Author
Gerring, J., Jerzak, C. T., Öncel, Erzen
Publication Date
2023
Publication Place
-
Cambridge University Press
Type
Periodical
Language
English
Digital
Yes
Manuscript
No
Library
Özyeğin University
Library Asset ID
2-s2.0-85170686146
Record ID
2dd0b6e7-72aa-4e62-a3ac-94a1f1551b4b
Library Location
International Relations
Date
2023
Notes
Frederick S. Pardee Center ; World Bank Group ; Boston University ; Cornell University
Sample Text
How well do governments represent the societies they serve? A key aspect of this question concerns the extent to which leaders reflect the demographic features of the population they represent. To address this important issue in a systematic manner, we propose a unified approach for measuring descriptive representation. We apply this approach to newly collected data describing the ethnic, linguistic, religious, and gender identities of over fifty thousand leaders serving in 1,552 political bodies across 156 countries. Strikingly, no country represents social groups in rough proportion to their share of the population. To explain this shortfall, we focus on compositional factors - the size of political bodies as well as the number and relative size of social groups. We investigate these factors using a simple model based on random sampling and the original data described above. Our analyses demonstrate that roughly half of the variability in descriptive representation is attributable to compositional factors.
DOI
10.1017/S0003055423000680
