The Effects of Women's Descriptive Representation on Government Behavior

Author(s):  
Jonathan Homola
Author(s):  
Mark Bovens ◽  
Anchrit Wille

How can we remedy some of the negative effects of diploma democracy? First, we discuss the rise of nationalist parties. They have forced the mainstream political parties to pay more attention to the negative effects of immigration, globalization, and European unification. Next we discuss strategies to mitigate the dominance of the well-educated in politics. We start with remedies that address differences in political skills and knowledge. Then we discuss the deliberative arenas. Many democratic reforms contain an implicit bias towards the well-educated. A more realistic citizenship model is required. This can be achieved by bringing the ballot back in, for example, by merging deliberative and more direct forms of democracy through deliberative polling, corrective referendums, and more compulsory voting. The chapter ends with a discussion of ways to make the political elites more inclusive and responsive, such as descriptive representation, sortition, and plebiscitary elements.


Author(s):  
Semra Sevi

Abstract Who runs and is elected is one of the most fundamental questions in political science as it pertains to the issue of descriptive representation. Despite the importance of this issue, until recently there were no longitudinal datasets on candidates in Canadian elections. This article presents two novel datasets including information on all candidates who ran in Canadian federal and Ontario provincial elections from 1867 to 2019. I present how these data were collected and how they can be used to gain new insights. I expect these data will be a valuable resource to Canadian political scientists for both research and teaching purposes.


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