The political behaviour of minority councillors across London boroughs: comparing Tower Hamlets, Newham, and Hackney

Abstract

Western European countries, Canada, and the United States are host to numerous minorities. These groups may identify themselves by their religion, ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation, disabilities, and their immigrant status. Most are socio-economically and politically disadvantaged. As such, minority groups pressure their governments to accommodate their particular needs. Yet the responses of Western democracies to minority demands vary significantly. Some countries, like Britain, take a pluralistic approach and strive to accommodate minority needs. Others, such as France, pursue an assimilationist strategy and do not grant group rights. What is more puzzling is that government responsiveness to minority interests varies significantly even within countries. This presents an intriguing research problem; what explains the variation in government responsiveness to minority demands? In this chapter, we explore this puzzle by analyzing the factors that influence local government responsiveness to Muslim demands in London. Although Muslims in the West is a flourishing research area, there arefew rigorous studies on the political representation of Muslims in Western Europe. Moreover, most studies focus on ethnicity rather than the sociopolitical Muslim identity. Hence, this chapter investigates the dynamics of effective Muslim political representation in a liberal democracy. We define effective political representation as high levels of congruence between policy preferences of voters and elected officials. These research questions are significant for a number of reasons. First, there are an estimated 15-20 million Muslims living in the EU, and close to 3 million of whom reside in Britain (Open Society Institute 2010). Recurring riots, violent backlashes and increasing religious extremism demonstrate that the accommodation of Muslim minorities is a pressing issue for European governments. Dovi (2007: 5) argues that the primary goal of a democracy is resolving conflicts fairly, which ensures its legitimacy and stability in the eyes of its citizens; ‘For if a disgruntled minority or majority holds that democratic institutions are unfair, then such groups are likely to employ undemocratic practices – for example, violence – to settletheir political conflicts’. Hence, the sociopolitical integration of Muslims is of considerable importance for the future of British civic life. Currently, there are ten Muslims in the House of Commons, eight in theHouse of Lords, and three in the European Parliament representing Britain. More strikingly, since 1980, the number of ethnic minority city councillors in Britain increased by more than 700 per cent.1 As of January 2010, we estimated that there are approximately 146 Muslim councillors (thirty-six of whom are women) in London. Yet the number of Muslim councillors and government responsiveness to minority needs vary drastically across local councils. The aim of this chapter is to explore which factors facilitate or hinder effective Muslim political representation in Britain, and how representation styles of Muslim elected officials shape these factors. To this end, we study the political incorporation, party fragmentation, experiences and perceptions of Muslim councillors in London as well as their impact on government responsiveness to minority needs. In particular, we investigate whether the increasing number of Muslim councillors in Britain leads to substantive representation of Muslim interests. We argue that descriptive representation of minorities leads to improved government responsiveness to minority interests contingent on the percentage of minority representatives, the level of their party fragmentation and political incorporation, and the electoral competitiveness of the district. We evaluate the specific process of their interaction through comparativeanalyses of the London Boroughs of Tower Hamlets, Newham, and Hackney, while also investigating the role of representational styles of Muslim councillors on their political effectiveness. The findings suggest that:a Muslim identity has become strong and politicised in Britain and shapes political behaviour.