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Becoming a Party of Choice: a Tool for Mainstreaming Diversity

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Becoming a Party of Choice: a Tool for Mainstreaming Diversity Migration Policy Group Becoming a Party of Choice: a Tool for Mainstreaming Diversity Mapping of Political Party Diversity Initiatives in France, Germany and the United Kingdom By Alexandre Kirchberger with Katy Kefferpütz, Jan Niessen and Anne Friel May 2011 Share this report: Table of Contents PREFACE .................................................................................................................................................. 3 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................................... 5 1. SCOPE OF THE STUDY: POLITICAL PARTIES ................................................................................. 9 1.1. France ...................................................................................................................................... 9 1.2. Germany ................................................................................................................................ 10 1.3. United Kingdom ..................................................................................................................... 11 2. ETHNIC DIVERSITY WITHIN PARTIES .......................................................................................... 13 2.1. Membership diversity............................................................................................................ 13 2.2. Diversity of candidates (national elections) .......................................................................... 13 2.3. Diversity of representatives .................................................................................................. 15 2.4. Diversity within party decision-making structures and ministerial posts ............................. 17 2.5. Diversity of senior management and general staff members ............................................... 18 3. PARTY STANCE ON DIVERSITY ................................................................................................... 19 3.1. France .................................................................................................................................... 19 3.2. Germany ................................................................................................................................ 22 3.3. United Kingdom ..................................................................................................................... 24 4. DIVERSITY INITIATIVES WITHIN PARTIES ................................................................................... 27 4.1. Diversity structures ............................................................................................................... 27 4.2. Electorate .............................................................................................................................. 32 4.3. Members ............................................................................................................................... 33 4.4. Candidates and elected representatives ............................................................................... 35 4.5. Recruitment and professional development......................................................................... 42 4.6. Procurement .......................................................................................................................... 43 4.7. Leadership, boards and committees ..................................................................................... 43 4.8. Recognition/accreditation/certification for diversity efforts ................................................ 44 5. OTHER NOTABLE POLITICAL PARTICIPATION INITIATIVES ........................................................ 45 5.1. France .................................................................................................................................... 45 5.2. Germany ................................................................................................................................ 46 5.3. United Kingdom ................................................................................................................... 477 6. CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................. 49 2 Preface The Migration Policy Group has undertaken a pilot project aiming to encourage a more holistic approach to the mainstreaming of diversity into political party processes across the political spectrum. This paper maps the diversity initiatives of three key political parties/groupings in each of the target countries (France, Germany and the UK). In the first section, a brief overview is given of each of the political parties, while the second section examines the diversity of each party’s membership, candidates, elected and appointed representatives, leadership and staff members. Section 3 uses, where possible, political parties’ constitutions, manifestos, web materials and news releases to provide an overview of the extent to which the issue of diversity, in particular within parties themselves, has made its way into party discourse, while section 4 gives details of the parties’ diversity initiatives. Section 5 provides details of some of the many valuable political representation- related diversity initiatives undertaken by governmental bodies, NGOs and parties not featured in the earlier sections of the paper within the project’s three target countries. The conclusion can be found in section 6. As in any study focusing on non-EU immigrants and their descendents, it is vital to establish the meaning of the terms used, as this can differ – not only by country but also by data source. For the purpose of this paper, the term ‘with migration backgrounds’ (commonly used in Germany) is employed interchangeably with ‘ethnic minorities’, ‘Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME)’ (both commonly used in the UK), ‘visible minorities’ (commonly used in France) and ‘diverse communities’ to mean non-European immigrants and their descendents that are identifiable as such by their appearance and/or name: the ‘migrant voices’ mentioned in the project’s title. ‘Migrants’ is only used to refer to first generation non-European immigrants. When data is used from sources which employ the same or similar terms differently (as in Germany, where ‘migration background’ may refer to ethnic German immigrants or Aussiedler, who receive different treatment and experience different problems, or to non-German EU nationals), this will be specified. When it was not possible to access comparative external data relating to the representation of people with migration backgrounds within political parties, and as a result of time constraints preventing more in-depth research on the basis of place of birth (individuals’, parents’ and grandparents’), the author used information from brief surveys of party representatives on the basis of name and appearance. While this approach is clearly imperfect, it is useful to the extent that it is both relatively quick and responds to the grounds upon which discrimination is most likely to occur, and is therefore employed in similar circumstances by organisations including the Conseil représentatif des associations noires (CRAN) in France. The main source of information for this paper was political party websites (in particular party constitutions, manifestos and policy papers where available), in addition to valuable suggestions by members of the project’s Advisory Council including key publications such as the Report of the House of Commons’ Speaker’s Conference on Parliamentary Representation, published in 2010, and the 2009 paper ‘Ouvrir la politique à la diversité’ by Eric Keslassy for the Institut Montaigne. The reports of the EU-funded EMILIE and POLITIS projects, in addition to Bird, Saalfeld and Wüst’s 2011 publication The Political Representation of Immigrants and Minorities: Voters, parties and parliaments in liberal democracies, the European Network Against Racism (ENAR)’s September 2010 publication ‘Political participation & representation of ethnic minorities: from wishful thinking to reality?’ and information sourced from the European Web Site on Integration,1 were also very useful. 3 The research for this document was concluded at the end of May 2011 and therefore its contents reflect the situation as of that date. 4 Introduction As the Council of Europe’s 2010 Resolution on the representativity of parliaments underlines, the full and equal participation of all members of society in the political decision-making process is crucial to the legitimacy of democratic political systems.2 In the context of the increasing diversity of European societies, the importance of the full participation of diverse groups, particularly migrants and those with migration backgrounds, in political decision-making processes has become a high-profile issue in recent years. An issue that has been subject to particular scrutiny within the political participation debate has been that of parliamentary representativity. The United Kingdom, has seen a significant increase in parliamentary diversity following the General Election in May 2010, the publication of the final report of the Speaker’s Conference on Parliamentary Representation, set up in November 2008 by the House of Commons to “consider, and make recommendations for rectifying, the disparity between the representation of women, ethnic minorities and disabled people in the House of
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