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

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.