Parliamentary democracies are increasingly characterised by diverse constituencies with high levels of net migration. With the rise of anti-migrant sentiment, the question of how migrant communities are able to secure representation, despite their limited voting rights, has become an increasingly important question for representation scholars. We use the case study of EU citizens in the UK after 2019 to explore three different channels for unenfranchised migrants to secure representation—direct representation, mediated selection, and surrogate representation. Drawing on thirty-one interviews with MPs and their staff, combined with statistical analysis of Written Parliamentary Questions in the 2019–2024 parliament, we conclude that, while voting rights are preferable, unenfranchised groups are still able to access some form of parliamentary representation. MPs are both directly responsive to EU constituents’ interests in their behaviour, and the presence of EU citizens increases the likelihood of voters selecting pro-EU candidates. However, most of the representative activity comes from MPs who are already engaged in parliamentary policy networks on immigration and migrant rights.
Cooper, G. Networked Representation: Understanding the Processes of Political Advocacy for Refugees in the UK Select Committee system (Data Cleaning)
This paper's aim is to develop a richer qualitative understanding of how representation is experienced by the target constituent and the representative. It does so by examining the select committee system to understand the means and mechanisms by which refugees are represented in the UK parliament by examining the parliamentary networks that drive this process. It relies on qualitative interview data to triangulate ideas of how Refugee NGOs understand their relationship to formal parliamentary representation, MPs' conceptualisations of what it means to represent and how they perform this process, and how staff understand the structural institutional features that shape these representation processes and therefore networks. This account has emphasised the importance of institutional actor networks, as well as relationship and knowledge networks, for the shaping process of representation and highlights how these three closely related networks intersect in order to produce representation for refugees in the UK parliament.
Cooper, G. Re-measuring representation: How we should apply theory to the representation of unenfranchised citizens (data collection)
This paper makes the argument that in principle refugees can be normatively represented in the UK parliament, but any attempts to measure the presence of representation has thus far suffered from various measurement issues. This paper speaks to the heart of my thesis which is how do the unfranchised come to be represented in the UK Parliamentary system? It does this by evaluating the measurements traditionally used in empirical research, and generating a typology of these causal processes, to understand the ways in which representation has traditionally been studied and suggest that analysing these methods through a network lens is a more comprehensive way of understanding how the unfranchised come to be represented.
Cooper, G and Long, K. The Deliberative Marketplace: A Qualitative Social Network Analysis of local climate mini-publics. (Drafting stage)
This paper investigates the evolving landscape of local climate mini-publics (CMPs) in the United Kingdom through a social network analysis approach, exploring the dynamics that shape their design and delivery. This paper outlines the relevant literature on the industry or market that CMPs operate within, and the implications of this for those organisations implementing them. These theoretical investigations are embedded within an understanding of social network theory, which further illuminates the approach of this paper. The paper then moves on to the three levels of networks that operate within the marketplace of CMPs in the UK - an actor network, relationship network and finally, a knowledge network. Having laid out this analysis, the paper’s primary argument of the resistance of market pressures and commercialisation through certain actors' structural privilege is discussed.
Cooper G. “Where MPs sit in Social Networks Matter" LSE Blogs, February 2024
Cooper, G. "PSA and House of Commons Internship" PSA News, January 2025
My Research makes three sets of arguments on how the process of representing refugees occurs in the UK Parliament. First, my thesis begins by arguing that refugees can be normatively represented without the right to vote. Representation theory has traditionally relied on two important principles of the ‘non-objection’ criteria (Runciman, 2007) and of ‘authorisation’ (Castiglione, 2006; Castiglione and Warren, 2019; Montanaro, 2012; Saward, 2009). Traditionally democratic theorists have argued you have to meet these thresholds for representation claims to be legitimate. As a result, many would argue that refugees do not meet this criteria because they do not meet the objection criteria due to being unenfranchised, as well as often unaware of the representative claims being made on their behalf. This thesis argues that instead representation is a spectrum not an absolute, and by conceptualising representation on a scale of legitimacy, refugees can be legitimately represented without the right to vote. This argument therefore justifies the democratic representation of all unenfranchised groups within the UK parliament, without justifying non-democratic or authoritarian claims of representation.
Second, this thesis has created a typology of parliamentary representation and argued that this empirical framework is a more substantial way of measuring the representation of refugees in the UK parliament. This study has set out a framework for conceiving of and measuring representation building on the work of Siow (2023) and contributes empirically to the study of parliaments. By evaluating the measures that political scientists use to study this theoretical abstract, the gap between our understanding of what counts as representation and how we can empirically measure that has closed. Thus, whilst what constitutes as representation remains a contested concept in political theory tracing from J.S Mill's best form of government debates, to the constructivist turn in representation theory (Dish, 2019; Wolkenstein, 2024), this thesis has provided clarity on this
Finally, this thesis argues that studying MPs as isolated representative actors leads to a failure in understanding how representation works in practice in the UK Parliament. The solution provided by this thesis is to apply a social network approach to highlight how the relational structures of MP networks is shaping and characterising the presence of representation of refugees. By addressing the structures of representation, this thesis has highlighted how representative outputs occur in the UK parliament and has highlighted how representational outputs can occur without the right to vote but are also vulnerable to shifts in the network composition.