Exploring Electoral Discrimination through an Ethics of Office Accountability

Ceva, Emanuela; Stojanovic, Nenad

doi:10.1080/00344893.2025.2515587

Scientific article

English

Exploring Electoral Discrimination through an Ethics of Office Accountability

Contributors

Ceva, Emanuela

; Stojanovic, Nenad

Published in

Representation

First online date

2025-06-19

Abstract

Electoral discrimination (ED) in democratic settings occurs when majority voters, influenced by their personal, cultural, or religious biases, favour majority candidates, consequently diminishing support for minority candidates. We discuss ED’s alignment with a normative ethics of voting grounded in office accountability, asking whether ED is compatible with the democratic mandate of voters. Our normative discussion shows that ED is compatible with the open terms of a voter’s mandate. We recognise, however, that there are empirically grounded reasons not to overlook the negative repercussions of ED for minority candidates’ political participation. We address these concerns by exploring how institutional design could mitigate the negative outcomes of ED, fostering critical reflection on the democratic electoral process

Keywords

Democratic studies
Democracy
Elections
Discrimination
Electoral discrimination
Ethics of voting
Accountability<

UNIGE affiliation entities

Funding

Swiss National Science Foundation - Racist voters and minority candidates: a conceptual puzzle and an empirical challenge with a focus on the Swiss case [154983]

Citation (ISO format)

CEVA, Emanuela, STOJANOVIC, Nenad. Exploring Electoral Discrimination through an Ethics of Office Accountability. In: Representation, 2025. doi: 10.1080/00344893.2025.2515587

Article (Published version)

CC BY-4.0

Identifiers

PID : unige:190482
DOI : 10.1080/00344893.2025.2515587

Additional URL for this publication

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/00344893.2025.2515587?needAccess=true

Journal ISSN

0034-4893

22views

141downloads

Creation

09/06/2025 11:52:42

First validation

16/01/2026 11:53:15

Update

16/01/2026 11:53:15

Status update

16/01/2026 11:53:15

Last indexation

16/01/2026 11:53:16

Exploring Electoral Discrimination through an Ethics of Office Accountability

Contributors

Published in

First online date

Abstract

Keywords

UNIGE affiliation entities

Funding

Citation (ISO format)

Main files (1)

Identifiers

Additional URL for this publication

Journal ISSN

Technical informations

Creation

First validation

Update

Status update

Last indexation