Critical Actors in a Dominant-Party Parliament? Representing Marginalised Communities in Singapore

IF 1.3 3区社会学 Q2 POLITICAL SCIENCE

Parliamentary Affairs Pub Date : 2022-06-25 DOI:10.1093/pa/gsac015

Y. Ng, J. Yew, Steven Oliver

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Who speaks for marginalised communities in dominant-party parliaments, where electoral accountability is weak? While existing work demonstrates the persistent salience of a legislator’s personal identity in such settings, we build on recent ‘critical actor’ theory to argue for factors beyond identity-based selection to explain why representatives might speak for marginalised communities. To this end, we use a mixed-methods approach to analyse the representation of six marginal communities in Singapore’s dominant-party system. A quantitative content analysis of all 8246 parliamentary questions filed from 2011 to 2020 shows that in addition to representative gender and ethnics identities, prior careers and political tenure also influence marginal community representation. In-depth interviews with seven Member of Parliament help identify precise mechanisms for such representation, including shared experience, career-derived awareness, political freshness and representative philosophies. That said, not all marginalised communities are well-represented, reflecting constraints on individual legislator-driven representation amidst broader party electoral strategies in non-competitive systems.

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执政党议会中的关键角色?代表新加坡的边缘社群

在选举问责制薄弱的占主导地位的政党议会中，谁为边缘化社区发声？虽然现有的工作表明，在这种情况下，立法者的个人身份持续突出，但我们以最近的“关键行为者”理论为基础，论证了基于身份选择之外的因素，以解释为什么代表可能会为边缘化社区发声。为此，我们采用混合方法分析了新加坡主导政党体系中六个边缘社区的代表性。对2011年至2020年提交的所有8246个议会问题的定量内容分析表明，除了具有代表性的性别和种族身份外，以前的职业和政治任期也会影响边缘社区代表性。对七名议员的深入访谈有助于确定这种代表性的确切机制，包括共同经验、职业意识、政治新鲜感和代表性哲学。也就是说，并非所有边缘化社区都有很好的代表性，这反映出在非竞争性制度中，在更广泛的政党选举策略中，个人立法者驱动的代表性受到限制。

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来源期刊

Parliamentary Affairs POLITICAL SCIENCE-

CiteScore

3.00

自引率

8.30%

发文量

期刊介绍： Parliamentary Affairs is an established, peer-reviewed academic quarterly covering all the aspects of government and politics directly or indirectly connected with Parliament and parliamentary systems in Britain and throughout the world. The journal is published in partnership with the Hansard Society. The Society was created to promote parliamentary democracy throughout the world, a theme which is reflected in the pages of Parliamentary Affairs.