Morales Cerda, Natalia Paz; (2025) Rethinking Political Representation in Constitutional Democracies: A Socio-Legal Analysis of Chile’s 2021–2022 Gender Parity Convention. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This thesis provides a socio-legal analysis of political representation through a case study of Chile’s 2021–2022 Constitutional Convention, the first constitution-making body in the world to be constituted in accordance with the principle of gender parity. It investigates how political representation was conceptualised and experienced by female members of the Convention and explores the potential for reimagining representative relationships. Drawing on Hanna Pitkin’s typology, feminist political theory, and recent constructivist accounts, the study develops and critically engages with its own typology of juridical, inclusive, and embodied conceptions of representation, using Chilean constitutional democracy as a site to reflect on their limitations and possibilities for rearticulation. The analysis is based on a qualitative methodology combining grounded theory and case study techniques to offer a context-sensitive and inductive framework. It draws on interviews with female members of the Convention, whose representational practices illustrate both alignment with and departure from existing models. Three key dimensions –personalised trust, mutual recognition, and the educative role– emerged as central to how these actors navigated their institutional responsibilities and societal expectations. These findings reveal a relational, evolving conception of representation that resists reduction to static categories such as delegation or descriptive mirroring. At the same time, these practices reflect internal ambivalence, raising questions about their consistency, reach, and normative grounding within a constitutional framework. The thesis uses the Chilean case to interrogate how the role of the representative, the role of the represented, and the representative relationship itself are constructed and contested in moments of constitutional change. It situates this inquiry within the broader theoretical study of constitutional democracy, where tensions between institutional design, democratic legitimacy, and social mobilisation are brought to the fore. The analysis suggests that practices emerging from female representatives may open new perspectives on representation as a site of mutual formation, civic pedagogy, and contested claims to speak for others.

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