Replication Data for: Political Representation as Communicative Practice

It is uncontroversial that the quality of democracy is closelynbound up with the quality of political representation. But what exactly is political representation and how should we study it? This Element develops a novel conceptual framework for studying political representation that makes the insights of recent theoretical work on representation usable for quantitative empirical research. The theoretical literature the authors build on makes the case for changing the understanding of representation in two ways. First, it proposes to conceive representation in constructivist terms, as a practice that is shaped by both representatives and represented. Second, it treats communicative acts by representatives that address constituents and different analytical dimensions contained in them as the central categories of analysis; political representation is thus conceived as an essentially communicative practice. This Element argues that quantitative research can benefit from taking these innovations seriously, and it provides the conceptual tools for doing so.

民主质量与政治代表（political representation）质量息息相关，这已是学界公认的论断。但究竟何为政治代表？又当如何对其展开研究？本专题论著构建了一套全新的政治代表研究概念框架，可将近年来政治代表理论研究的核心洞见应用于量化实证研究之中。作者所依托的理论文献，从两个维度论证了革新政治代表认知的必要性：其一，该理论主张以建构主义视角诠释政治代表，将其视作由代表者与被代表者共同形塑的实践活动；其二，该理论将代表者面向选民开展的沟通行为，及其所蕴含的多重分析维度，作为核心分析范畴，由此将政治代表本质性地界定为一种沟通实践。本专题论著指出，量化实证研究若能充分吸纳这些理论创新，将可获得显著裨益，并为此提供了配套的概念工具。