111 3 Third, the primacy of Muslim in-group favouritism underlines an important step in the continuingly relevant “identity-to-politics-link” (Lee, 2008). Future research should not only understand identity as a top-down category, but also ask respondents what they consider to be their in-group and to what extent they favour one in-group over the other. One cannot understand the relationship between identity and politics if one is not critical about what in-group, amongst many possible in-groups (Muslim, Moroccan, Dutch, Rotterdammer, Amsterdammer, immigrant), they favour. This research indicates that Muslim in-group favouritism is much more important than ethnic favouritism in understanding voting for DENK, which already shows that merely seeing citizens in terms of their migration background is improvident. Expanding the categories one can identify with even further might be a fruitful avenue for further research. Moreover, the importance of Muslim in-group favouritism also points towards what sets DENK apart from almost all political parties in Europe. Although the Netherlands has a particularly rich history of descriptive representation of ethnic minority politicians in parliament (Bloemraad, 2013: 659; Fernandes et al., 2016: 2), this does not mean that this always included proud and open Muslim politicians, as many party selectors opt for symbolic inclusion of Muslim politicians who do not profess their faith openly (Dancygier, 2017). For various reasons, not all Muslim politicians are always open about their faith (Aktürk and Katliarou, 2021: 392), while the parliamentarians of DENK have always been active advocates of Islam (Loukili, 2021a, 2021b). DENK thereby combines descriptive representation of Muslims with substantive representation. Mainstream parties struggle with dilemmas of inclusion (Dancygier, 2017): Left-wing parties are more inclined to (have voters who) value diversity, yet they fear adding Muslim politicians to their party lists will upset their voters who also value gender equality, freedom of expression and gay rights. They are therefore more likely to opt for representatives that do add to the diversity of their list, but who do not openly and unapologetically profess their Muslim faith (idem). DENK shows that the unique combination of descriptive and substantive representation (terminology from Pitkin, 1967) might enhance the extent to which voters feel represented and therefore are more likely to vote for in-group politicians. Future research on affinity voting should include variables on in-group favouritism, whilst also scrutinizing whether descriptive or substantive representation is driving voting.
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