In person icon Understanding Presence and Absence in Political Representation

Abstract

Political representation is not only about who is present in the political process but also about who is absent—and why. While political science has developed robust theories and empirical analyses of political presence, the politics of absence remains underexplored. Focusing on intentional and unintentional absences raises questions about inclusion, exclusion, and the dynamics of visibility in democratic systems shaped by power, inequality, and institutional practices. This panel seeks to uncover these dynamics of absence in political representation. This panel brings together papers that explore these themes from diverse angles—conceptual, empirical, and normative—and across different contexts, levels of governance, and methodological approaches. They address mechanisms of exclusion in parliamentary debates and policy-making, the roles of representatives and constituents in shaping political absences, intersectional perspectives on absence in representation as well as the implications of absence for democratic legitimacy and policy outcomes.

Title	Details
The Fourfold Recursion of Representation: Rethinking Absence in Representative Practice	View Paper Details
Conceptualizing Representative Absence: What, How, When, and Why?	View Paper Details
Trans(gressing) Visibilities: Paradoxes of Presence in the Political Representation of Minority Interests	View Paper Details
Developing Digital Infrastructure and Automated Text-Analysis Methods for Identifying Representative Claims in Political Texts: First Findings from Speeches and Social Media Data	View Paper Details
Resonance: Performative Representation Between Presence and Virtuality	View Paper Details