Multidimensional Representation

Abstract

The study of representation is a major research field in quantitative political science. Since the early 2000s, it has been accompanied by a range of important conceptual innovations by political theorists working on the topic. Yet, although many quantitative scholars are familiar with the conceptual literature, even the most complex quantitative studies eschew engaging with the "new wave" of more sophisticated concepts of representation that theorists have developed. We discuss what we take to be the main reasons for this gap between theory and empirics, and present four novel conceptions of representation that are both sensitive to theorists' conceptual impulses and operationalizable for quantitative scholars. In doing so, we advance an alternative research agenda on representation that moves significantly beyond the status quo of the field.Replication Materials: The data and materials required to verify the computational reproducibility of the results, procedures, and analyses in this article are available on the American Journal of Political Science Dataverse within the Harvard Dataverse Network, at: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/79RI4R. 1. surrogation (claiming and choosing constituents and representatives), 2. justification (providing and demanding reasons for actions), 3. personalization (viewing the representative role as that of an individual versus party agent), and 4. responsiveness (acting out of and expecting sensitivity to electoral sanctions).

Can Deliberative Participatory Fora Cure Representation Gaps in France and Germany?

“…The concept of political representation has been further developed to account for broader and multiple forms of the relationship between the representatives and the represented, pointing in particular to the context dependency of interests and the way representatives create and frame claims put forward by the represented (importantly, Mansbridge 2003 ; Saward 2010 ). Recently, these more constructivist conceptions of representation have found their way into quantitative social research on the quality of representation (Wolkenstein and Wratil 2021 ), yet they fall short of providing a picture of the diversity of parliaments.…”

Repräsentation in der (Internationalen) Politischen Theorie – eine feministische Kritik und ein Aufruf zum Dialog

“…Vor diesem Hintergrund ändert sich schließlich auch das Theorieverständnis. Der theoretische Anspruch liegt dann weniger in der Identifikation von Kriterien für "gute" transnationale Repräsentation (Wolkenstein und Wratil 2020). Ziel der Theorie ist vielmehr die Kritik an aufkommenden Repräsentationsverständnissen, Identitätskonstruktionen, wobei der Forschungsprozess, durch den diese Verunsicherungen entstehen, als "theoriegenerierend" aufgewertet wird.…”

Distributing Democratic Influence: External Efficacy and the Preferred Influence of Policy Winners and Losers

“…Research examining more specific process preferences, by contrast, is relatively rare (see Gherghina & Geissel, 2020). What is more, existing studies have tended to focus on distinctions highlighted in classical works in democratic theory (e.g., substantive versus descriptive representation; Pitkin, 1967) while neglecting more recent debates on representation (see Wolkenstein & Wratil, 2021). This study's starting point is thus to dig more deeply into preferences for citizen influence over policy, with the goal of improving our understanding of what ordinary people think about not only the appropriate distribution of representational influence, but also the underlying democratic tensions highlighted in the political theory literature (c.f., Cowley, 2013;DeScioli & Bokemper, 2019).…”