Limitations of the study

In this section I acknowledge some of the limitations of my study which particularly relate to methodological constraints.

My analysis was limited to the transcripts of plenary speeches because of the lack of video footage of plenary sessions. Appearance, clothing, gestures and other non-verbal language is integral to any performance. Posture, facial expressions or tone of voice, for instance, also convey meaning in addition to the speeches delivered on the floor. Non-verbal utterances express feelings and arouse emotions which are often not detectable by merely looking at the transcripts of political speeches. The availability of such data would have significantly enriched my analysis and allowed me to explore the performance of claims in more dynamic way. However, in the interviews representatives actively pointed to some instances in which body language was particularly important, which allowed me to at least indirectly take some of these aspects into consideration.

Another limitation in terms of data availability relates to the lack of diversity of my data. It would have been interesting to compare claims made before different audiences; for instance, comparing plenary addresses to claims made in committee meeting where the audience is more limited or wider political claims made on MPs’ personal websites, blogs or other social media. Yet, as I argued in Chapter 3, these data were not available in my cases: parliaments do not make transcripts of committee meetings and politicians rarely use social media outlets to communicate with their constituents. This limitation was circumvented by combining analysis of the plenary speeches with the interviews, which allowed me to compare the shaping of representative claims before different audiences.

A long-term approach would have allowed me to detect patterns of shape-shifting more clearly depending on the change of structural and cultural incentives. In that case, however, it would not be possible to include all the claims made throughout years. The research would rather have to be limited to a single policy issue, or particular moments such as electoral campaigns.

I argued in Chapter 2 that extending the scope of political representation beyond electoral representation is one of the important insights of the representative turn in

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democratic theory. Since non-elected actors also make claims to represent, the analysis of such claims would have significantly contributed to my research. Comparing the claims made by non-elected actors to those made by MPs enables researchers to encompass the diversity of claims about and for minorities but also to explore how diverse actors engage with different institutional and cultural incentives. Since non-elected actors are not constrained by institutional norms and pressures, focusing on their claims would enable us to explore in more detail the ways they exploit cultural resources in the performance of representation. In my cases, however, minority civil society is weak and dependent on political parties. In addition, there is a lack of media attention to any issues related to minorities; the only actors that manage to gain some media visibility are minority parties. This has enabled minority parties to succeed in monopolising the representation of ethnicity. For these reasons I chose to focus on the claims made by MPs. I also had to narrow the scope of my research to include only MPs with minority backgrounds as in the post-conflict context of my cases only those MPs were expected to make claims about and for minorities. However, I did extended analysis beyond minority parties to include all MPs who publicly identified themselves as members of ethnic groups. In this context, if a diversity of claims about and for minorities was to be expected, it could only have been found in different political parties rather than at other stages of representation. However, I believe that even the little there is here on other stages of representation deserves to be explored in future research.

In this thesis I have looked at the ways representative claims contribute to the formation of group identity and interests. Yet, the scope of my research did not allow me to grasp the whole process of identity construction. I have acknowledged throughout the thesis that identity construction and identity contestation go well beyond the walls of parliament. The examples I have offered indicate how the construction of minority identities is a long-term process influenced by many actors (political parties, civil society actors, kin states, international community, etc.) and diverse institutional and cultural incentives. Furthermore, my interviews point to the fact that many of these constructions, that political representatives contribute to, are happening outside parliament; for instance, during electoral campaigns or through direct contact with the constituents on the ground. In this thesis, I have neither claimed, nor intended to suggest, that representation constructs ethnic groups from scratch. The aim of my research was to show the creative and aesthetic qualities of representation, i.e. to show that the performance of representation is also integral to the construction of groups. My findings show that representative claims bring ethnic groups into being as political subjects and contribute to the ways that members of these groups perceive themselves as ethnic minorities and the ways that different audiences perceive them.

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In addition to the methodological limitations, several other important issues were outside the remit of the thesis. The existing literature on minority representation has been concerned with normative issues, i.e. how to achieve better, more just and more democratic representation of minorities. My thesis did not tackle these issues. While acknowledging the importance of these questions, I have argued that the research on what is going on in representation is both relevant and fills a wide gap in the literature. Because earlier research has failed to understand and explore the complexity of representation and its dynamics, I decided to open up these important questions in the hope that other researchers will engage with them and push the debate further. The claim-making approach that I have adopted has been criticised for focusing too much on representatives while failing to address the process of claim-reception. Concerned with the quality of representation, these arguments suggest that by putting too much emphasis on representatives’ constructions of the represented, the represented are given no independence to hold their representatives to account (Castiglione, 2012, p. 122, Severs, 2010). I agree, and indeed have argued throughout the thesis that the way audiences engage with the representative claims is an essential component of representative relations, but this does not diminish the importance of representative claims for the construction of both the representatives and the represented. Issues of audience reception remain to be studied in future research.