Women's Substantive Representation: Defending Feminist Interests or Women's Electoral Preferences?

To what extent does the inclusion of marginalised groups in policymaking institutions influence policy outcomes? This article examines whether and under which conditions female legislators are more likely to represent women's interests compared with male legislators. Building on the literature on women's substantive representation, it is argued that the advocacy of women's interests by female representatives depends on a number of factors, namely party affiliation, contact with women's organisations, electoral district, and seniority. This argument is evaluated using vote-level fixed-effect models based on a unique data set from a direct democratic context that combines representatives' voting behaviour, women's voting preferences, and recommendations from feminist groups. The findings show that female legislators defend feminist interests more than their male colleagues but that they only marginally respond to women's electoral preferences. Moreover, gender has its most visible effect within the populist party.     

Comparing Electoral Systems: A Geometric Analysis

This paper constructs a game-theoretic model of elections inalternative electoral systems with three or four candidates.Each electoral system specifies how the platforms of thecandidates and their scores give rise to an outcome. Whengeometrical analysis shows that two outcomes can competeagainst each other for victory, a pivot probability isassociated to that pair. Each voter is rational and picks thecandidate that maximizes her expected utility, which resultsfrom the balancing of her preferences and beliefs about thepivot-probabilities. Candidate positioning is endogenous andthe result of a Nash game. The possible equilibria arecomputed for plurality and runoff majority systems.     

Are opinion leaders better represented?

Few studies have analysed the effect of political engagement on legislators’ responsiveness. This article focuses on opinion leaders defined as citizens who regularly discuss politics and who attempt to persuade others to change their viewpoint. It investigates whether opinion leaders are better represented compared to other voters. Taking advantage of the Swiss institution of direct democracy, the article combines roll-call votes and information from popular votes to compare the voting behaviour of legislators and citizens on exactly the same policy proposals. It thus overcomes limitations pertaining to the lack of identical information on elites’ and citizens’ preferences that is common in the literature. The findings show that opinion leaders are better represented than the rest of the electorate in those instances where both sub-groups disagree, and that issue salience does not increase responsiveness to rank-and-file voters. These findings have important implications for understanding unequal representation.     

The Fear Factor is a Main Thing: How Radio Influences Anxiety and Political Attitudes

We investigate how being exposed to media influences levels of anxiety and political attitudes in conflict-affected areas. Exploiting exogenous variation in signal strength of a radio station in South Sudan’s Western Equatoria State, we compare original qualitative and quantitative data from areas with differing radio coverage. Civilians living in areas with more exposure to radio are more afraid of attacks by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). This anxiety means civilians rely more on a civilian militia, the arrow boys, and less on the state army. Hence media, through fear, can contribute to changing social and political structures.     

Intérêts spécifiques et formation de l'opinion politique des Suissesses (1999-2005)

L'existence “d'intérêts spécifiques” qu'on pourrait naturellement attribuer à la catégorie des femmes est amplement débattue dans la littérature contemporaine. Ainsi, selon certains, les femmes en tant que catégorie sociodémographique seraient traditionnellement plus portées à s'intéresser à certains sujets (l'enfance, la parité entre les sexes, l'avortement, etc.) qu'à d'autres. Or, bien que la littérature sur la définition des intérêts des femmes soit assez étoffée, peu d'études essaient, de mesurer leurs effets sur le comportement politique des citoyennes. Ainsi, aucune analyse n'a été proposée jusqu'à maintenant pour mesurer si la présence d'enjeux particulièrement parlants pour les citoyennes augmente leur engagement intellectuel (notamment dans des enjeux de démocratie directe). A travers l'analyse des votations populaires pour la période 1999-2005 (VOX), nous nous proposons de voir dans quelle mesure le niveau d'intérêt spécifique qui caractérise l'objet soumis au vote influence les stratégies cognitives que les femmes activent lors du processus de formation de l'opinion. En partant de modèles dualistes développés en psychologie cognitive, nos analyses montrent que les citoyennes sont davantage prêtes que les hommes à activer des stratégies cognitives plus exigeantes d'un point de vue intellectuel lorsque le projet soumis au vote les touche de près.     

Citizenship agendas for the abject: the production of distrust in Amsterdam's youth and security domain

In this article I explore the seemingly contradictory notion of citizenship agendas for the abject. While abjection suggests a casting off or expulsion, citizenship implies inclusion. The youth and security policies that I argue can be read as citizenship agendas for the abject evidence this contradiction and the concomitant ambiguity. This article focuses on the workings of the ‘youth and security assemblage’ in the Amsterdam South District. This policy assemblage primarily targets ‘unruly’ young Moroccan-Dutch men from Amsterdam's notorious Diamantbuurt. In Amsterdam and elsewhere in the Netherlands, such young men have been portrayed as the ultimate troublemakers who have made urban lives unsafe and ‘terrorized’ entire neighborhoods. Through an ethnographic analysis of a public event that brought together various members of the youth and security assemblage, this article examines the tensions and organized distrust that these citizenship agendas for the abject carry within them.