front cover of Parliaments in the Modern World
Parliaments in the Modern World
Changing Institutions
Gary Copeland and Samuel C. Patterson, Editors
University of Michigan Press, 1994
Parliaments in the Modern World presents the case that these legislative bodies – long characterized as institutionalized and therefore static – are in fact changing at a surprising rate. Whether the changes are subtle (as in the United Kingdom) or responding to fundamental constitutional rearrangements (as in Italy and Germany), even the casual observer no longer views parliaments as regular or predictable. Focusing on the parliaments of Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Scandinavia, Turkey, and Central and Eastern Europe, contributors to this volume try to understand how, when, and why parliaments modify themselves.
 
The editors frame the book in the theoretical questions of how institutionalized bodies accomplish change. They explain the nature of the institutionalizing process and show that as the ability for an organization to fulfill its mission changes (or as the mission itself changes), corresponding adaptation becomes necessary if the institution is to remain viable. The individual case studies amply illustrate how modifications in the governing ideology, the party, the electoral systems, or the character of membership have precipitated change at various times and in various parliaments. Parliaments in the Modern World ultimately demonstrates that it is precisely this ability to change that has kept these organizations vital, responsive, and long-lived.
 
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front cover of Youth without Representation
Youth without Representation
The Absence of Young Adults in Parliaments, Cabinets, and Candidacies
Daniel Stockemer and Aksel Sundström
University of Michigan Press, 2022

Officeholders in contemporary parliaments and cabinets are more likely than not to be male, wealthy, middle-aged or older, and from the dominant ethnicity, whereas young adults have an insufficient presence in political office. Young adults—those aged 35 years or under—comprise a mere ten percent of all parliamentarians globally, and three percent of all cabinet members. Compared to their presence in the world’s population, this age group faces an underrepresentation of one to three in parliament and one to ten in cabinet. In this book, Stockemer and Sundström provide a holistic account of youths’ marginalization in legislatures, cabinets, and candidacies for office through a comparative lens. They argue that youths’ underrepresentation in political office constitutes a democratic deficit and provide ample evidence for why they think that youth must be present in politics at much higher rates. They further embed this book within what they label a vicious cycle of political alienation, which involves the declining political sophistication of the young, their waning electoral participation, and their insufficient of representation in office. Empirically, the authors combine a global focus with in-depth studies, discussing the country-level, party-level, and individual-level factors that bar young adults’ entry to positions of political power. This is the first comprehensive book on youth representation and it has relevance for those broadly interested in issues of representation, democracy, inequality, and comparative politics.

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