{"title":"Limited supply: Youth underrepresentation in the Canadian House of Commons","authors":"Daniel Stockemer , Kaitlin Gallant , Erin Tolley","doi":"10.1016/j.electstud.2024.102747","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Much of the research on youth representation focuses on the final stage of electoral recruitment: young peoples' presence in legislatures. We expand this scope using a supply and demand framework to document the representation of young people not only in parliament but also in the candidate stage that proceeds it. Drawing on an extensive dataset of more than 3000 candidates in Canadian federal elections from 2008 to 2021, we show that young peoples’ numerical underrepresentation is not primarily a function of voter discrimination but rather a result of the small number of young candidates who come forward. We find that limited youth representation in the candidate pool translates into low representation rates in parliament. These results suggest that efforts to ameliorate youth underrepresentation in politics must be attentive to supply-side issues, including party gatekeeping, resource constraints, political ambition, and the motivations for running for office.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48188,"journal":{"name":"Electoral Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.9000,"publicationDate":"2024-02-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379424000052/pdfft?md5=16b180166f7cd214653429ee27664d4c&pid=1-s2.0-S0261379424000052-main.pdf","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Electoral Studies","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379424000052","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"POLITICAL SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Much of the research on youth representation focuses on the final stage of electoral recruitment: young peoples' presence in legislatures. We expand this scope using a supply and demand framework to document the representation of young people not only in parliament but also in the candidate stage that proceeds it. Drawing on an extensive dataset of more than 3000 candidates in Canadian federal elections from 2008 to 2021, we show that young peoples’ numerical underrepresentation is not primarily a function of voter discrimination but rather a result of the small number of young candidates who come forward. We find that limited youth representation in the candidate pool translates into low representation rates in parliament. These results suggest that efforts to ameliorate youth underrepresentation in politics must be attentive to supply-side issues, including party gatekeeping, resource constraints, political ambition, and the motivations for running for office.
期刊介绍:
Electoral Studies is an international journal covering all aspects of voting, the central act in the democratic process. Political scientists, economists, sociologists, game theorists, geographers, contemporary historians and lawyers have common, and overlapping, interests in what causes voters to act as they do, and the consequences. Electoral Studies provides a forum for these diverse approaches. It publishes fully refereed papers, both theoretical and empirical, on such topics as relationships between votes and seats, and between election outcomes and politicians reactions; historical, sociological, or geographical correlates of voting behaviour; rational choice analysis of political acts, and critiques of such analyses.