Acta Politica

https://doi.org/10.1057/s41269-020-00149-5

BOOK REVIEW

K. Heidar and B. Wauters (eds.): Do parties still represent?

Avital Friedman1 

© Springer Nature Limited 2020

In their edited volume, Do Parties Still Represent? Heidar and Wauters present a
comprehensive examination of representativeness at the level of party members. By
drawing attention to party members, as the tier that serves as the link between the
citizens and the party, they allow for a more complex investigation of representation
and its effects. The book’s eight chapters, each written by leading scholars, address
a range of perspectives regarding both political representation and the more specific
topic of party members. In an era of party change and a rise in identity politics, this
connection offers valuable insights for scholars, students, and party officials alike.
Though the chapters vary on the puzzle they investigate, as well as the case study
they focus on, three main themes are raised throughout concerning membership
representativeness. First, are party members today representative of the voters in a
descriptive manner to begin with? Second, has the decline in the membership tier
that is evident in all the selected cases also led to a decline in the party members’
representativeness of the voters? While these two issues are themselves interesting
to explore, the book goes further by probing the consequences of the low descriptive
representation found at the membership tier. The diversity of the case studies not-
withstanding, it appears that there are four main consequences examined through-
out: the effect of low representation on candidacy, the involvement of members who
are from underrepresented groups, substantive representation, and even the impact
of members’ low descriptive representation on the trust of citizens in parties, as
investigated in the Norwegian example (Chapter 8).
In all cases, it appears that women, young people, and the less-well educated are
underrepresented among party members. Other descriptive characteristics, such as
income, employment, and belonging to a minority, are also examined in some chap-
ters, and their findings show that members are more likely to be financially better off
and not belong to any minority group. However, in the cases that analyze change in
representation over time (Germany, Netherlands, Norway, and Denmark) the authors
found that, generally, the decline in membership had little to no effect on the level
of the descriptive representativeness of party members. This stability in members’
representativeness is quite surprising, as it is to some extent, counter-intuitive.

* Avital Friedman
avital.friedman2@mail.huji.ac.il
1
Department of Political Science, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

Vol.:(0123456789)
 A. Friedman

While the connection between decline in membership and representation yields

some valuable insights, it seems that the main novelty in this study lies in the third
theme that was raised. By examining the consequences of low descriptive represen-
tation, the book delves into the significance of representative party members, adding
to the crucial “so what?” question with regard to the lack of representation. One of
the most dominant outcomes revealed in five of the eight chapters was the effect of
low descriptive representativeness of members on substantive representation, meas-
ured as congruence between voters and members (Britain, Germany, Belgium, the
Netherlands, and Denmark). It is interesting to see that in most countries, congru-
ence was not only analyzed by comparing the self-placement on a left–right scale
between voters and members but also their position on specific issues. In this way,
the authors were able to go beyond the generalized notion of left–right views and
examine representation more concretely and pragmatically.
An additional strength of this volume is that in several chapters, the authors do
not generalize the members when examining descriptive representation, but rather
differentiate further between the levels of membership that were diagnosed. Such
a distinction was made based on involvement within the party, ranging from par-
ticipating in party activities to serving as party officials. By examining representa-
tion among different levels of the membership, the authors revealed a more nuanced
and somewhat dire picture of representation, as it appears that underrepresentation
is more acute the higher one moves up the party hierarchy. In addition to the empiri-
cal contribution this nuanced analysis of members’ representativeness offers, there
is also a practical one. This was evident mainly in the chapters on Canada and Aus-
tralia, which used the differentiation among members to examine ways for parties to
overcome underrepresentation in terms of candidacy and policy development.
The decision to focus on the representativeness of party members is an ambi-
tious one, as data on this tier of the party are scant. Doing so, then, is an achieve-
ment in itself. Indeed, the editors’ note that due to the difficulties of obtaining such
data, they made a conscious choice to focus only on stable Western democracies,
where information on party membership is more accessible. The countries that were
selected might vary in membership size and the changes they have experienced over
time, yet they are all stable democracies, making them the more likely case to find
stability in the patterns of members’ representativness, certainly in comparison to
other democracies. This case selection ultimately means, however, that the findings,
valuable as they are, cannot be applied beyond the strong Western democratic world.
Moreover, in the chapters that investigated the change in representation over time,
it would have been interesting also to examine whether there were changes in the
official roles and responsibilities of party members. Adding such information to the
analysis would have helped readers further understand the impact of underrepresen-
tation at this layer of the party.
In conclusion, while representativeness is seen as an important element of mod-
ern democracy, the book leaves no doubt that party members are also an integral
part of this representational mechanism. This impressive body of work not only pro-
vides an analysis of the descriptive representativeness of party members, and its sta-
bility over time in Western democracies, but also reveals the implications in cases
when there is a lack of such representativeness. Do Parties Still Represent? is an
K. Heidar and B. Wauters (eds.): Do parties still represent?

innovative addition to the literature on political parties and political representation

alike, and a fascinating read for anyone with an interest in the subject.
Lastly, on a personal note, I wish to offer the editors my commiserations over the
untimely death of contributing scholar Tim Spier. He will be greatly missed.

Compliance with ethical standards 

Conflict of interest  The author declares that there is no potential conflict of interest with respect to the
book review, authorship and\or publication of this review.

Publisher’s Note  Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published
maps and institutional affiliations.

Avital Friedman  is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Science at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem. She is also a researcher in the Israel Democracy Institute. Her fields of research include com-
parative politics, party politics, and Israeli politics.