Pathways to Power: The Political Representation of Citizens of Immigrant Origin in Seven European Democracies

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Thomas Saalfeld
• Subject Area: Political Science ; Education Systems and Educational Institutions
• Term: from 2014 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 243023356

PATHWAYS is a tightly integrated, internationally co-operative and comparative project of social scientists at British, French, German and Dutch universities, seeking to advance knowledge in two areas: (a) the descriptive representation of citizens of immigrant origin (CIO) in the legislative assemblies of seven European countries (Britain, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands and Spain) at the national and regional levels (where meaningful regional assemblies exist); and (b), for the first time, the parliamentary activities of representatives of immigrant origin (substantive representation). These are our dependent variables. In a second step, we will seek to build on, test and (where necessary) extend, explanations of the variations in representation we observe. These are based on empirical theories of political representation in liberal democracies with a particular emphasis on the impact of political institutions and macro-level contextual factors on representation.With regard to descriptive representation, our objectives are to collect data on the variation in the parliamentary 'presence' of CIOs across seven European democracies at national and regional levels of government, and analyse it in terms of age, gender, national origin, career and political history and examine the primary socio-economic, political and institutional factors that affect the access of CIOs to elected office. In relation to substantive representation, our objectives are to study variations and similarities of parliamentary activity of CIOs across the seven countries and analyse whether there is a relationship between descriptive and substantive representation (as hypothesised, e.g., by critical mass and mainstreaming approaches).In relation to both types of representation, our goals are to (a) to provide the social science community with original data on the political representation of CIOs in seven European countries - some of which have been neglected in previous studies - making the data freely available (duly considering data protection issues); and (b) to describe and explain variations and similarities in the descriptive and substantive representation of CIOs using, and extending, existing empirical theories of political representation in political science with particular emphasis on political institutions, strategies, social networks and political opportunity structures.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: France, Netherlands, United Kingdom
• Participating Persons: Professor Dr. Manlio Cinalli; Professorin Laura Morales, Ph.D.; Professor Dr. Jean Tillie