Representation in European National Parliaments: The Role of the Electoral System Type

1. Representation in European National Parliaments: The Role of the Electoral System Type Daniel Stockemer Inclusion and Exclusion Conference, Ottawa, Canada April 26, 2012

2. Research Question • Research Topic: An evaluation of the inclusiveness and exclusiveness in terms of representation of various European national parliamentary assemblies that operate under various electoral system types • H 1): I hypothesize that a more proportional electoral system type triggers more diversification in national assemblies • 4 representational dimensions: Gender, Age, Education and Minority presence in Parliament • 5 countries: the UK, France, Ireland, Germany, Denmark with five electoral system types (i.e. single member plurality, the two round majority system, the single transferable vote, mixed member proportional representation and proportional representation)

3. The Literature on the Inclusiveness and Exclusiveness of various Electoral System Types Proportional Representation: - Non-zero sum game (various candidates on each electoral list are nominated) - Parties are likely to nominate various types of candidates to appeal to the largest constituency possible - Costs of slating female candidates, unexperienced candidates, and minorities decreases Majoritarian Electoral System Type - zero sum game (only one candidate is nominated per district) - parties are likely to prefer a specific type of candidate (i.e. a middle-age to senior men of the dominant ethnic group with relatively high educational attainment) – who is likely to be the most attractive to voters

4. The 5 Countries` Electoral System Types

5. Data and Methodolgy • Data: I have collected data on gender, education, age and the representation of foreign born nationals for all parliamentarians that held elected office in any of the five national assemblies as of December 2011. (Data source: Personal bibliographies on parliamentary website) • Methodology: I use descriptive statistics (mean comparisons) and inferential statistics (Anova Multi-comparision Tests and Logistic Regression Analysis) to test whether there are empirically relevant and statistically significant differences between the countries

6. Women`s Representation Women’s Representation in the Five Western European Countries

7. Women`s Representation • Hypothesis is mainly confirmed: - PR systems (Denmark and Germany) have significantly more female deputies - the only (slight) anomaly is Ireland, which in the strictest sense should have more female representatives than France or the UK - Germany provides further support for the hypothesis; more women are elected in the PR tier than the first past the post tier

8. Representation of various age cohorts

9. Representation of various age cohorts • The Hypothesis is mainly confirmed • Denmark as a PR country has the most representative representation (there only a 3 point difference in the medium age of the population and that of the parliamentarians). France as a majoritarian countries has the most skewed representation (a 18 year gap between the medium age of deputies and that of the population. • Except for Denmark and to a less degree Ireland, the 20 to 39 age group is unterrepresented everywhere and particularly in France

10. An Additional Factor Impacting the Skewed Age Representation is Incumbency

11. Education

12. Education • Hypothesis is not confirmed • Educational attainment is high everywhere (the average MP in all countries is more highly educated than a bachelors degree) • In all parliaments, individuals having less than High School only make a tiny portion of the parliamentarians, despite the fact that they could make up more than 60 percent of the adult population, as is the case in Germany. • In some countries PhDs are highly overrepresented (e.g Germany and France)

13. Foreign Born Individuals

14. Foreign Born Individuals • Hypothesis is disconfirmed - the two countries operating under majoritarian rule – Great Britain and, even more so, France – have the highest representation of foreign born individuals with respectively 4.15 and nearly 6 percent of all representatives. - It seems to be important to look at other factors such as the specific historical trajectories of the five countries under consideration, when interpreting the parliamentary representation of foreign born individuals.

15. Summary of Results

16. Conclusions • Across these four dimensions, the results are mixed, it appears that the electoral system type has an influence on some representational dimension but not on others • This research cautions us not to overstate the electoral system type’s influence on the presence of any cohort of the population in parliament, but rather to also consider other institutional (e.g. the candidate nomination process or quotas) and non-institutional variables (the specific political culture and history of a country) and their influence on parliamentary representational patterns.

17. Future Research • Expand the scope of this study by incorporating more countries representing any of these electoral system types • Add more electoral system types into the equation (e.g. mixed member plurality systems such as Italy) • Determine why the electoral system type has a positive (causal)impact on some representational dimensions but not on others.