Defending exclusion: Combating overrepresentation in democratic legislatures

Conventionally, feminist and democratic scholars have viewed the inclusion of marginalized groups as the primary means to combat the overrepresentation of dominant groups in legislatures. In this article, I argue that insofar as ingroup favoritism and closed networks entrench biased rules and practices, inclusion alone is insufficient to challenge mechanisms that perpetuate overrepresentation. To address this, I propose adopting exclusion politics to promote representational equity. Contrary to the general view that exclusion is always anti-democratic, I maintain that exclusion can serve as a power-limiting tool to promote democratic equality. Democratic parties can exclude overrepresented members from their nomination of safe seats or cap their number on the leadership boards to limit their influence in the legislative process. Finally, I argue that a proper exclusion device needs to pass intersectional scrutiny and should only be used when structural inequalities are identified.