Marco Lisi

POLITICAL EQUALITY AND THE PROCESS OF CANDIDATE SELECTION: MPs' VIEWS IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

There has been an increasing concern in contemporary democracies about political equality and descriptive representation. But to what extent do MPs consider legitimate the selection of candidates according to their social background? Drawing on the PARENEL project data, our results indicate that age and gender are the two most legitimate criteria from the MPs normative view. Yet there are significant differences among countries and political parties. In particular, left-wing MPs are more prone to support the selection of prospective MPs based on principles of social equality, whereas Belgian MPs display higher levels of consensus towards descriptive type of recruitment.

Contextual reasons for emigrants’ electoral participation in home country elections: the Portuguese case

ABSTRACT Although emigrants represent an increasing share of the electoral population in many democracies, not much is known about their participation in home country elections. With the purpose of contributing to fill such gap, this article develops a longitudinal and exploratory analysis of the contextual factors of emigrants’ participation in national elections in the case of Portugal (1976–2015), a country with one of the highest emigration rates of the EU today. It begins by presenting a longitudinal analysis of the electoral participation of Portuguese emigrants. Afterwards, the conditions underlying levels of participation are examined. Using aggregate data covering the main 15 destination countries, this study compares institutional, socio-economic and political contextual factors for voting. Findings indicate that the lack of political participation of emigrants is first demonstrated by the very low registration rates, although it varies according to the country, and that voting methods and socio-economic factors in the destination country are the most relevant to explain voting in home country elections.