Social Group Inequality and the Chain of Democratic Representation

Research has shown that some social groups are more likely to participate in the democratic process, more frequently descriptively represented in parliaments or governments, and more likely to see policymakers respond to their preferences. By now, we know that factors like affluency, gender, age, or migration status can result in patterns of unequal representation. Yet we still lack understanding of how and where unequal representation emerges across the democratic process, how it accumulates over time, and how it shapes democratic legitimacy. This thematic issue addresses this gap by studying representation as a multidimensional and procedural phenomenon, building on Hannah Pitkin’s (1967) classical forms of substantive, descriptive, and symbolic representation, on representative claims, and on the democratic chain of representation. 

Unequal representation may arise at different links in the chain, from preference formation and political mobilization to voting, government formation, agenda-setting, policy-making, and policy outputs. At each stage, institutional design, actor constellations, and societal inequalities may systematically advantage some groups while disadvantaging others. We focus on group-based inequalities in representation, including (but not limited to) class, gender, age, migration background, ethnicity, and intersecting identities. A core premise of the issue is that different social groups experience distinct forms of representational inequality and at different points in the chain, e.g., being descriptively underrepresented in elected office, symbolically excluded from political discourse, or substantively marginalized in policy outputs. We also aim to uncover the cumulative nature of unequal representation: Are some groups particularly at risk of accumulating disadvantages across the representative process? We invite contributions that focus on group differences in representation at a specific stage, compare social group inequality across forms or stages of representation, and/or analyse how unequal representation accumulates across the democratic chain.

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