Representing the People

A Survey Among Members of Statewide and Substate Parliaments

Edited by Kris Deschouwer and Sam Depauw

Comparative Politics

Includes interviews from over 70 parliamentary assemblies from 15 countries
Based on brand-new original survey data

Representing the People

A Survey Among Members of Statewide and Substate Parliaments

Edited by Kris Deschouwer and Sam Depauw

Description

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.

Representing the People

A Survey Among Members of Statewide and Substate Parliaments

Edited by Kris Deschouwer and Sam Depauw

Comparative Politics

1:Representing the People in Parliaments, Kris Deschouwer, Sam Depauw, and Audrey André
2:Representational Roles, Agnieszka Dudzi?ska, Corentin Poyet, Olivier Costa, and Bernhard Weßels
3:The Representation and Old and New Groups, Daniele Caramani, Karen Celis, and Bram Wauters
4:From Agency to Institutions and Back: Comparing Legislators' Acting on on Behalf of Women in Parliamentary Democracies, Silvia Erzeel, Didier Caluwaerts, and Karen Celis
5:Electoral Rules and Legislators' Personal Vote-Seeking, Audrey André, André Freire, and Zsófia Papp
6:Agreement, Loyalty and Discipline; A Sequential Approach to Party Unity, Cynthia M.C. van Vonno, Reut Itzkovitch Malka, Sam Depauw, Reuven Y. Hazan, and Rudy B. Andeweg
7:MPs' inter-party Contacts and the Operation of Party Democracy, Marcelo Jenny, Wolfgang C. Müller, Jonathan Bradbury, Nikolaus Eder, and Gabriella llonszki
8:Legislators' Constituency Orientation, Audrey André, Michael Gallagher ,and Giulia Sandri
9:Do the Media Set the Agenda of Parliament or is it the Other Way Around? Agenda Interactions Between MPs and Mass Media, Tor Midtbø, Stefaan Walgrave, Peter Van Aelst, and Dag Arne Christensen
10:Career Patterns in Multilevel Systems, Jean-Benoit Pilet, Filippo Tronconi, Pablo Onate, and Luca Verzichelli
11:The Institutional Constraints of Representation, Kris Deschouwer and Sam Depauw
Appendix

Representing the People

A Survey Among Members of Statewide and Substate Parliaments

Edited by Kris Deschouwer and Sam Depauw

Comparative Politics

Author Information

Edited by Kris Deschouwer, Research Professor and Head of the Department of Political Science, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and Sam Depauw, Assistant Professor and Post-doctoral Researcher, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Kris Deschouwer's research has focussed on political parties, elections, and the governance of divided societies. He is the central co-ordinator of the research programme PartiRep on political participation and representation. One of the projects of this PartiRep programme was the survey among members of parliament on which this book is based. He is Professor of Politics at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

Sam Depauw's research concentrates on legislative and electoral studies. He has published extensively on political representation and party discipline in West European Politics, the Journal of Legislative Studies, Acta Politica, and Party Politics. He is Assistant Professor and Post-doctoral Researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

Contributors:

Rudy Andeweg is Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Leiden
Audrey André is a Post-doctoral Researcher at the Department of Political Science of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Jonathan Bradbury is Reader in Politics and Head of the Department of Political and Cultural Studies at Swansea University.
Didier Caluwaerts is a Post-doctoral Researcher at the Department of Political Science of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Daniele Caramani is Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of St. Gallen.
Karen Celis is Research Professor at Department of Political Science of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Dag Arne Christensen is a Researcher at the Stein Rokkan Centre for Social Studies at the University of Bergen.
Olivier Costa Senior Research Fellow at CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique), Centre Emile Durkheim, Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Bordeaux, University of Bordeaux (France)
Sam Depauw is Assistant Professor and Postdoctoral Researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
Kris Deschouwer is Research Professor of Politics at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
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 a Post-doctoral Researcher at the Department of Political Science of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel
André Freire is Professor at the Centre for Research and Studies in Socioology at the Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL)
Michael Gallagher is Professor at the Department of Political Science of Trinity College Dublin
Reuven Hazan is Professor in the Political Science Department of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem
Gabriela Ilonszki is Professor of Political Science at Corvinus University in Budapest
Marcelo Jenny is a Post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Government of the University of Vienna
Reut Izkovitch Malka is a Researcher in the Political Science Department of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem
Tor Midtbø is Professor in the Department of Comparative Politics of the University of Bergen
Pablo Onate is Professor of Political Science at the University of Valencia.
Wolfgang C. Müller is Professor of Political Science in at the Department of Government of the University of Vienna
Zsofia Papp is a Research Fellow in the Department of Political Behaviour of the Hungarian Academy of Science
Jean-Benoit Pilet is Director of Cevipol Research Center and Professor in Political Science at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB).
Giulia Sandri is a Post-doctoral Researcher at the Cevipol research of the Université Libre de Bruxelles
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
Luca Verzichelli is Professor of Political Science at the University of Siena.
Cynthia van Vonno is a Researcher in the Department of Political Science of the University of Leiden
Stefaan Walgrave is Professor of Political Science at the University of Antwerp.
Bernhard Wessels is Deputy director of the Research Unit "Democracy: Structures, Performance, Challenges" at the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB)
Bram Wauters is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Business Administration and Public Management (University College Ghent - Ghent University, Belgium).