Accessing the Corridors of Power: Puzzles and Pathways to Understanding Minority Representation

Abstract

Three major constraints hinder cross-national comparisons: a lack of data on the immigrant origins of political candidates and elected representatives, incomplete public data on the immigrant origins of national populations or electorates, and cross-national differences in the definition of the minority population. This article addresses these methodological difficulties and the conceptual challenges of studying minority representation. Using public data for a number of West European countries and three ‘Anglo-settler’ immigration countries, it elaborates an index to evaluate representational equity and to compare women’s and minorities’ presence in national legislatures. The index reveals the limits of a ‘national models’ or simple ‘electoral rules’ framework. Future research should focus on dynamics of group mobilisation, ideological contexts and the recruitment practices of political parties.

Acknowledgements

I have greatly benefited from the feedback and suggestions of Colin Brown, Rafaela Dancygier, Ben Forest, Dirk Jacobs, Laure Michon, Karen Schönwälder, Constanza Sanhueza, Anja van Heelsum, the editors and reviewers of WEP, and participants at the ‘Social and Economic Foundations of Ethnic Minority Political Representation’ conference (University of Manchester, 2010), the workshop on ‘Immigrant Political Incorporation’ (University of Amsterdam 2010), and the ‘Political Incorporation of Immigrants’ conference (University of California, Berkeley, 2011). I thank the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek for financial support and the Institute for Ethnic and Migration Studies, University of Amsterdam, for institutional support during initial research on this paper.

Notes

1. Recent academic books on statistical representation include Andrews et al. (2008) and Bird et al. (2011). In France, a public think tank and a government commission used this technique to document ethnic and racial inequality in politics (Haut conseil à l’intégration 2009; Keslassy 2009).

2. In the United States, few view Obama as the first mixed-race president, or the first person with an immigrant parent elected to the White House in modern times. The framing as the first ‘black’ president underscores the symbolic importance of representation.

3. On a ‘European Obama’, see, for example, Keslassy (2009), Maxwell (2009) and Schönwälder (2009).

4. In 2007, Ahmed Aboutaleb was appointed mayor of Rotterdam. Aboutaleb, the son of an imam, was born in Morocco and immigrated to the Netherlands as an adolescent. The choice was dramatic since in 2002 residents of Rotterdam had offered significant support for Pim Fortuyn’s party, with its vocal stance against Islam.

5. Given the focus on immigrant-origin minorities, I do not include African Americans in the United States or the Aboriginal population of Australia, Canada and the United States.

6. This type of representation index is also used in Bloemraad (2006) and Andrews et al. (2008).

7. In some countries, citizens of certain nations have voting rights in national elections; such is the case for members of Commonwealth countries in the United Kingdom. In other countries, non-citizens are granted local voting rights after meeting certain residency requirements, but such rights are rarely extend to national elections.

8. The representation data rely primarily on research by country experts. In places where more than one source exists, studies were cross-referenced and, in the case of discrepancies, numbers were drawn from studies that most clearly articulated the methods used to count minority representatives. These methods usually relied on web-based or hard copy directories of representatives, and used a combination of birthplace, last name and visual identification, supplemented with knowledge of the country’s political scene. In a few cases, I collected data myself, verifying the data with country experts. Wherever I could, I calculated the population data in the denominator of the index to ensure a precise match between the categorisation used to count representatives and the minority population. When public-use statistical data were not readily available, I relied on studies of the minority population conducted by government agencies or country experts.

9. The US representation index is calculated for Latinos and Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders since these groups are most clearly immigrant-origin racial minorities. In 2008, 38 per cent of all self-reported Latinos were foreign-born; the proportion for Asian-origin residents was 67 per cent. In contrast, only 8 per cent of African Americans are foreign-born, a proportion equal to the percentage of immigrants in the white population. Compared to Latinos and Asian Americans, African Americans are much closer to reaching representational parity in Congress. Their representation index in the House of Representatives was 0.71 in 2007.

10. The value for the United States combines Latino and Asian American/Pacific Islander representation.

11. Why such dynamics carried less weight in Australia, also commonly identified as a strong multicultural country, is a topic for future research.

12. Recent elections in Canada have also led to more visible minorities within the ruling Conservative government; the UK Conservative party is reportedly in contact with the Canadian Conservative party to discuss how it can further increase minority representation.

13. Immigrant-origin minorities are also ‘in-between’ when it comes to the benefits and drawbacks of residential concentration in electoral systems. Unlike women, immigrant-origin minorities are usually concentrated in certain residential locations. However, unlike many historic ethnic minorities, they rarely constitute a majority in a region.

14. In general, minorities enjoy greater representation in local politics than at the national level, probably because the barriers and costs tend to be lower in local elections, immigrant communities are more concentrated in particular places, and success locally can legitimise a ‘move up’ to national politics. However, comparative representation indices for the Netherlands and Canada suggest that, at least in the early twenty-first century, national representation was more equitable at the national rather than local levels.

15. This might be because once a few minority pioneers succeed in getting elected, they can serve as inspiration or provoke others to offer an alternate ‘ethnic’ perspective (Bloemraad 2006). Political parties might also take the success of a pioneer representative as an indicator that a minority community is electorally ‘mature’ or that voters will not punish parties running minority candidates. If successful, other political parties might also run minority candidates in future elections.