Norms, Politics and Quotas for Women and Ethnic Groups

Abstract

This panel will address claims to group representation by examining the claims made by different groups for an increased share of political power. The existing literature has broadly dealt with these claims in two different ways: (1) scholars have considered all under-represented groups together, and their exclusion as a broader issue of democratic theory and practice, or (2) scholars have studied specific under-represented groups as a way of generating insights into the exclusion of one group, which can then be generalized to other groups. To the extent that various groups have been examined together, then, they have largely been viewed as presenting similar challenges to existing states. Consequently, much less attention has been paid to differences across group claims to political representation. These differences stem partly from the nature of each political cleavage, crossing broader or narrower swathes of the population and presenting varying challenges to existing patterns of political integration. More centrally, however, they spring from debates about the political relevance of certain identities and the purpose that their increased representation will serve, including self-determination, democratic legitimacy, public order, and state survival. The panel thus seeks to theorize and compare the nature of different claims to increased political representation, paying attention to both the competing and complementary dimensions of struggles for political recognition.

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