Symbolic and substantive relevance of politicians with disabilities: a British Columbia case study.

• Author: Langford, Brynne
• Position: Case study

Little is known in Canada about the political participation of persons with disabilities and their effects on public policy. The authors draw upon the 2013 British Columbia election which saw three persons with disabilities elected to examine their symbolic and substantive relevance. Symbolically, the potential exists for increased legitimacy in governments and diversity in thinking while substantively, an important role exists in shaping the agenda yet actual policy advancements fall prey to party politics.

Introduction

While many minority groups including women and ethnic minorities have made (albeit sometimes limited) progress towards more equal representation in government over the past few decades across Canada, persons with disabilities have largely lagged behind. Few have been elected to office federally--less than a handful with visible disabilities in recent elections. (1) Moreover, studies show that less than one per cent of candidates across all parties in recent provincial elections were persons with disabilities, further revealing blockages to their electoral participation. (2) The situation in British Columbia (BC) is somewhat different: three Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) with visible disabilities were elected in the May 2013 provincial election. Is their election significant? The BC results offer a unique opportunity to examine how the election of these individuals with disabilities has affected the representation of persons with disabilities in the province. What factors led to their successful election? How were issues related to their disability addressed? More broadly, does their election matter? Will politicians with disabilities advance issues and concerns raised by the disability community? Answers to such questions are not only important for encouraging the greater representation of persons with disabilities in politics but also contributes to our understanding of changes in disability policy.

In this article we argue that there are symbolic and potentially substantive benefits to persons with disabilities seeking and in being elected to political office. The first section notes parallels to the experiences of other minority groups seeking political representation. Although there are some factors unique to the disability community that need to be considered, we find that little is known about this subject, especially in the Canadian context. We then explore the experiences of three disabled individuals who recently sought political office in BC. Our analysis leads us to some tentative answers to our questions and allows us to offer some explanations as to why this breakthrough is occurring in BC. We also find that political parties play an important role in this process determining the candidates who run and shaping the policies that their party members must support.

Literature

The importance of minority representation

Debate on the substantive nature of minority representation in politics often centres on the degree to which minority politicians represent and argue for the interests of minority group members in policy decisions. Some scholars argue that having minority representatives (e.g., gender, race, sexual orientation) in decision making roles may lead to their greater consideration in policy discussions and thus lead to better public policy.3 This may be related to the fact that, at the individual level, minority representatives ask more poignant questions relating to minority populations than non-minority representatives. Yet, given that elected officials are typically "... [sensitive] to the demographic composition of their constituencies," (4) there are questions about the extent of this substantive representation. Furthermore, party interests may be privileged over this minority representation. (5) Strongly partisan political systems, such as those found in Canada (including BC), thus act as a brake on substantive representation and thereby emphasize symbolic benefits.

Given minority populations can more readily identify with their representatives, it is this symbolic representation--seeing people who have similar characteristics to oneself--that may generate greater confidence in governments. For example, persons with disabilities "do not necessarily have common interests, but because of common experiences they may have interests that are opposed to those that the majority of non-disabled people may hold." (6) Perceptions matter and are directly linked to feelings of political efficacy. For example, a study of minority representation in the United States found that having a minority representative may create positive views of their quality of representation; however, this did not necessarily translate to overall satisfaction with representation in the government as a whole. (7) As such, these feelings translate to civic participation rates. It is important that minority groups feel they have access to government either through representation (direct) or other pathways (indirect).

At the heart of these pathways are questions of issue salience and venues. Evidence from the United Kingdom suggests that the period shortly after WWII had the highest issue salience for disability as political parties fought to capture the votes of newly disabled veterans.8 At the same time, and given a history where prejudice and exclusion of minorities in government was significant, minority populations often worked through interest groups to pursue changes in policy. Due to this legacy, minorities may still be more prone to seek representation in policy through interest groups rather than seek elected representation in government; however, these forms of representation are shifting. In the current neoliberal era, funding and consultation with interest groups have been cut in favour of direct consultation with citizens. (9) With a renewed individual voice but lacking policy influence and with limited substantive representation, symbolic representation takes on added importance.

In BC, as elsewhere, there are a number of ways in which persons with disabilities have representation in government. Yet, since the province has one of the highest numbers of elected officials with disabilities compared to other provinces, this situation provides a unique opportunity to study the effect of their representation and the factors that have produced it.

Conditions conducive for minority representation

Navigating the electoral process can be challenging with political parties acting as gatekeepers. They play a fundamental role in candidate identification and selection through control of nomination procedures and funding of candidates. As minority populations have grown, political parties have worked to obtain their support in elections including the nomination of an increasing number of minority candidates. Yet any increase in their election has been marginal at best, and there has been wide variation among minority populations. (10) For example, evidence suggests that some minority groups, particularly those of South Asian ethnicity, have more success in navigating the political system than others due to demographics and mobilization given concentrated populations. (11) This underscores the fact that individual characteristics of minority populations (such as residential patterns) need to be considered when working to overcome blockages to their electoral participation. (12)

Even so, our first-past-the-post electoral system disadvantages minority groups. For example, women candidates fare better under proportional representation systems that deliver more female representatives. (13) This can be seen in Sweden which adopted a proportional representation list system and had 47.3 per cent female representation at the national level in 2007, a figure that dropped slightly to 43.6 pert cent in the 2014 election. (14) These results are significantly higher than the 26 per cent of MPs elected in the 2015 Canadian federal election who are women. This under-representation in first-past-the-post systems leads to a heightened awareness of inequity in political representation among minority populations and their preference for other forms of political representation such as multi-member districts and proportional representation list systems. (15)

Characteristics of minority candidates

Looking narrowly at persons with disabilities, much can be learned about the challenges minority candidates face by examining the characteristics of those that have been successfully elected. Must minority candidates conform to the characteristics of the dominant group in order to get elected? On the one hand, minority candidates are often required to match and surpass the qualifying characteristics of the dominant group to achieve success. (16) This includes superior educational attainment and working their way up party ranks. (17) Simply put, "more is required of newcomers with political aspirations because they need to countervail negative stereotyping and serious barriers." (18) All of this work is done to be seen as "acceptably different," (19) suggesting that, rhetoric notwithstanding, our political systems are still not very welcoming of diversity.

On the other hand, qualifications and characteristics have varied across time for both men and...