Political Representation in Contested and Polarized Times

The field of political representation continues to develop and evolve in rich and varied ways. While the variation in approaches has continued to flourish, particularly under the influence of the broader ‘constructivist turn’, in their different ways scholars continue to grapple with the central questions of what is political representation? How can it be conceptualized, studied and analyzed? And, normatively, what is good (and consequently what is bad) political representation? Through various theoretical and empirical approaches (drawing on both quantitative and qualitative methods), scholars of political representation grapple with these questions in different ways. Increasingly they do so in polarized and polarizing times, marked by the rise of right-wing populism, the contestation of long-established rights, and renewed struggles over gender, race, and sexuality in the public sphere. In this context, debates about what counts as “good” political representation are inseparable from broader conflicts over democratic legitimacy and the very meaning of equality and inclusion in contemporary politics. This section is sensitive to the incredible diversity in the field and the importance of the insights each approach offers in furthering our understanding of political representation. This section welcomes theoretical, conceptual, and empirical papers that consider the contestation over political representation and its entanglement with contemporary political and policy challenges, that discuss key concepts, theories, and practices of representation in historical and comparative perspective (and in relation to increasing political polarization and change), that present empirical findings on the evolving nature of contemporary representative relationships both between representatives and the represented, but also importantly between different representatives (of different types).