Descriptive and Substantive Representation in Southern Europe: A General Overview Before and After the Great Recession

This paper looks at descriptive and substantive representation in Southern in comparative perspective. First, we want to study comparatively descriptive representation in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain since the 1990s, with a special emphasis on the period before and after the Great Recession. In this part, we will analyse also the levels of resemblance of the two national legislatures (overall and by parties), vis-à-vis their respective electorates, in terms of socio-demographic characteristics (gender, age, education and profession). MPs’ turnover rates in the two parliaments across the different elections will also be analysed. If data allow it, we will use the Synthetic Index of Social Disproportion for comparative purposes. In the second part of the paper, we will analyse how well represented in the national Parliaments are the different political parties in the two countries. Levels of disproportionality, in the transformation of votes into seats, and levels of party system fragmentation, from the electoral (ENEP: Effective Number of Electoral Parties) to the parliamentary level (ENPP: Effective Number of Parliamentary Parties), will be a major focus in this part. Additionally, we will analyse also substantive representation in the two national Parliaments understood as the levels of congruence in ideological left-right self-placement.