Karen Celis
Biographic Data
| ID | 4123343 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Karen Celis |
| GIVEN NAMES | Karen |
| FAMILY NAME | Celis |
| SIGNATURE | CELIS K |
| AFFILIATIONS | Vrije Universiteit Brussel |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7579-9107 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 52 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1273 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 51 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 19 |
De-democratising political representation: The impact of violence against politicians
Violence against politicians (VAP) is on the rise. Complementing extant scholarship on the impact of violence on politicians, this article shifts focus to its effects on the democratic quality of political representation. Based on interview data ( N = 24) with politicians in Belgium, we identify three mechanisms – silencing, invisibilising and exiting – that are triggered by VAP and that reduce the democratic quality of representation by making i…
From principle to practice: Institutionalizing intersectionality in a women’s umbrella organization – a case study on the Flemish Women’s Council
This article examines how intersectionality is articulated and enacted within a typical women’s umbrella organization – the Flemish Women’s Council – and what facilitates or hinders that process. Using semi-structured interviews with current and former staff members, we take an inductive approach that centres interviewees’ own explanations of what enables or constrains intersectional practice within the council. We find broad rhetorical endorseme…
Gender differences in politicians’ exposure to threats, intimidation and harassment: Evidence from Belgium
Political representation from the people’s perspective: The problem-solving principal–agent partnership
Combining key elements of classical and constructivist approaches to representation, this article suggests a novel reconceptualisation of political representation. Developed through participatory agency research with people in socio-economically difficult situations and anchored in people’s lived experiences and sense-making processes, the representative relationship is redefined as a pragmatic and solution-oriented partnership between representa…
Gender quota, and intersectional presence and power: The politics of prototypicality
While electoral gender quota have successfully increased the numerical presence of women in many parliaments worldwide, questions remain about who gains access and who remains excluded. Furthermore, most research continues to focus on gender alone, overlooking how intersecting identities, such as migration background, education, and age, shape unequal opportunities for political participation and power. This study offers an intersectional and lon…
Feminist Democratic Design and the Redress of Intersectional Representational Problematics
If one were to write the history of representation from an intersectional perspective, it would read as a veritable comedy of errors. A story, in short of inclusion and exclusion, privileging and marginalization, and of good, mis-, poor, and non-representation. No facet of politics is untouched by these dynamics – whether civil society or formal political participation, political recruitment and leadership, or policy and legislation (Siow 2023
Women’s Good Political Representation
In this 'state of the art' mapping the major contours of three decades of politics and gender analysis, Celis and Childs re-make the case for women's group representation.Drawing on their recent book, Feminist Democratic Representation (2020), they call for rejecting traditional disaggregated conceptions of representation derived from Hanna Pitkin (1967) in favour of a procedural-plus approach.They hold that formal representational processes can …
From women’s presence to feminist representation: Second-generation design for women’s group representation
Feminist democratic representation is a new design for women’s group representation in electoral politics. We build on the design principles and practices of the 1990s’ presence theorists, who conceived of political inclusion as the presence of descriptive representatives and advocated for gender quota. Our second-generation design foregrounds women’s ideological and intersectional heterogeneity, and details a representative process that enacts t…
Resentment and Coping With the Democratic Dilemma
Resentment is a complex, multi-layered emotion, within which perceptions of unfairness and feelings of anger are central. When linked to politics, it has predominantly been associated with the alleged “crisis of representative democracy” and populism. However, recent studies have shown that resentment can intervene positively in people’s relations to politics and political institutions by facilitating certain types of political participation (Cap…
Intersectional candidate nomination: How district and party factors shape the inclusion of ethnic minority men and women in Brussels
Feminist Democratic Representation: Theory, Practice, and Institutional Design
When are women well represented, politically speaking? The popular consensus has been, for some time, when descriptive representatives put women’s issues and feminist interests on the political agenda. Today, such certainty has been well and truly shaken; differences among women—especially how they conceive of their “interests”—is said to fatally undermine the principle and practice of women’s group representation. There has been a serious loss o…
Farewell reflections from the founding editors
Power struggles: Gender equality in political representation
Gender inequality in political representation remains despite widespread and long-standing feminist campaigns for representative equality. This article suggests that in order to increase our understanding of why men’s over-representation in politics persists, gender equality in descriptive and substantive representation should be analysed as power struggles. Power is operationalised as positional power and active power, and struggle as the intera…
Politics and gender: Rocking political science and creating new horizons
Contemporary crises in European politics: Gender equality+ under threat
Conservatism and Women's Political Representation
Conservative political actors appear rather troubling for many gender and politics scholars and feminist activists. What should we make of their claims to represent women? How should we best understand their actions? This article, based on a critical rereading of the empirical literature and informed by contemporary representation theory, develops a new conceptual framework for assessing the quality of women's substantive representation by conser…
Introduction to Special Issue on Gender and Conservatism
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Whose equality? Measuring group representation
Presence, of bodies and ideas, is often taken as the primary indicator of political equality and, hence, democratic health. Intersectionality and constructivism question the validity of measuring presence. Turning theory into practice, we propose a comparative reflexive design guided by two research questions: (1) Who are the groups? and (2) What are their problems? This reveals both prototypical and non-prototypical groups and interests, from th…
Good Representatives and Good Representation
This article should be read as an ongoing dialogue between Suzanne Dovi and ourselves about a common concern: the quality of representation in general and, in particular, the good substantive representation for women (SRW). We strongly share Dovi’s concern that democratic institutions and processes can favor those in positions of power and can be used to dominate and oppress. We also are persuaded that for democracy to function well, a specific t…
The Complementarity Advantage: Parties, Representativeness and Newcomers’ Access to Power
Why have ethnic minority women—a group experiencing ‘double barriers’ in society and politics—gained inroads into formal politics in Belgium more quickly than ethnic minority men? Our qualitative analysis of candidate selection shows that political parties prefer ethnic minority women candidates because their ‘intersectional identity mix’ is maximally complementary to groups embodied by the incumbents. It enables party selectors to maximise the r…
Other identities in ethnofederations: Women’s and sexual minorities’ advocacy in Belgium
This article considers the experience of the impact of ethnofederations on social identities that cut across such an ethnic divide. Based on a series of in-depth interviews focusing on the structure and operation of women’s and lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender movement organizations in Belgium, we demonstrate that these groups experience constraints of the dominant ethno-linguistic identity. These results in a ‘federalism disadvantage’ for…
Mainstreaming disability in policies: The Flemish experience
Although research on gender mainstreaming (GM) is extensive, literature on disability mainstreaming (DM) is scarce. This article builds on the experience of GM to explore the conditions affecting DM, focusing on the first Flemish policy cycle of DM (2010–2014) in two policy domains: employment and education. We found no substantive difference in the conditions necessary for the successful implementation of DM compared with that of GM. Also, devel…
Power, privilege and disadvantage: Intersectionality theory and political representation
This article critically reviews the extant literature on social group representation and clarifies the advantages of intersectionality theory for studying political representation. It argues that the merit of intersectionality theory can be found in its ontology of power. Intersectionality theory is founded on a relational conception of political power that locates the constitution of power relations within social interactions, such as political …
Regendering party politics: An introduction
Political parties, ideology and the substantive representation of women
The recent finding that right-wing parties increasingly make efforts to integrate women’s concerns raises questions as to whether ideology still counts as a reliable indicator for women’s substantive representation and how different party contexts shape opportunities for the articulation of women’s interests. This article therefore critically reassesses how ideology defines the opportunities for women’s substantive representation, based on a comp…
Rethinking Women's Substantive Representation
This article seeks to rethink how scholars have traditionally studied women's substantive representation. It outlines a framework that aims to replace questions like ‘Do women represent women?’ with ones like ‘Who claims to act for women?’ and ‘Where, how, and why does the substantive representation of women occur?’ Arguing that representation occurs both inside and outside legislative arenas, the article calls attention to the wide range of acto…
The Substantive Representation of Women: What to Do with Conservative Claims
Recent developments in the gender and politics literature suggest that studying the substantive representation of women is much more complicated than counting the number of women present in a particular political institution and judging the actions of women representatives against a ‘feminist’ shopping list of demands. In brief, the substantive representation of women is no longer considered to be restricted to what happens in our parliaments or …
Constituting Women's Interests through Representative Claims
A recent wave of gender and politics research revisits the concept of “women's interests,” opening up new ways of thinking about who can articulate these interests and how to avoid essentialism in empirical analysis on women's substantive representation. This article seeks to advance these debates by integrating them with new work on political theory noting that speaking “for” a group also entails speaking “about” a group. Resolving some of the t…
Substantive Representation of Women: The Representation of Women's Interests and the Impact of Descriptive Representation in the Belgian Parliament (1900–1979)
Based on empirical data, speeches from the budget debates of the Belgian Lower House (1900-1979), this article explores the relationship between descriptive and substantive representation of women. Tile article concludes that women members of Parliament (MPs) were women's most fervent representatives and contributed in a unique way to how women were represented; they stretched tile borders of the political definition of women's interests and made…
Introduction: The Descriptive and Substantive Representation of Women: New Directions
Journal Article Introduction: The Descriptive and Substantive Representation of Women: New Directions Get access Karen Celis, Karen Celis Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Sarah Childs Sarah Childs Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Parliamentary Affairs, Volume 61, Issue 3, July 2008, Pages 419–425, https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsn006 Published: 01 March 2008
Quotas and intersectionality: Ethnicity and gender in candidate selection
Gender equality is not fully realised when it is restricted to ethnic majority men and women. This article examines how gender quotas as a form of equality policy affect ethnic minority groups, in particular, the gender balance among ethnic minority candidates for political office. Our analysis focuses on the selection of ethnic minority candidates in Belgium, where legally binding quotas exist, and in the Netherlands, where they do not. Drawing …
Political parties, ideology and the substantive representation of women
The recent finding that right-wing parties increasingly make efforts to integrate women’s concerns raises questions as to whether ideology still counts as a reliable indicator for women’s substantive representation and how different party contexts shape opportunities for the articulation of women’s interests. This article therefore critically reassesses how ideology defines the opportunities for women’s substantive representation, based on a comp…
The Complementarity Advantage: Parties, Representativeness and Newcomers’ Access to Power
Why have ethnic minority women—a group experiencing ‘double barriers’ in society and politics—gained inroads into formal politics in Belgium more quickly than ethnic minority men? Our qualitative analysis of candidate selection shows that political parties prefer ethnic minority women candidates because their ‘intersectional identity mix’ is maximally complementary to groups embodied by the incumbents. It enables party selectors to maximise the r…
Beyond the Usual Suspects: Non-Left, Male and Non-Feminist MPs and the Substantive Representation of Women
The focus on female MPs and leftist and feminist issues in traditional studies of women's substantive representation has supported the overall conclusion that women, feminists and left-wing parties promote women's interests in parliament. But our analysis of the ‘critical actors’ in women's substantive representation in 10 European countries confirms this finding only to a certain extent. Our inductive research design reveals an important group o…
Sowing the Seeds of Its Own Failure: Implementing the Concept of Gender Mainstreaming
Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society - Volume 18, Number 4, Winter 2011
The Rise of Gender Quota Laws: Expanding the Spectrum of Determinants for Electoral Reform
The seminal work of Arend Lijphart, Electoral Systems and Party Systems (1994), limits the definition of electoral reforms to those affecting electoral formulas, district magnitudes, assembly size, or electoral thresholds. Following this definition, studies on electoral reform have put political parties and their motivations at centre stage. Expanding the definition of electoral reform, however, requires a move beyond parties to explore the multi…
Substantive Representation of Women (and Improving it): What it is and should be About
Power, privilege and disadvantage: Intersectionality theory and political representation
This article critically reviews the extant literature on social group representation and clarifies the advantages of intersectionality theory for studying political representation. It argues that the merit of intersectionality theory can be found in its ontology of power. Intersectionality theory is founded on a relational conception of political power that locates the constitution of power relations within social interactions, such as political …
Studying Women's Substantive Representation in Legislatures: When Representative Acts, Contexts and Women's Interests Become Important
The lack of consensus regarding what the substantive representation of women means involves far reaching consequences for empirical research. This article illustrates some consequences of specific operationalisations of ‘the substantive representation of women’. It shows that, in order to understand the substantive representation of women, as it is performed by multiple representatives, empirical research needs to encompass a broad range of repre…
Conservatism and Women's Political Representation
Conservative political actors appear rather troubling for many gender and politics scholars and feminist activists. What should we make of their claims to represent women? How should we best understand their actions? This article, based on a critical rereading of the empirical literature and informed by contemporary representation theory, develops a new conceptual framework for assessing the quality of women's substantive representation by conser…
On Substantive Representation, Diversity, and Responsiveness
When are “the people”—with all its different groups—represented? It is commonly accepted that democratic representation implies that no significant parts of the population are excluded from the right to vote or to stand for election and, similarly, that parliaments and even governments should, to a certain extent, mirror the represented and governed population. If authorization and accountability indicate the democratic quality of the formal dime…
Intersectional Puzzles: Understanding Inclusion and Equality in Political Recruitment
Feminist scholars have developed a solid research agenda on gender equality in politics. This scholarship is built on the conviction that equitable representation of men and women is fundamental to the functioning of representative democracies (Mansbridge 1999; Norris and Lovenduski 1995). In order to comply with the intersectional research paradigm, gender and politics scholars have increasingly focused on other discriminatory mechanisms and how…
Whose equality? Measuring group representation
Presence, of bodies and ideas, is often taken as the primary indicator of political equality and, hence, democratic health. Intersectionality and constructivism question the validity of measuring presence. Turning theory into practice, we propose a comparative reflexive design guided by two research questions: (1) Who are the groups? and (2) What are their problems? This reveals both prototypical and non-prototypical groups and interests, from th…
Gender and Ethnicity: Intersectionality and the Politics of Group Representation in the Low Countries
This article studies how Belgian and Dutch parties regulate demands for representation by women and ethnic minorities, and how this influences the representation of intersectional groups. We argue that demands for representation by multiple groups bring competition into play. Ethnic minorities have found it particularly difficult to integrate into electoral politics in Belgium where parties maintain a stricter hierarchy of gender over ethnicity. …
Social Movement Organizations and Changing State Architectures: Comparing Women's Movement Organizing in Flanders and Scotland
This article analyzes the impact of restructuring processes on the organizational structure and lobbying strategies of women's movement organizations (WMOs) in Belgium (Flanders) and the UK (Scotland). We argue that devolution/federalization and the resultant creation of new, intermediary levels of governance offers a devolution/federalism advantage to WMOs. Multilevel governance multiplies access points, allowing for accumulation of funds, limit…
Pinning the Butterfly: Women, Blue-Collar and Ethnic Minority MPs vis-à-vis Parliamentary Norms and the Parliamentary Role of the Group Representative
This article deals with the apparent contradiction between, on the one hand, parliaments as envisaged by neo-institutionalists as stable and stabilising institutions and, on the other hand, the societal desire to diversify political personnel and to open up political decision making processes to include group interests that were under-represented in the past. To answer the question whether and to what extent norms have changed to embrace diversit…
Introduction to Special Issue on Gender and Conservatism
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Representativity in times of diversity: The political representation of women
Specialised Parliamentary Bodies and the Quality of Women's Substantive Representation: A Comparative Analysis of Belgium, United Kingdom and New Zealand
This comparative analysis investigates formal parliamentary bodies ‘for women’ and informal networks and parliamentary groups (‘gender equality bodies’). These are evaluated to determine the extent to which they contribute to a ‘good’ collective process of women's substantive representation. Focusing on three countries, Belgium, the United Kingdom (UK) and New Zealand (NZ), we explore which venues are responsive to women and which are inclusive o…
Resentment and Coping With the Democratic Dilemma
Resentment is a complex, multi-layered emotion, within which perceptions of unfairness and feelings of anger are central. When linked to politics, it has predominantly been associated with the alleged “crisis of representative democracy” and populism. However, recent studies have shown that resentment can intervene positively in people’s relations to politics and political institutions by facilitating certain types of political participation (Cap…
Substantive Representation of Women: The Representation of Women's Interests and the Impact of Descriptive Representation in the Belgian Parliament (1900–1979)
Based on empirical data, speeches from the budget debates of the Belgian Lower House (1900-1979), this article explores the relationship between descriptive and substantive representation of women. Tile article concludes that women members of Parliament (MPs) were women's most fervent representatives and contributed in a unique way to how women were represented; they stretched tile borders of the political definition of women's interests and made…
State Feminism and Women’s Movements in Belgium: Complex Patterns in a Multilevel System
In the aftermath of the Second World War Belgium developed a welfare system with extensive unemployment allowances, social security, pension rights, accessible health and care infrastructure. Notwithstanding a rather conservative gender regime, fed by the Catholic tradition and its impact on politics, the participation of women in the labour market is higher than in the neighbouring countries like Germany or the Netherlands. A decrease in the num…
Rethinking Women's Substantive Representation
This article seeks to rethink how scholars have traditionally studied women's substantive representation. It outlines a framework that aims to replace questions like ‘Do women represent women?’ with ones like ‘Who claims to act for women?’ and ‘Where, how, and why does the substantive representation of women occur?’ Arguing that representation occurs both inside and outside legislative arenas, the article calls attention to the wide range of acto…
Studying Women's Substantive Representation in Legislatures: When Representative Acts, Contexts and Women's Interests Become Important
The lack of consensus regarding what the substantive representation of women means involves far reaching consequences for empirical research. This article illustrates some consequences of specific operationalisations of ‘the substantive representation of women’. It shows that, in order to understand the substantive representation of women, as it is performed by multiple representatives, empirical research needs to encompass a broad range of repre…
Introduction: The Descriptive and Substantive Representation of Women: New Directions
Journal Article Introduction: The Descriptive and Substantive Representation of Women: New Directions Get access Karen Celis, Karen Celis Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Sarah Childs Sarah Childs Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Parliamentary Affairs, Volume 61, Issue 3, July 2008, Pages 419–425, https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsn006 Published: 01 March 2008
Substantive Representation of Women (and Improving it): What it is and should be About
Pinning the Butterfly: Women, Blue-Collar and Ethnic Minority MPs vis-à-vis Parliamentary Norms and the Parliamentary Role of the Group Representative
This article deals with the apparent contradiction between, on the one hand, parliaments as envisaged by neo-institutionalists as stable and stabilising institutions and, on the other hand, the societal desire to diversify political personnel and to open up political decision making processes to include group interests that were under-represented in the past. To answer the question whether and to what extent norms have changed to embrace diversit…
Convergence and Divergence: The Federalization of Belgian Equality Policies
The development of an asymmetrical federal structure profoundly changed the institutional setting for Belgian gender equality policies. This contribution assesses the influence of this process on the development of the Belgian women's policy agencies and its gender equality policies. It argues that while the characteristics of the Belgian federal system—its asymmetrical structure and dual, centrifugal nature—stimulate the development of diverging…
Sowing the Seeds of Its Own Failure: Implementing the Concept of Gender Mainstreaming
Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society - Volume 18, Number 4, Winter 2011
The Rise of Gender Quota Laws: Expanding the Spectrum of Determinants for Electoral Reform
The seminal work of Arend Lijphart, Electoral Systems and Party Systems (1994), limits the definition of electoral reforms to those affecting electoral formulas, district magnitudes, assembly size, or electoral thresholds. Following this definition, studies on electoral reform have put political parties and their motivations at centre stage. Expanding the definition of electoral reform, however, requires a move beyond parties to explore the multi…
On Substantive Representation, Diversity, and Responsiveness
When are “the people”—with all its different groups—represented? It is commonly accepted that democratic representation implies that no significant parts of the population are excluded from the right to vote or to stand for election and, similarly, that parliaments and even governments should, to a certain extent, mirror the represented and governed population. If authorization and accountability indicate the democratic quality of the formal dime…
The Substantive Representation of Women: What to Do with Conservative Claims
Recent developments in the gender and politics literature suggest that studying the substantive representation of women is much more complicated than counting the number of women present in a particular political institution and judging the actions of women representatives against a ‘feminist’ shopping list of demands. In brief, the substantive representation of women is no longer considered to be restricted to what happens in our parliaments or …
Introduction: Gender and Politics: A Gendered World, a Gendered Discipline
This article discusses the gendered nature of politics (as practice) and political science (as an academic discipline). It studies the sex-typing characteristic of most institutions in the modern world and describes how gender shapes the ways people organize, think, and know about the world. The article then identifies the changes that have occurred in politics and political science over the last hundred years and examines the politics and gender…
The Oxford handbook of gender and politics
"As a field of scholarship, gender and politics has exploded over the last fifty years and is now global, institutionalized, and ever expanding. The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Politics brings to political science an accessible and comprehensive overview of the key contributions of gender scholars to the study of politics and shows how these contributions produce a richer understanding of polities and societies. Like the field it represents, th…
Left, right, left. The influence of party ideology on the political representation of ethnic minorities in Belgium
The scholarly literature on ethnic minority representation often points to the ‘political opportunity structure’ – particularly that of political parties – to explain the prevalence of ethnic minorities in elected politics. Informed by the literature on women in politics, this article examines how the ideology of political parties affects the representation of ethnic minorities. The article is based on a qualitative case study of two major Belgia…
Representative claims and beyond: A study of Muslim women's inclusion in the Flemish headscarf debate
In this article, we take a stand against the relativism of contemporary “claim-based” approaches to the study of the substantive representation of women (SRW), and argue for on-going evaluation of the responsiveness of actors’ claims to speak for women. We advance the concept of responsiveness as a criterion for evaluating the quality of SRW. We define such quality in a relational manner; implying the inclusion of women's judgment in the represen…
Representativity in times of diversity: The political representation of women
Gender and Ethnicity: Intersectionality and the Politics of Group Representation in the Low Countries
This article studies how Belgian and Dutch parties regulate demands for representation by women and ethnic minorities, and how this influences the representation of intersectional groups. We argue that demands for representation by multiple groups bring competition into play. Ethnic minorities have found it particularly difficult to integrate into electoral politics in Belgium where parties maintain a stricter hierarchy of gender over ethnicity. …
Social Movement Organizations and Changing State Architectures: Comparing Women's Movement Organizing in Flanders and Scotland
This article analyzes the impact of restructuring processes on the organizational structure and lobbying strategies of women's movement organizations (WMOs) in Belgium (Flanders) and the UK (Scotland). We argue that devolution/federalization and the resultant creation of new, intermediary levels of governance offers a devolution/federalism advantage to WMOs. Multilevel governance multiplies access points, allowing for accumulation of funds, limit…
Visible Ethnic Minorities in Local Political Parties: A Case Study of Two Belgian Cities (Antwerp and Ghent)
The central concern of this article is the extent of political party commitments to the inclusion of ethnic minorities. The study of two Belgian cities and four parties shows a marked discrepancy between the efforts to include ethnic minority candidates and their level of inclusion in the local party structures as individual members, as party officials or as a party subdivision. A possible explanation is that political parties only promote the re…
Constituting Women's Interests through Representative Claims
A recent wave of gender and politics research revisits the concept of “women's interests,” opening up new ways of thinking about who can articulate these interests and how to avoid essentialism in empirical analysis on women's substantive representation. This article seeks to advance these debates by integrating them with new work on political theory noting that speaking “for” a group also entails speaking “about” a group. Resolving some of the t…
Quotas and intersectionality: Ethnicity and gender in candidate selection
Gender equality is not fully realised when it is restricted to ethnic majority men and women. This article examines how gender quotas as a form of equality policy affect ethnic minority groups, in particular, the gender balance among ethnic minority candidates for political office. Our analysis focuses on the selection of ethnic minority candidates in Belgium, where legally binding quotas exist, and in the Netherlands, where they do not. Drawing …
Cleavage, Ideology and Identity. Explaining the Linkage between Representatives and Interest Groups
This article critically evaluates explanatory theories about how representatives, and more specifically members of parliament (MPs), connect with interest groups. Central to this are the crucial questions of whether these contacts are party-based or identity-based. Our analysis includes five kinds of groups: two traditional cleavage-based groups (blue-collar workers and employers) with well-established contacts between parties (respectively, soci…
Intersectional Puzzles: Understanding Inclusion and Equality in Political Recruitment
Feminist scholars have developed a solid research agenda on gender equality in politics. This scholarship is built on the conviction that equitable representation of men and women is fundamental to the functioning of representative democracies (Mansbridge 1999; Norris and Lovenduski 1995). In order to comply with the intersectional research paradigm, gender and politics scholars have increasingly focused on other discriminatory mechanisms and how…
The Indirectness of Political Representation: A Blessing or a Concern? A Study of the Conceptions of Members of the Flemish Regional Parliament
This article situates itself within ongoing scholarly debates on the conditions of democratic representation. It, more precisely, posits traditional concerns for the ‘indirectness’ of political representation—that is the possibility for citizens' alienation and exclusion from decision-making—against contemporary accounts that conceive of such ‘indirectness’ as quintessential to democracy; mobilising citizens' judgement and, potentially, drawing t…
Gender Politics and Representation (46 works) · Political science (46 works) · Politics (46 works) · Law (45 works) · Sociology (43 works) · Law (40 works) · Gender Studies (32 works) · Gender Studies (29 works) · Representation (politics (24 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (19 works)