2
During the negotiations over the new Iraqi constitution, the United States insisted
on a provision that mandates the inclusion of women as 25% of the members of the new
provisional legislature (Online News Hour 2004). This constitutional provision assumes
that the protection of the rights and interests of women is an important goal that is best
served by requiring descriptive representation of women in the national government
rather than simply accepting that the substantive interests of women will be served by
whichever democratically elected representatives the people choose.
1
By contrast, in the
United States, women constitute only 14% of the members of the House of
Representatives and the Senate in the 108
th
Congress (CAWP 2004). There is no
groundswell of support for adopting gender quotas similar to those administered in some
other countries (Norris 2003). The most extensive experiment in promoting descriptive
representation in the United States, the creation of majority/minority districts has sparked
intense controversy. Many scholars who have examined the roll-call voting records of
representatives on issues of special concern to minorities such as civil rights and social
welfare spending find that the voting behavior of minority representatives and white
Democrats who represent districts with large minority populations are substantially the
same. Given the similarity of their voting records, these scholars conclude that minorities
are better off spreading their influence through a large number of districts and electing
white Democrats than reducing their influence across districts to elect a small number of
minority representatives (Swain 1993, Lublin 1997, Cameron, Epstein, and O’Halloran
1996).
I maintain that a focus on roll-call voting is not the best way to calibrate the
substantive impact of descriptive representation as the roll-call vote represents the end of
the policy process after the decisions have been made concerning which issues require
Convention