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Presence, Representation, and Impact: How Minority MPs Affect Policy Outcomes
Author(s) -
Hänni Miriam
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
legislative studies quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.728
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1939-9162
pISSN - 0362-9805
DOI - 10.1111/lsq.12142
Subject(s) - legislature , affect (linguistics) , representation (politics) , leverage (statistics) , parliament , ethnic group , argument (complex analysis) , political science , government (linguistics) , public economics , public administration , economics , psychology , politics , law , medicine , computer science , linguistics , philosophy , communication , machine learning
Many ethnic minorities demand (adequate) descriptive representation in parliament because they expect it to affect the responsiveness of governments towards their demands. However, the mechanism of how minority representatives affect policy outcomes remains unclear. I argue that descriptive representation mainly has an effect if representatives possess additional leverage to influence policy outcomes. The argument is tested with hierarchical time‐series models from 88 minority groups in 47 countries multiethnic democracies. The analysis shows that descriptive representatives are most successful in influencing policy outcomes if they are included in the government, the legislature is powerful, and a group is comparatively large.