EVENTS

Print

ISS Seminar (Jun. 12, 2018)

May 21, 2018

Details

Type Symposium
Intended for General public / Enrolled students / International students / Alumni / Companies / University students
Date(s) June 12, 2018 15:00 — 16:40
Location Hongo Area Campus
Venue Meeting Room (Akamon General Research Building, 5F)
Entrance Fee No charge
Registration Method No advance registration required
Contact E-mail: webmaster@iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp

ISS Seminar
■Date■ Jun. 12, 2018, 15:00~16:40
■Location■ Meeting Room (Akamon General Research Building, 5F)
■Guest lecturer■ Jackie F. Steele (Institute of Social Science, the University of Tokyo)
■Title■ What are Ethnic Quotas? A Typology of Parliamentary Representation Mechanisms for Ethnic groups, Minority Nations and Indigenous Peoples
■Summary■
 Who rules matters. Which groups can access political power shapes how political elites behave, how members of underrepresented groups feel about themselves, their political engagement, citizens’ perceptions about the quality of democratic government, and even political stability and social cohesion. Yet, we have a limited understanding of the mechanisms and policies that shape the representation of ethnic groups, indigenous peoples, and minority nations, nor of their perceived effects in terms of identity reification and conflict resolution over the short to long term. Using the terms ‘ethnicity’ and ‘ethnic’ in their broadest possible sense (e.g., Hughes 2011; Ruedin 2009), an ethnic group is defined both by ancestry (decent) and by politicized group identification, and may share territory, culture, language, religion, or a combination of these.
 One central obstacle to research in this area is the lack of a multi-disciplinary conversations across scholars in political theory, political science, electoral systems, constitutionalism, indigenous studies, postcolonialism, and/or the sociology of ethnicity who may work on only selected categories of groups or countries/regions wherein these groups (ethnic minorities, national minorities, indigenous peoples, minority nations) are concentrated and exert political influence in representative politics. Without a holistic conceptual framework and typology to guide cross-national data and analyses, empirical counting of policies and legal mechanisms differs vastly in the published literature.
​ In this Seminar, I will introduce an emerging typology developed with collaborators (Elin Bjarnegard, Uppsala; Melanie Hughes, Pittsburgh) in the Designing Political Diversity Database Project and that guides a broader project of cataloguing codified measures for the political representation of ethnic groups, minority nations and indigenous peoples in national parliaments worldwide.

Related links

Access Map
Close
Kashiwa Campus
Close
Hongo Campus
Close
Komaba Campus
Close