In this mentorship program, Professor Mary Stegmaier of the University of Virginia and I work on the bureaucratic and political representation of women and minorities in Eastern Europe. The project pursues three objectives. First, we seek to describe the main characteristics of representation in the post-communist states of Eastern Europe. In so doing, we primarily focus on Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and the Slovak Republic. Second, we will elaborate a theoretical framework for explaining the determinants of representation in both the political and bureaucratic arena. In this context, particular attention will be paid to whether the successor parties of the old regime, i.e. the communist parties, display significantly different representation patterns vis-à-vis the ‘new political parties. In the third and final step, we will test the theoretical arguments on the basis of original empirical data.
