Political representation and the evolution of group differences within parties: Evidence from 110 years of parliamentary speech

Jeremias Nieminen, Salla Simola and Janne Tukiainen
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Salla Simola: Storytel

No 161, Discussion Papers from Aboa Centre for Economics

Abstract: We study the long-term evolution of party demographics and the associated changes in parliamentary speech patterns of various within-party groups in Finland during 1907-2018. We find significant speech differences by gender and university education status, while other MP characteristics - age, white-collar job, first-term MP status, or urbanicity - do not predict speech patterns. We find that when female seat share began to rise in the late 1950s, there is a concurrent increase in speech differences by gender. As the representation of women increased, there was also a shift in speech topics female MPs specialized in. Additionally, we observe a sharp increase in speech differences by education when the seat share of university-educated increased in the 1960s. These results suggest that descriptive representation of these groups may play a role in changing speech patterns, and thus, in their substantive representation.

Keywords: intra-party politics; parliamentary speech; descriptive representation; substantive representation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 J16 N44 P00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 81
Date: 2023-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-gen, nep-his and nep-lab
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