The Intersectional Costs of Incivility: Descriptive and Substantive Representation in Polarised Times

Violence and incivility disproportionately affects representatives that descriptively stand for underrepresented groups, particularly women. This is well-established by international research. But we know much less about the issues and the substance driving political contestation. However, the rise of far-right, anti-immigrant and anti-feminist ideologies suggest that certain policy areas are particularly contested and prone to backlash. Drawing on Hanna Pitkin’s (1967) classic distinction between descriptive and substantive representation and the literature on incivility, which provides a general conceptual understanding of violations of deliberative norms in political discourse, our work examines the impact of incivility on political representation. In particular, we address two closely related research questions: (1) How and to what extent does incivility toward local political elites affect descriptive and substantive representation? (2) To what extent do representatives’ descriptive characteristics and their substantive policy focus moderate these effects? Our empirical work focusses on local politics in Germany and is based on The German Metropolitan Survey 2022, an online survey of all local elected officials in German major cities (≥ 100.000 residents). Our analyses explore the prevalence, (online and offline) forms, and consequences of incivility, revealing that the vast majority of local political representatives experience it. Incivility negatively affects both descriptive and substantive representation, fostering withdrawal considerations and topic avoidance, with particularly pronounced effects for specific groups and party contexts. Concerning intersectionality, our results further show that descriptive representation is particularly jeopardised for racialised office- and mandate-holders, whereas for women, it is predominantly substantive representation that suffers: Female representatives are more likely to avoid addressing certain issues, suggesting a gendered pattern of silencing within political discourse. In light of these results, further attention is warranted on those representatives who, despite having experienced incivility, do not resort to topic avoidance, but exhibit consistency on policy issues. Descriptive analyses suggest a relevance of intersectional patterns and mechanisms. While we do not observe gender-specific differences in the level of incivility, differences become apparent in the consequences for political careers and the coping strategies adopted by those affected. By applying interaction effect statistic measures to our analysis, our findings further demonstrate distinctive patterns of impact on both descriptive and substantive representation resulting from the intersection of racialisation, gender and class. Consequently, our analysis moreover provides insights into the intersectional effects that go beyond single-axis analyses. As such, it offers a more comprehensive perspective on vulnerabilities in political representation, and on resilience strategies. The results thus help provide a more nuanced understanding on the effects on political representation in contested and polarised times, highlighting the consequences for free, undistorted political representation. By the time of the ECPR General Conference, we will additionally be able to draw on novel data freshly collected from the 2026 follow-up survey. As such, early insights into temporal dynamics and comparisons should be possible.