Why Do Political Elites Promote the Political Inclusion of Marginalized Peoples?

• In Event: Linking Descriptive and Substantive Representation

Abstract

Under what conditions do political elites promote the political inclusion of marginalized peoples? Addressing the question, this paper focuses on marginalized people until recently seldom investigated in political science research: indigenous people. Specifically, I examine the evolution of political elites' strategies toward the only indigenous people in Europe, the Sámi of Fennoscandia. Political scientists concur that "political inclusion is vital to sustainable democracy" (Cordenillo 2017). Yet how is political inclusion achieved for people marginalized on the grounds of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, or other traits? For many at the margins, the quest for political inclusion remains an ongoing struggle, as the worldwide protests inspired by Black Lives Matter demonstrate. The question of political inclusion is timely and urgent.

I argue that political incumbents' strategies toward a marginalized group should depend on two factors: the marginalized group's potential to act as a pivot, spelling the difference between victory or defeat in elite competition; and the degree of competition between political elites. I examine as rival hypotheses those rooted in economic factors, political entrepreneurs' manipulation of outcomes (Riker 1986), and macro-level historical political development. To appraise hypotheses, this mixed-method paper analyzes quantitative data and constructs qualitative narratives. In analyzing election results, I rely primarily on the Constituency-Level Electoral Archive (CLEA; 2021), which offers district-level data for national legislative results, including the 1882-2017 Norwegian elections, 1872-2014 Swedish elections, 1907-2015 Finnish elections, and 2003-2011 Russian elections. I also draw on Statistics Norway (2021), with disaggregated 1945-2019 results for Norwegian municipal and county council elections. For the narratives, I compare incumbent strategies and Sámi pivot potential since the seventeenth century across what are today the four countries of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. Norway is the in-depth case, for which the quantitative analysis exploits the richest data, and the most detailed narrative uses the largest set of secondary sources and some primary sources as well. The selection of Norway as the in-depth case does not bias the evidence in favor of the argument, for, as shown in the paper, Norway presents a “tough case” for the logic. Thus. if the hypotheses were to be rejected in Norway, they would fall flat elsewhere as well.

Given its question, argument, research design, and (to date preliminary) findings, this paper contributes to scholarship on subjugated peoples, indigenous politics, institutional reform, representation, and political pluralism.

References
Constituency-Level Elections Archive, CLEA. (2021). Co-directors: Backer, D., Caramani, D., Hicken, A. Kollman, K., and Lublin, D. Last accessed January 13, 2021, at: http://www.electiondataarchive.org .
Cordenillo, R. (2017). "Political inclusion is vital to sustainable democracy." International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), June 28.
Riker, W. H. (1986). The art of political manipulation. Yale University Press.
Statistics Norway / Statistik sentralbyrå. (2021). Last accessed January 13, 2021, at: https://www.ssb.no/en .

Author

• Carol A. Mershon, University of Virginia