Muslim minorities in national legislatures, relying on an original data set that includes 635 seats filled by Muslim-origin MPs in the lower chambers of national parliaments of twenty-six European polities in three legislative cycles between 2007 and 2018. We argue that the image of a polity as a union of multiple ethnocultural groups, reflected in concrete state policies and institutional arrangements, may be conducive to better descriptive representation of Muslim minorities, who were not originally envisioned as one of the communities constituting the nation. The results of multivariate regression analysis provide support for our hypothesis that the extent to which ethnocultural diversity is recognized and institutionalized helps explain variation in the levels of descriptive representation of European Muslims. We supplement our findings with congruence testing in four brief case studies: Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and Bulgaria.

Targeted Nativism: Ethnic Diversity and Radical Right Parties in Europe

“…The best available proxy for ethnic political empowerment today is the presence and strength of ethnic parties. While there is some work on political participation by minority populations, especially immigrants (Aktürk and Katliarou 2020;Dancygier 2010Dancygier , 2017Ruedin 2009), the situation could be much improved by a cross-national measure of minority participation and representation through all parties. Given the rising importance of the ethnic dimension in contemporary European politics, it is important to focus on collecting new data, allowing us to more directly address the questions raised by this literature.…”

“…While the presence of ethnic parties cannot be applied to immigrant minorities, the work of Rafaela Dancygier (2010, 2017) illustrates possible negative responses that political inclusion of immigrant minorities can provoke. Additionally, the example of Denk, the first immigrant ethnic party represented in the Dutch parliament, illustrates that immigrant minorities can create a successful political party (Aktürk and Katliarou 2020). However, I keep in mind that minority descriptive representation might also improve mutual trust between groups (Mansbridge 1999).…”

Compatibility of ethnic and national identifications under multicultural policies

“…It should be noted that there are other competing MCP indices, such as Indicators of Citizenship Rights for Immigrants (ICRI) originally developed by Koopmans et al (2005) (for a comparisons between the ICRI and the MCP, see Koopmans, 2013), and the index developed by Aktürk and Katliarou (2021). However, these indices focused heavily on Muslim immigrants, while this study does not exclusively consider Muslim immigrants.…”

Do political duos diminish discriminatory voter preferences? Evidence from a combined conjoint experiment

“…With regard to ethnic minority representation, the narrative is also mixed. Although it is one of the countries with the highest number of parliamentarians from this group (18 in the period from 2017 to 2018), in proportional terms according to population, only France is more under representative of these minorities (Aktürk and Katliarou, 2021). In terms of sexual orientation, gays, lesbians and bisexuals are still a minority of 2% in the German Bundestag (11 members in total).…”