Wednesday, July 12, 2017
Gilbert Scott Building - Room 134 (University of Glasgow)
There is a fundamental tension in contemporary democracy: the uneasy place of gender and ethnicity in political representation. Even as societies meticulously track politicians’ gender and ethnicity, minority politicians and their parties reject the idea that parliamentarians should only represent “those who are like them". This paper analyzes the tension between the simultaneous embrace and rejection of personal identification, asking when and why do visible minority Members of Parliament (MPs) promote group identities? Historically, the Netherlands adopted a multicultural politics, while being a hotbed of political feminism. But the eventual backlash against multiculturalism and feminism revealed the profound uneasiness with group representation. Building on established theories of political representation and intersectionality this paper analyzes how group representation has been vexing parties and politicians, and which strategies they have employed in response. Analyzing the experiences of visible minority MPs since 1986, when the first visible minority representative took office, the paper develops the distinction between passive and active representation. The evolution over time and differences between groups show that identities are not something politicians simply have, like a birthday. Instead, they mold their identity strategically depending on their political role, the expectations of the party or the political climate. Drawing on 40 in-depth interviews with visible minority MPs I develop a theoretical framework that approaches gender and ethnic identities and different dimensions of representation as a flexible and context-dependent spectrum.
