Amy C. AlexanderUniversity of Gothenburg | GU · Department of Political Science
Amy C. Alexander
PhD
About
47
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Introduction
Amy C. Alexander (Ph.D.) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg and a Research Fellow with Performance of Democracies (PERDEM) Project at the Quality of Government Institute. She received her doctorate in 2011 at the University of California, Irvine where she was a Jack and Suzanne Peltason Fellow of the Center for the Study of Democracy. Her research focuses on the sources of gender equality and its effects on political representation, social values, democratization and governance across the globe.
Additional affiliations
November 2012 - November 2014
Publications
Publications (47)
The Cool Water condition is a climatic configuration that combines periodically frosty winters with mildly warm summers under the ubiquitous accessibility of fresh water. Historically, it embodied opportunity endowments that weakened fertility pressures, resulting in household formation patterns that empowered women and reduced gender inequality. R...
This paper takes one of the first, direct approaches to understanding which factors shape which attitudes towards gender equality among political elites. We examine support for gender equality among legislators in 13 Latin American countries, using 10 new questions from the 2015–2018 wave of the Latin American elites survey (PELA). We argue that le...
While Western democracies have become increasingly gender-equal over the past decades, recent research documents a backlash against gender equality in the form of rising modern sexism. Previous research shows that modern sexism predicts political attitudes and voting behavior that are detrimental to women's empowerment and liberalism. Yet, we know...
This study offers a multidimensional analysis of individuals’ self-assessments of their masculine and feminine characteristics to better understand variation from more to less binary gender identities. Through gender’s co-constitution along with various social localities, we expect that a number of socio-political factors differentiate individuals’...
Public debates depict Arabs as opposed to gender equality because of Islam. However, there may be substantial numbers of Arab Muslims who do support feminist issues and who do so while being highly attached to Islam. This study explains why certain Arabs support feminism while remaining strongly religious (“Muslim feminists”). We propose that some...
In the Print published article, the funding source was missed in the acknowledgements section. The correct acknowledgement is given below:
Gender Stereotyping and Chivalry in International Negotiations: A Survey Experiment in the Council of the European Union — ADDENDUM - Daniel Naurin, Elin Naurin, Amy Alexander
Is there a gender effect on attitudes toward gender equality among political elites? There is a general assumption that women have more progressive opinions than men, especially when it comes to gender equality, but no major empirical studies have been made to verify this theory among political elites. This paper aims at identifying the reasons why...
Gender stereotypes—stylized expectations of individuals’ traits and capabilities based on their gender—may affect the behavior of diplomats and the processes of international negotiations. In a survey experiment in the Council of the European Union, we find that female representatives behaving stereotypically weak and vulnerable may trigger a chiva...
Supplemenatry_Table – Supplemental material for Got Milk? How Freedoms Evolved From Dairying Climates
In global value research, Muslim-majority countries emerge not only as consistently more patriarchal but also as a rather homogeneous cultural cluster to that effect. We, however, know little about the variation within Muslim-majority countries in these values through comparative analysis of subnational units. This limits the possibility of identif...
The roots and routes of cultural evolution are still a mystery. Here, we aim to lift a corner of that veil by illuminating the deep origins of encultured freedoms, which evolved through centuries-long processes of learning to pursue and transmit values and practices oriented toward autonomous individual choice. Analyzing a multitude of data sources...
This article examines whether the presence of a woman head of state or government is associated with enhanced symbolic empowerment. We assess this through gauging support for female leaders and increased political engagement among citizens, both women and men. Working with the most recent public opinion data available, covering the years from 2010...
This chapter returns to the definition of women’s political empowerment and the questions that motivated this volume. We assess the contributions of the chapters herein. We offer key takeaway points from these and call for greater connections to the established literature, particularly in development studies and advanced by international organizati...
This chapter establishes definitions of key concepts such as women’s political empowerment and establishes the theoretical and empirical goals of this volume. We identify the complexities in defining women’s global political empowerment, critically review prior research on elites and masses to develop definitional and measurement goals, and tie wom...
Engaging in politics through various activities is an important way for citizens to empower themselves politically. Using public opinion data (World Values Survey 2010–2014), Alexander and Coffé measure gender gaps in mainstream and activist modes of engagement, as well as more general attitudes towards women’s role in politics, thereby focusing on...
A growing literature evidences a strong link between higher levels of gender equality and lower levels of corruption. Much of this research evaluates the link through a focus on the impact of women’s inclusion in political office holding. Few studies turn to the analysis of mass attitudes for greater understanding of this relationship or larger lin...
This volume brings together leading gender and politics scholars to assess how women’s political empowerment can best be conceptualized and measured on a global scale. It argues that women’s political empowerment is a fundamental process of transformation for benchmarking and understanding all political empowerment gains across the globe. Chapters...
Over several thousand years since the emergence of states, societies remained entrapped in cycles of despotic power building and decay—until civilization matured in areas with a cool and rainy climate, what we call the “cool water” (CW) condition. In CW-areas, agriculture and urbanization at a level known since millennia from the pristine civilizat...
This article presents evidence for a rising emancipatory spirit, across generations and around the world, in a life domain in which religion hitherto blocked emancipatory gains: sexual freedoms. We propose an explanation of rising emancipative values that integrates several approaches into a single idea—the utility ladder of freedoms. Specifically,...
Analyzing the changes to gender equality in the wake of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, this manuscript evaluates whether civil conflict creates new openings for women’s empowerment. Recently, the literature has considered civil conflict a potentially powerful, transformative force in women’s social and political inclusion. Given Egypt’s comparativel...
Although women's access to political power has increased tremendously, nowhere are women equal to men in their influence over and exercise of political authority. Scholarship on women's political empowerment is uneven and incomplete. This article interrogates 'women's political empowerment', considering its definition, measurement, and application....
A powerful evidence base identifies human trafficking as a symptom of gender inequality and, as such, a women’s interest issue. The women and politics literature has long posited and evaluated whether there is a link between female descriptive representation and attention to women’s issues. We evaluate whether increases in women in leading politica...
Some scholars find that top-down improvements in women's rights increase societies' value of gender equality at the grassroots, creating pressure for more adoption and enforcement. Others claim that the extension of women's rights is strongly dependent on value change at the grassroots, operating largely as a bottom-up process. We find that top-dow...
This article presents evidence for a rising emancipatory spirit, across generations and around the world, in a life domain in which traditional family, fertility and sex (FFS) norms have been most resistant to emancipatory gains since the ages: reproductive freedoms. We propose an explanation of rising emancipative values that integrates several th...
As a core principle of democratic theory, political scientists stress the importance of more inclusive and diverse elected bodies (Mansbridge 1999; Phillips 1995; Pitkin 1967; Williams 1998; Young 2000). A large portion of that literature discusses the positive symbolic effects of elected bodies when they come closer to mirroring the population fro...
Responding to recent criticism, this article demonstrates that the Index of Effective Democracy (EDI) developed by Welzel and Inglehart (2008) has scale properties that are fully consistent with the theoretical premises underlying the index’s construction. Empirically, it is shown that the EDI differs from the other existing measures of democracy a...
Against recent criticism, this article demonstrates that the effective democracy index (EDI) has scale properties that are fully consistent with the normative premises of the index's construction logic. Empirically, it is shown that the EDI deviates from all other indices of democracy in a perfectly intended way that incorporates substantiating qua...
Evidence that Muslims support patriarchal values more than non-Muslims is abundant but the nature of this evidence is contested. The ‘cultural’ interpretation suggests that patriarchal values are an inherent element of Muslim identity. The ‘structural’ interpretation holds that patriarchal values reside in structural characteristics and have little...
Few studies consider the effect of selection procedures on women's attainment of mayoral office. This article begins to fill this gap through analysis of more than 100 cities in California. The results show that selection method of mayor by popular vote exerts a substantial negative effect on whether a woman holds the office of mayor. The study the...
The core idea inspiring democracy is to empower people. To measure democracy in ways that capture its empowering nature, one must focus on popular rights and take into account rule of law as a state quality that makes these rights effective. Based on this premise, an index of "effective democracy," tested for 150 states, best represents the empower...
In cross-national research, few studies analyse the influence of subjective beliefs on women's empowerment, and when they do, they treat subjective beliefs as an alternative explanation that rivals the influence of objective opportunities, such as the rise of knowledge societies. Under the theory of 'belief-mediated social change', we disagree with...
In cross-national research, few studies analyse the influence of subjective beliefs on women's empowerment, and when they do, they treat subjective beliefs as an alternative explanation that rivals the influence of objective opportunities, such as the rise of knowledge societies. Under the theory of 'belief-mediated social change', we disagree with...
Scholars widely agree on a profound link between Islam and patriarchal values. Yet, the nature of this link is contested. The cultural interpretation suggests that the link between Islam and patriarchal values reflects a genuine bias in the value system of Muslims. The structural interpretation holds that the link between Islam and patriarchal valu...
Is there gender discrimination in academia? Analysis of interviews with 80 female faculty at a large Research One university—the most comprehensive qualitative data set generated to date—suggests both individual and institutional discrimination persists. Overt discrimination has largely given way to less obvious but still deeply entrenched inequiti...
The core idea inspiring democracy is to empower people. To measure democracy in ways that capture its empowering nature one must focus on popular rights and take into account rule of law as a state quality that makes these rights effective. Based on this premise, we portray an index of "effective democracy" and test its qualities against six altern...
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Projects
Projects (2)
The project’s objectives is to analyze the relation between how democracies are organized and how they perform in generating human well-being, curb corruption and handling the public finances.
The project was financed by an Advanced Research Grant to Professor Bo Rothstein from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (339571 PERDEM) and hosted by the Quality of Government Institute (University of Gothenburg, Sweden).
Throughout several thousand years of human history, societies remained entrapped in cycles of despotic power building and decay—until civilization matured in areas with a cool and rainy climate, what we call the “cool water” (CW) condition. In CW-areas, agriculture and urbanization at a level known since millenia from the pristine civilizations of the Middle East, the Mediterranean, Asia and Mesoamerica emerged late. It only happened during late Medieval times with the rise of pre-industrial capitalism in Northwestern Europe, and somewhat later in Japan during the Tokugawa era.
Since then, the evolution of civilization suddenly accelerated to an unprecedented speed, proliferating technological, organizational and cultural innovations of a previously unparalleled scale. In addition to this massive acceleration, the civilization process took a sharp turn into a whole new direction. Indeed, the lead theme of the civilization process turned from perfecting mass exploitation into advancing human empowerment—a process that prolongs and improves human lives and places more choice into people's own hands.
After human empowerment started in some of the Old World's CW-areas, the process spread into the CW-areas of the New World. This happened with the settlement of European farmers in North America, Australia and New Zealand. From then on, the CW-areas in both the Old and the New World continued to drive human empowerment towards consecutive emancipatory outcomes, from human rights to civil liberties to electoral democracy.
But until very recently, human empowerment remained the privilege of a small segment of the world population in a triple sense. First, human empowerment only advanced in CW-areas, whereas tropical, sub-tropical and arid regions fell victim to the most exploitative forms of colonialism. Second, in the CW-territories of the New World, the indigenous populations have been decimated, marginalized and excluded from the benefits of human empowerment. Third, even where human empowerment advanced with highest speed, women remained discriminated relative to men.
Since several decades, however, these limitations are quickly fading under the rising tide of women’s emancipation and sexual liberation around the world. This emancipatory breakthrough now makes women part of human empowerment and spreads the process into areas that lack the geo-climatic features of the CW-condition. Hence, human empowerment is about to feminize and to globalize at the same time.
Our new book examines the deep causes of this civilizational turn, analyzing the role of geography, genes, disease, agriculture, language, religion, statehood, colonialism, law traditions and other institutional factors, such as emerging democracy. The evidence shows that, among multiple possible paths towards human empowerment today, there is only one narrow route of significance. The very narrowness of this route explains why it took civilization so long to reach towards human empowerment. The narrow route was entered when urban markets began to flourish under the CW-condition. Urbanization under the CW-condition--and only under this condition--encouraged a transition in people's lifetime investment from reproduction to learning. This transition has been further supported as states began to provide public schools and to promote universal education. With rising mass-level education, an enlightenment process set in that mobilized the populations’ cognitive potentials and their aspirations for emancipatory rights—the ingredients of human empowerment. In the era of accelerating globalization, human empowerment escapes with increasing speed its gender bias as well as its initial limitation to CW-areas. After outlining these insights, this book also discusses policy implications for development aid and addresses the resistance of reactionary forces, in particular authoritarian nationalism and religious fundamentalism.
