Patterns of Political Representation in India: Who and What Does a Member of Parliament Represent?

The concept of political representation has a long lineage in the political science literature but there have been few earlier works that have empirically analyzed it. Wherever empirical studies exist they have brought light to representation mostly in the context of industrialized countries like USA. We introduce an empirical study in a new context, the country India with a seventy year history of formal democracy. The central question is: what is the model of political representation that characterizes the Indian voters? Does the pure descriptive model (based on ethnicity or gender) accurately reflect voters’ preferences or are voters more aligned to the substantive model or could there possibly be a creative amalgamation of the two? We put these contending theoretical questions to test in the light of large scale nationally representative survey data with 20,000 respondents. We examine for variation in representation models across the localities (urban/ rural) and degree of political awareness of the respondents. The results bring light to some interesting patterns pertaining to political representation in India where substantive representation is significantly supported, but mixed findings are noticed on descriptive representation. Alongside the empirical findings, the study raises theoretical prospects for exploring plausible interactions between the descriptive and substantive models, an area that yet to receive adequate attention. As the data shows some contrasting evidences, the study contends further inquiry whether descriptive representatives in India failed to serve the expected interests of their constituents or there is mismatch between the high expectation (explicit or implicit) and the actual policy gains by some sections of societies from their mirror representatives.