The Oxford Handbook of Political Representation in Liberal Democracies

The Handbook of Political Representation in Liberal Democracies offers a state-of-the-art assessment of the functioning of political representation in liberal democracies. In 34 chapters the world's leading scholars on the various aspects of political representation address eight broad themes: The concept and theories of political representation, its history and the main requisites for its development; elite orientations and behavior; descriptive representation; party government and representation; non-electoral forms of political participation and how they relate to political representation; the challenges to representative democracy originating from the growing importance of non-majoritarian institutions and social media; the rise of populism and its consequences for the functioning of representative democracy; the challenge caused by economic and political globlization: what does it mean for the functioning of political representation at the national leval and is it possible to develop institutions of representative democracy at a level above the state that meet the normative criteria of representative democracy and are supported by the people? The various chapters offer a comprehensive review of the literature on the various aspects of political representation. The main organizing principle of the Handbook is the chain of political representation, the chain connecting the interests and policy preferences of the people to public policy via political parties, parliament, and government. Most of the chapters assessing the functioning of the chain of political representation and its various links are based on original comparative political research. Comparative research on political representation and its various subfields has developed dramatically over the last decades so that even ten years ago a Handbook like this would have looked totally different.

Robert Rohrschneider, Sir Robert Worcester Chair of Political Science, University of Kansas,Jacques Thomassen, Emeritus Professor of Political Science, University of Twente

Robert Rohrschneider is Sir Robert Worcester Distinguished Professor of International Public Opinion and Survey Research at the University of Kansas. He teaches Comparative Politics and his research focuses on Comparative Public Opinion, Political Parties, Democratic Representation in Western and Central-Eastern Europe.

Jacques Thomassen is an emeritus professor of political science at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. He is member and former secretary general of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has held visiting positions at the universities of Michigan, Harvard, Mannheim, the Australian National University, and the European University Institute. He published widely on issues of political representation, electoral behaviour, democracy, and legitimacy. He was a founding member of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) and participated in many other projects of comparative political research. Among his publications are Elections and Democracy: Representation and Accountability OUP 2014; Myth and Reality of the Legitimacy Crisis: Explaining trends and cross-national differences in established democracies OUP 2017.

Part I. Concept and theories of political representation
1. The Evolution of Political Representation in Liberal Democracies: Concepts and Practices, Jane Mansbridge
2. The Formation and Development of Liberal Democracies, Carles Boix, WillHorn and Alex Kerchner
3. The cultural Pre-Requisites of Democracy., Christian Welzel
4. The institutional framework of representative democracy: Comparing the Populist-Majoritarian and the Liberal/Consensual Model, Rudy B. Andeweg and Tom Louwerse
5. Electoral Integrity., Carolien van Ham
Part II. Elite Orientations and Behavior
6. Roll-call voting behavior in legislatures, Simon Hug
7. Constituency Candidates and Political Representation, Thomas Zittel
Part III. Descriptive representation
8. Descriptive Representation Revisited, Anne Philips
9. Gender equality, Karen Celis and Silvia Erzeel
10. Regional and Ethnic Minorities, Didier Ruedin
11. Sortition and Mini-Publics: A Different Kind of Representation, David Farrell and Peter Stone
Part IV. Party Government and Representation
12. The Model of Party Government, Richard S. Katz
13. Party Competition and Representation, Russell Dalton
14. Party government and Voters, Wouter van der Brug, Eelco Harteveld and Jaap van Slageren
15. Parliamentarians and Party Groups: the Role of Intra-party Unity, Reuven Hazan and Reut Itzkovich-Malka
16. Intra-party Democracy and Representation: Necessity, Complement, or Challenge?, Thomas Poguntke and Susan Scarrow
17. Parties' Election Manifestos and Public Policies, Robert Thompson
18. Opinion-Policy congruence, Zoe Lefkofridi
19. Mandate vs Accountability, Bingham Powell
20. Political equality and Turnout, Andr? Blais, Ruth Dassonneville and Filip Kostelka
21. Feeling represented, S?ren Holmberg
Part V. Beyond Elections as Instruments of Representative Democracy
22. Referendums and Direct Democracy, C?line Colombo and Hanspeter Kriesi
23. Interest Groups and the Market for Representation, Jeremy Richardson
24. Non-electoral Participation, Jan van Deth
25. Dynamic Representation, Christopher Wlezien
Part VI. Challenges to representative democracy: domestic origins
26. Non-majoritarian institutions, Mark Bovens and Thomas Schillemans
27. Print, Electronic and Social Media and the Transformation of Democratic Representation, Mark Peffley, Alexander Denison and Travis N. Taylor
Part VII: Challenges to Representative Democracies: Populism
28. The Populist Challenge to Liberal Democracies, Pippa Norris
29. The Rise of Populism in Modern Democracies, Thomas M. Meyer and Markus Wagner
30. Populists in Power: Populism and Representation in Illiberal Democracies, Zsolt Enyedi and Stephen Whitefield
Part VIII. Challenges to Representative Democracy: International Aspects
31. Globalization, Electoral Change and Representation, Timothy Hellwig
32. Representation and the European Union, Sara B. Hobolt
33. Does Economic and Political Integration Undermine Representative Democracy? Lessons from the 2008 Economic Crisis in the European Union, Jorge M. Fernandes and Pedro Magalh?es
34. Globalisation and Representative Democracy: Normative Challenges, Richard Bellamy