Under conditions of international migration, growing socio-economic inequality and demographic change, European societies are becoming increasingly heterogeneous. These trends of diversification as well as the expansion of group interests resulting from these trends affect the democratic linkage between individuals and politics.
Against this background, the proposed paper examines the political inclusion of “intersectional” social groups. Specifically, it examines the descriptive representation of various groups in Austrian parliamentary elections. The proposed paper aims to assess whether and how intersectional group characteristics along the lines of class, gender, ethnicity and age determine candidates’ ranking on either safe, marginal or unwinnable positions on party lists (Childs/Evans 2009: 9). We assume that the social characteristics determine the candidates’ positions on the party lists, as these characteristics come along with different opportunities, resources and motivations. We further assume that persons at specific intersections of these characteristics are particularly disadvantaged. The intersectional perspective enables us to capture the different forms of stratification that affect the political inclusion of social groups in their “intersecting dynamics” (Kerner 2012: 208).
In the paper, Austria exemplifies a list PR system (Müller 2005). As in list PR systems the number of candidates on a list exceeds the number of winnable seats, the chance of being elected largely depends on the list positions of candidates (Maddens/Put 2012). Therefore we analyze the chances of candidates for being placed on winnable positions as a function of their intersectional group belonging. As a database we use province-level party lists compiled by the four parties (SPÖ, ÖVP, FPÖ, Greens) who won seats in all of the six most recent Austrian parliamentary elections (1994-2008). For each year our dataset thus comprises about 400 candidates.
Our findings reveal which intersectional characteristics explain the list position of candidates and how the explanatory value of these characteristics changes over time.
