Political representation

Abstract

Feminist empirical and theoretical work on representation has largely proceeded along separate paths.1 The RNGS project offers a corrective, as it permits the simultaneous consideration of the effects of formal and informal channels of participation, patterns of women's presence in decision-making arenas, movement activities, and policy outcomes. Thus, it provides a rich source of data that can be analyzed to illuminate both substantive and descriptive representation, a distinction that is central to current feminist debates. We find evidence that feminists should not give up on presence, that women's substantive and descriptive representation are linked through the critical acts of women legislators and agency officials. Our findings challenge various aspects of previous research on women's representation, four of which are contentious. First, they raise questions about the relationships between descriptive (procedural) and substantive representation. Second, they suggest a model of effective policy advocacy that does not quite correspond to the idea of the policy triangles of movement, agency, and legislature, or of autonomous and integrated women's movements and agency or legislature. Third, they suggest that the debate over critical mass-critical actor-critical acts should be revisited and respec-ified. Fourth, they raise important questions about accountability. In this chapter, we first examine the varying dimensions of political representation found in recent feminist research and summarize these concerns into a series of nine researchable questions. Second, we show how we draw on RNGS concepts and data in an attempt to refine and provide initial answers to these questions. Third, we use the RNGS data to answer the questions. We conclude with a discussion of the relationships between different kinds of representation and different actors in contemporary policy debates. © 2010 by Temple University Press. All rights reserved.