Modern democracy is organized as a representative democracy in which those representing the people are elected to office. Political parties play a crucial role in this. They select the candidates, form or oppose governments, and organize the work of the representatives in parliament. This model of democracy is however being criticized. Parties are hardly trusted and voters have become volatile. How, then, do elected representatives of the people see and fulfil their role? To study this a survey was organized among the members of statewide and sub-state parliaments in fifteen countries. Members of seventy-three parliamentary assemblies were asked how they perceive their representative role, what they do to keep in touch with voters, how they behave and vote in parliament and how they will try to get re-elected.
One of the ways in which candidates and elected members of parliament might react to the changing conditions in which they have to represent the people is by stressing more personal characteristics as opposed to the party label and party ideology. Representation might then become more a matter of personal choice. The results of the survey presented in this book do however confirm quite strongly that representation is very much shaped by the political institutions in which it is performed. Representation differs between countries, between different electoral systems, between statewide and regional parliaments, and depends strongly on the party to which a member of parliament belongs. Representation depends not as much on who the representatives are, as on where they are.
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Rudy B. Andeweg is a professor of Political Science at Leiden University and a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. His research interests include political legitimacy and representation.
Audrey André is a F.R.S.-FNRS postdoctoral researcher at the Centre d’étude de la vie politique (CEVIPOL) of the Université libre de Bruxelles. Her research focuses on the impact of electoral institutions on parties’, legislators’ and voters’ behaviour. Key findings have been published in the European Journal of Political Research, Electoral Studies, Comparative Political Studies, Party Politics, Acta Politica and West European Politics.
Jonathan Bradbury is Reader in Politics and Head of the Department of Political and Cultural Studies at Swansea University.
Didier Caluwaerts is a professor of political science at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. His book Confrontation and Communication: Deliberative Democracy in Divided Belgium (2012 Peter Lang) has won the 2013 ECPR Jean Blondel award. He has published in Acta Politica, Ethnopolitics, Politics, Res Publica, European Political Science Review, Government & Opposition, Journal of Elections, Public Opinion & Parties, Religion, State & Society, Journal of Public Deliberation, and West European Politics.
Daniele Caramani is Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. He translated from English into Italian, Stein Rokkan’s State Formation, Nation-Building and Mass Democracy in Europe, edited by Peter Flora et al. (2002). For his book The Nationalization of Politics: The Formation of National Electorates and Party Systems in Western Europe (2004) he has been awarded the 'Stein Rokkan Prize for Comparative Research in the Social Sciences'. He has also authored the entry 'Rokkan, Stein' for The Encyclopedia of Political Science.
Karen Celis is research professor at the Department of Political Science of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and affiliated to RHEA (Centre for Gender and Diversity). She conducts theoretical and empirical research (qualitative, comparative) on political representation of groups (women, ethnic minorities, class, age groups, LGBT), equality policies and state feminism. She is co-editor of theThe Oxford Handbook on Gender and Politics (OUP, 2013, with Georgina Waylen, Johanna Kantola and Laurel Weldon).
Dag Arne Christensen is a Researcher at the Stein Rokkan Centre for Social Studies at the University of Bergen.
Olivier Costa is Senior Research Fellow at CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique), Centre Emile Durkheim, Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Bordeaux, University of Bordeaux.
Agnieszka Dudzinska is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Political Studies of Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.
Nikolaus Eder is a Researcher in the Department of Government of the University of Vienna.
Silvia Erzeel is an assistant professor and postdoctoral researcher at the Political Science Department of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Her research interests include political representation, political parties, gender and ethnicity and comparative politics.
André Freire is a Full Professor of Political Science at ISCTE-IUL, Lisbon University Institute, and a senior researcher at CIES-IUL.
Michael Gallagher is Professor at the Department of Political Science of Trinity College Dublin.
Anna Hazan teaches at the Administration and Public Policy Department of the Sapir College, Israel. She served for many years as the director of the Local Development Department of Israel’s Ministry of Interior and coauthored numerous publications on Israel’s local government, mainly in Hebrew, such as Personal Liability in Local Government in Israel (Floersheimer Studies, 2008). She has several English and French publications in books and scientific journals, such as Geografiska Annaler, Political Geography, and Environment and Planning.
Gabriella Ilonszki is Professor of Political Science at Corvinus University of Budapest. Her English language publications include three edited volumes: Opposition Parties in European Legislatures: Conflict or Consensus (with Elisabetta De Giorgi, Routledge, 2018), Post-Communist Parliaments: Change and Stability in the Second Decade (with D.M. Olson, Routledge, 2012), and Perceptions of the European Union in New Member States: A Comparative Perspective (Routledge, 2010). She has published articles in journals such as the Journal of Legislative Studies, East European Politics, Europe-Asia Studies, the Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics. She has also authored several chapters in volumes on representation, parliamentary government and political elite, gender, areas that constitute her main research interest.
Reut Izkovitch Malka is a Researcher in the Political Science Department of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Marcelo Jenny is a Post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Government of the University of Vienna.
Tor Midtbø is Professor in the Department of Comparative Politics of the University of Bergen.
Wolfgang C Müller is Professor of Democratic Governance at the University of Vienna (Austria). Previous appointments included Chair and Director of the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES) at the University of Mannheim. He is currently Speaker and Principal Investigator of the Austrian National Election Study (AUTNES). Since 2013 he has been co-editor of West European Politics. His research interests include government coalitions, political parties and political institutions.
Pablo Onate is Professor of Political Science at the University of Valencia.
Zsofia Papp is a Research Fellow in the Department of Political Behaviour of the Hungarian Academy of Science.
Jean-Benoit Pilet is a professor of Political Science at ULB. He works on elections, electoral system, political parties and representation. He is the coauthor of Faces on the Ballot; The Personalization of Electoral Systems in Europe (with Alan Renwick – Oxford UP 2016) and The Politics of Political Party Leadership in Comparative Perspective (with William Cross – Oxford
UP 2015).
Giulia Sandri is an associate professor at the European School of Political and Social Sciences of the Catholic University of Lille. She was previously research fellow at Christ Church and at the Department of Politics and International Relations of the University of Oxford. Her main research interests are party politics, intra-party democracy and political behaviour.
Tinette Schnatterer is a Researcher in the Centre Emile Durkheim, Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Bordeaux, University of Bordeaux (France).
Filippo Tronconi is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Bologna.
Peter Van Aelst is Professor of Political Science at the University of Antwerp.
Cynthia van Vonno is a Researcher in the Department of Political Science of the University of Leiden.
Luca Verzichelli is Professor of Political Science at the Centre for the Study of Political Change (CIRCaP, University of Siena). His academic interests cover the field of comparative political institutions, political elite and budgetary politics.
Stefaan Walgrave is a professor of Political Science at the University of Antwerp. He leads the research group M2P (www.m2p.be). His research interests are social movements, political participation, political communication and elections.
Bram Wauters is an associate professor at the Department of Political Sciences of the Ghent University, Belgium, where he leads the research group GASPAR. His research interests include political representation, elections and political parties, with special attention to diversity.
Bernhard Weßels is Professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin and Deputy Director of the Department “Democracy and Democratization” at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
