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Espírito-Santo, Ana, Verge, Tània & Wiesehomeier, Nina (2018). The underestimated benefits of descriptive representation and gender quotas. 114th APSA Annual Meeting and Exhibition.

A. C. Santo et al.,  "The underestimated benefits of descriptive representation and gender quotas", in 114th APSA Annu. Meeting and Exhibition, Boston, 2018

@misc{santo2018_1714178238628,
	author = "Espírito-Santo, Ana and Verge, Tània and Wiesehomeier, Nina",
	title = "The underestimated benefits of descriptive representation and gender quotas",
	year = "2018",
	howpublished = "Digital",
	url = "https://connect.apsanet.org/apsa2018/"
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - The underestimated benefits of descriptive representation and gender quotas
T2  - 114th APSA Annual Meeting and Exhibition
AU  - Espírito-Santo, Ana
AU  - Verge, Tània
AU  - Wiesehomeier, Nina
PY  - 2018
CY  - Boston
UR  - https://connect.apsanet.org/apsa2018/
AB  - While there is a broad debate in the literature on whether descriptive representation
improves substantive representation, other benefits that descriptive representation may
bring about have received considerable less attention. As argued by Mansbridge (1999),
the representation of historically under‐represented groups might have two important
benefits: (i) it might help the under‐represented group construct social meaning, i.e. to
improve the way the society as a whole evaluates the group’s capacity of ruling; and (ii)
it might contribute to achieving a de facto legitimacy, by making members of those
groups feel as if they themselves were present in the deliberations. Although
Mansbridge’s theory has been vastly quoted, to our knowledge, it has never been
empirically tested at the individual level. Do citizens perceive these benefits? And how
might this perception be affected when increases in descriptive representation are
achieved through a widely used but still contested measure like quotas? In answering
those questions we focus on women’s representation and draw on data from an online
framing experiment, administered in 2015 to a nationally representative sample of the
population in both Spain and Portugal. In particular, we analyse whether random
assignment to two dissimilar treatment conditions – a scenario where gender quotas are
mentioned and another one where they are not mentioned – or to the control group (no
treatment) reveals differences in the perceived benefits of descriptive representation.
ER  -