Intersectional Group Representation: A New Inductive Approach

It is a basic axiom in representation studies to understand the polis in terms of groups – geographically determined, or by ideology, class, gender, age, ethnicity, …- and representation of the polis by consequence as a process that also occurs group-wise. Political scientists are concerned with the composition of electoral lists, party cadres, executives and representative assemblies in terms of, for instance, geographical spread or ethnic background. Concerning substantive representation, they analyze whether and to which extend, for instance, women’s issues result in policy outcomes or whether policy congruence varies according to class. At a general level such research questions deal with the quality of democratic representation – it is generally accepted that no meaningful entity should be systematically excluded from processes of representation (descriptive nor substantive).
Acknowledging intersectional identities poses a fundamental problem for our understanding of how representation works and should work in that it questions the groups that we have accepted to be the structuring principle of politics. The concept of intersectionality implies amongst other things that the identity of a person is formed by a specific intersection and interaction of a variety of identities such as gender, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation etc. The broad categories that we are used to apply in political and policy contexts have become acknowledged to be not fine grained enough to understand the complexity of society. Our analysis of gender balance in political institutions and the substantive representation of women’s interests indeed actually do not inform us about the extent to which, for instance, older Roma women are represented. On the other hand it is not feasible nor does it make sense to conduct the same type of representation studies as we used to conduct for each and every intersectional subgroup imaginable.
This paper explores a possible solution to this ‘intersectionality problem’. It discusses the potential of taking symbolic representation as the starting point of studies on other dimensions of representation, i.e. descriptive and substantive representation. Symbolic representation refers to citizens feeling represented. It is not as much researched and it is furthermore often assumed to be the by-product of other dimensions of representation, i.e. when someone or a group is well represented in descriptive (by having representative present that look like them) and substantive terms (because their interests are included in the decision-making process) then the person or the group will also feel well represented. This paper will explore the pros and cons of taking symbolic representation as the starting point of representation studies. The major advantage lies in the inductive way the represented are able to determine by whom and by which political debates and discourses they feel represented thereby avoiding the use of a priori defined groups. A main obstacle might lie in the impossibility to conduct large-n studies on representation.