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Have legislatures become more representative over time? - Coggle Diagram
Have legislatures become more representative over time?
Introduction
Types of represention (source = textbook)
Represention is one of the key roles of a legislature and is often one of the first roles that comes to mkind when people think about what legislatures do (textbook). With this being true it becomes important to understand how representive these legisltures are to the people that elected them.
When looking at how effective a legislature is at representing the electorate there are a range of different measures that can be used (textbook).
Represention can be formulistic, descriptive, symbolic, substanive, collective or party based; each of these systems has their own merits into measuring how representive a legislture is.
In this essay I will focus on descriptive represention which looks at how well the representives resemble their electors when it comes to characteristics (textbook). In particicualr I will look at comparing the age, gender, education and ethnicity of the US Congress and UK Parliament.
Conclusion
Descriptive representiion of legislatures has not seen any substianal improvements in how representive they are.
Although in regard to gender represention has increased in the three other areas measured in this essay represention has even made no progress or legislautres have actually become less representive.
Main body
Gender
Data analysis
General trend to the increase in represention for women in both Parliament and Congress. There has been sudden increases in female represention in 1992 and 1997; these have been combinded with more stable gains in female represention on a year by year basis.
In more recent years there have also been sharp jumps in female represention in the years following 2010, with the 2015 election in the UK and the 2018 and 2020 Congressional elections providing these jumps. Both legislatures appear to be on steady increases although there is a slight plateuaing of the UK Parliament score in recent years following the 2019 election.
Both in the United States Congress and the UK Parliament female representation has remained below levels that would represent the population make of both countries with neither country near the 50/50 female/male representation level. However, there has been a general trend in both countries towards increased representation of women. Since the mid-1940s both countries have begun to see growth in the number of female representatives and at no point after the 1940’s has there been a large reduction in female representation. Substantial increases in representation occurred from the mid 1980s when the plateaued expansion of female representation began to change towards a steady increase in the number of female representatives. Figure 1 presents two sharp increases in the levels of female representation in both countries in 1992 (US) and 1997 (UK), years that coincide with the elections of Bill Clinton (Democrat) and Tony Blair (Labour) alongside respective gains in their own legislatures.
An important question that arrises from the increase in female represention is what has been the impact on women in the electorate.
Evidence suggest that women who are represented by another women in the US have a greater degree of political then they do when their representive is a man. (Wolak, 2020, pp345-348).
This benefit has been shown to have also impacted male voters with them also having an increase in political knowldge on matters such as who their Congressperson is and what party they are in (Wolak, 2020, p348).
However, increased female represention in Congress has not materialsied into increased female political particpation with there being on increase in their desire to hold office or an increase in female voter turnout (Wolak, 2020, p355).
The lack of change in female voter tunrout may be caused by already slightly higher rates of female turnout in US elections (CAWP, 2024).
More representive
Education
Rates of university education among Congress and Parliament have been steadily increasing. In the House of Representives univeristy education of representives has increased from 56% in 1945 to 94% in 2023 showing nearly a 40 point increase. Meanwhile the UK Parliament has seen a similar steady increase with univeristy education of MPs being at just below 60% following the 1979 election, but having increased to just under 90% in 2019.
In both countries this presents legisltures that are substially more educated then the age groups with the highest rates of university education (25-34 year olds) (OECD, 2024). In the United Kingdom an over 30 point gap between the education of MPs and of the general public. Meanwhile in the US this gap is even higher at over 40 points (OECD, 2024).
In both the US and the UK university education has expanded, in the US 44.7% of 55-64 year olds have a university education meanwhile 51.3% of 25-34 year olds do. A more dramatic change has occurred in the UK where 39.8% of 55-64 year olds have a university education and 57.7% of 25-34 year olds have one.
In the UK this has led to an increase in the gap between the legislature and the electorate's education with the gap going from around 20 points to a 30 point gap. Meanwhile in the US it has increased from around a 25 point gap to a 40 point gap now.
Less representive
Ethncity
Both the UK and the US have seen demographic changes since the 1980s with the share of the white population shrinking, this has most drasticlly occured in the US with a drop from 80% to 59%.
The changing ethnic map of the country has led to an increase in the number of ethnic minority representives in both countries. In the US the % of Congresspeople who are white has fallen from over 90% in 1980 to 75% in 2023. Simerly the % of white MPs has fallen from 99% in 1987 to just under 90% of MPs.
In Westminster this has meant that the expansion of ethnic minority MPs has roughly matched the expansion of ethnic minorities in the UK's population leading to the gap between represetion not changing.
Following the 2022 mid terms there was an increase in the number of ethnic minority representives in the US with 27 new members from minoirity backgrounds, this is an improvement from 16 of the new intake following the 2020 elections (pew).
Some ethnic minorities are represented properly within Congress. Native Americans make up around 1% of both Congress and the general population and Aferican Americans make up 13% of both Congress and the general population.
However, both Hispanics and Asian Americans are underepresented in Congress compared to their share of the general population.
improved
Age
The age of legilstors in both the UK and the US has seen very little change with both ages hovering around the same age in the last decade (around 50 in the UK and just under 60 in the US).
Meanwhile median ages have slowly increased with the media age in the UK moving from 39 years old to just over 40 years old whilst the US media age has moved from around 38 to 39.
This has led to a very small reduction in the age difference between representatives in both countries, with the gap becoming 10 years in the UK (from just over 10) and just under 20 in the US (from just over 20).
No real change in represention