Corinna Kroeber

• University of Salzburg

Prime ministers are the most powerful and visible politicians in established parliamentary democracies. But is this also true for post-communist Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)? Conventional wisdom suggests that prime ministers in CEE perform weakly because they lack political experience and operate in an extraordinarily difficult context, but thi...

Prime ministers are the most powerful and visible politicians in established parliamentary democracies. But is this also true for post-communist Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)? Conventional wisdom suggests that prime ministers in CEE perform weakly because they lack political experience and operate in an extraordinarily difficult context, but thi...

Prime ministers are the most powerful and visible politicians in established parliamentary democracies. But is this also true for post-communist Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)? Conventional wisdom suggests that prime ministers in CEE perform weakly because they lack political experience and operate in an extraordinarily difficult context, but thi...

Prime ministers are the most powerful and visible politicians in established parliamentary democracies. But is this also true for post-communist Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)? Conventional wisdom suggests that prime ministers in CEE perform weakly because they lack political experience and operate in an extraordinarily difficult context, but thi...

Prime ministers are the most powerful and visible politicians in established parliamentary democracies. But is this also true for post-communist Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)? Conventional wisdom suggests that prime ministers in CEE perform weakly because they lack political experience and operate in an extraordinarily difficult context, but thi...

Prime ministers are the most powerful and visible politicians in established parliamentary democracies. But is this also true for post-communist Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)? Conventional wisdom suggests that prime ministers in CEE perform weakly because they lack political experience and operate in an extraordinarily difficult context, but thi...

Prime ministers are the most powerful and visible politicians in established parliamentary democracies. But is this also true for post-communist Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)? Conventional wisdom suggests that prime ministers in CEE perform weakly because they lack political experience and operate in an extraordinarily difficult context, but thi...

Prime ministers are the most powerful and visible politicians in established parliamentary democracies. But is this also true for post-communist Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)? Conventional wisdom suggests that prime ministers in CEE perform weakly because they lack political experience and operate in an extraordinarily difficult context, but thi...

Prime ministers are the most powerful and visible politicians in established parliamentary democracies. But is this also true for post-communist Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)? Conventional wisdom suggests that prime ministers in CEE perform weakly because they lack political experience and operate in an extraordinarily difficult context, but thi...

Prime ministers are the most powerful and visible politicians in established parliamentary democracies. But is this also true for post-communist Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)? Conventional wisdom suggests that prime ministers in CEE perform weakly because they lack political experience and operate in an extraordinarily difficult context, but thi...

Prime ministers are the most powerful and visible politicians in established parliamentary democracies. But is this also true for post-communist Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)? Conventional wisdom suggests that prime ministers in CEE perform weakly because they lack political experience and operate in an extraordinarily difficult context, but thi...

Prime ministers are the most powerful and visible politicians in established parliamentary democracies. But is this also true for post-communist Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)? Conventional wisdom suggests that prime ministers in CEE perform weakly because they lack political experience and operate in an extraordinarily difficult context, but thi...

Prime ministers are the most powerful and visible politicians in established parliamentary democracies. But is this also true for post-communist Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)? Conventional wisdom suggests that prime ministers in CEE perform weakly because they lack political experience and operate in an extraordinarily difficult context, but thi...

This study analyzes whether the personality traits of Members of Parliament (MPs) affect their attitudes toward the representation of gender equality issues. Based on the Big Five personality traits, we argue that Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness shape MPs' positions toward gender equality policies through two different pathways. The fi...

Committee assignments continue to be gendered with men having higher chances than women to be appointed to the most visible, resourceful and influential committees. I contribute to a better understanding of this phenomenon by investigating to what extent women in parliamentary party groups push for gender parity in committee assignments. The empiri...

This article is the first to show that gender shapes the degree to which legislators use formal mechanisms to oversee government activities. Extensive scholarly work has analysed the use of oversight instruments, especially regarding who monitors whom. Whether, how, and why the conformity of men and women with institutional roles differs, has not y...

The interaction of the legislative and executive is gendered in nature. Gender shapes what actors in these two institutions demand from each other. This pattern is visible, for instance, in the distinct policy priorities of women and men in parliament (e.g., Allen and Childs 2019; Bäck and Debus 2019; Lowande, Ritchie, and Lauterbach 2019) and in t...

This article sheds light on the obstacles that women face as members of the government by answering the questions: How does the sex of ministers shape the way MPs’ assess the quality of their work? And, how does this relationship differ depending on the political ideology of MPs? We argue that legislators assess the competencies of women ministers...

Extensive scholarly work engages with the growing number of women in legislatures around the world and highlights their role as advocates of women’s interests during parliamentary decision-making processes. This article sheds light on the reactions of men MPs (members of parliament) to this trend by uncovering how women's numerical strength in part...

Prime ministers (PMs) significantly contribute to making parliamentary democracy work, but cabinet reshuffles can undermine the PM's ability to perform successfully. New ministers may have less policy expertise, intensify intra-cabinet struggles and hamper the control of government bureaucracy. This article explores the relationship between cabinet...

This chapter studies the relationship between party support for environmental issues and women in party offices. Following the ‘Politics of Presence’-argument (Phillips 1995), I argue that the gender gap in policy preferences towards the environment will motivate woman politicians to lobby for changes in party positions. I expect that parties led b...

Ministerial portfolios that promise high status, broad public visibility, and extensive financial and personnel resources continue to be men's domains. In this article, we shed light on gender inequality in ministerial selection processes by studying the duration from a minister's original appointment as a member of cabinet until he or she receives...

Even though Prime Ministers (PMs) are the central actors in parliamentary democracies, little comparative research explores what makes them perform successfully in office. This article investigates how the political careers of PMs affect their performance. For this purpose, we make use of a unique expert survey covering 131 cabinets in eleven Centr...

This article investigates how the sex of party heads impacts party positions and uncovers that parties led by a woman modify their stances on sociocultural but not economic debates. I argue that this pattern is a consequence of dissimilar gender gaps in policy preferences across the two ideological dimensions at the elite level. The empirical evide...

Ministerial portfolios that promise high status, broad public visibility, and extensive financial and personnel resources continue to be men’s domains. In this article, we shed light on gender inequality in ministerial selection processes by studying the duration between the original appointment as a member of cabinet until receiving responsibility...

In this article, we introduce a unique data set containing all written communication published by the German Bundestag between 1949 and 2017. Increasing numbers of scholars make use of protocols of parliamentary speeches, parliamentary questions or the texts of legislative drafts in various fields of comparative politics including representation, r...

The concept of career, while ubiquitous in elite research, has hardly received any comprehensive analytical treatment in the study of political executives. This chapter will summarize and develop the basic theoretical and methodological approaches as well as empirical findings of studies investigating political careers of cabinet members in democra...

Does the gender of prime ministers and cabinet ministers influence cabinet duration? We argue that the risk for early termination of cabinets decreases with women’s presence in the executive. As scholars of social psychology indicate, women apply more consensual and compromise-oriented conflict resolution strategies. Disputes between or within gove...

Which social characteristics of voters reduce the chances to waste a vote? Surprisingly, little is known about the commonalities and differences of citizens who do (not) make their vote count. In this article, we argue that levels of education and income, gender and age shape the likelihood to waste a vote through two channels: the voting motivatio...

This article investigates the representation of women on the three subnational levels of government in Germany from 1995 to 2013, drawing on a novel data collection. Although longitudinal trends point to an overall increase on the national level, we find large variations—both upturns and downturns—from one election to the next on the state, distric...

This article provides the necessary tools to advance comparative research studying the substantive representation of ethnic minorities and women. Firstly, I clarify how the various indicators for individual representatives’ and parliaments’ considerateness of the interests of traditionally excluded groups used in earlier (mostly single-country) stu...

Although there are considerably more men than women in most parliaments around the world, we know little about whether male-dominated legislatures neglect women’s policy preferences. Our article addresses this gap by analysing the congruence of policy preferences between women, men and their elected representatives. We endeavour to answer two quest...

A large set of research argues that policy responsiveness towards excluded societal factions such as minorities of immigrant origin improves through the presence of group members in parliaments because they bring forward different perspectives during parliamentary debates. This article challenges the straightforwardness of this relationship by demo...

Women’s representation is highest in local assemblies in some countries, while others display the largest share of female office-holders at the national level. Drawing on a new data set mapping the representation of women at all four levels of government in Germany during the 2000s, we argue that differences in party system configurations across ec...

Women's representation in elected assemblies across varying levels of government is often theorised to be shaped as a pyramid, with the highest proportion of women at the local level, where barriers to entry are minimal. Mapping women's representation in Germany, however, we find contradictory evidence, since the pyramid is spun on its head. Lookin...

This paper analyzes the effects of electoral rules for reserved seats in parliaments on representatives' ability and motivation to represent minorities. While most previous studies treat reserved seats as a uniform mechanism, the author argues that we can distinguish varieties along two attributes: electorate and candidacy. Limiting electorate mean...