Present, but Not Represented? Representative Claims and Group Appeals in Parliamentary Debates

Research on group appeals in political speech often overlooks that representatives may follow both a representative logic and a reference logic when addressing social groups. This means that groups can be present in a statement because they are appealed to, without being represented in the sense of a representative claim being made on their behalf. Against this background, our study asks which social groups are made present in parliamentary speech but are at the same time not represented, and how these patterns vary over time. Drawing on theories of political representation as claims-making, we conceptualize how appeals to groups can coexist with the absence of representation in a claims-making sense. We then empirically map the representativeness of group appeals. Using a stepwise text-as-data pipeline, we analyze all Bundestag plenary debates from 2009 to 2021 to identify how group appeals and representative claims overlap. We find that half of all group mentions are neutral or opposing, making a group present but neither acknowledging nor representing it in the sense of supportive group appeals. Among the supportive mentions, a small but meaningful share does not constitute representative claims but merely acknowledges or recognizes a group. The study advances debates on political representation by jointly analyzing group appeals and representative claims in the context of legislative speech, thereby shedding light on how presence without representation becomes particularly problematic in contested and polarized times, when groups are frequently made present rhetorically yet remain excluded from representative claims-making.