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Rising to the Top: Gender, Political Performance, and Party Leadership in Parliamentary Democracies
Abstract
Party leaders are the main actors controlling campaign strategies, policy agendas, and government formation in advanced parliamentary democracies. Little is known, however, about gender and party leadership. This article examines gendered leadership patterns across 71 political parties in 11 parliamentary democracies between 1965 and 2013. It shows that men and women have different access to, and experiences in, party leadership and that these gendered political opportunity structures are shaped by parties' political performances. Women are more likely to initially come to power in minor opposition parties and those that are losing seat share. Once selected for the position, female leaders are more likely to retain office when their parties gain seats, but they are also more likely to leave the post when faced with an unfavorable trajectory. Together, these results demonstrate that prospective female leaders are playing by a different (and often more demanding) set of rules than their male counterparts.
... Leadership styles are relatively stable and deeply rooted in personal and professional value structures; men and women have different experiences in gendered political opportunity structures (e.g. O'Brien 2015). A leader's identity as a woman, gender stereotypes, and gender role expectations likely influence how a woman deals with unexpected circumstances such as the pandemic. ...
... Due to the uncertainty and lack of consensus, the success of crisis management depends on the degree that it meets citizen expectations and their willingness to comply, as well as a leader's inclination to take responsibility and their ability to manage blame for decisions (Boin et al. 2005(Boin et al. , 2010Brändström and Kuipers 2003). 1 The distribution of power and representation is endogenous in that they determine women's emergence, gendered political opportunities to access power, and leadership effectiveness (e.g. Acemoglu et al., 2005;O'Brien 2015;Ladam, Harden, and Windett 2018). However, it remains unclear how democracy and representation encourage (or discourage) women to demonstrate their gendered leadership characteristics. ...
... Studies reported the difference in women's access to leadership between parliamentary systems and presidential systems (e.g. Jalalzai and Krook 2010;O'Brien 2015). Jalalzai and Krook (2010) found that women served more often as a prime minister in parliamentary systems than a president in presidential systems with masculine features. ...
This article investigates whether and how gendered leadership makes a difference in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. The country-level variances in the initial trajectories provide a unique comparative setting that allows us to examine the link between leadership and performance, moderated by institutional contexts – democracy and representation. Using daily panel data over the first half of the year 2020 across OECD countries, I find that women-led countries show epidemiologic patterns different from male-led countries. The effect of gendered leadership was contingent on the maturity of democracy and the degree of gender representation in both parliament and bureaucracy.
... Therefore, it is not only important to examine the rules, norms and procedures at both a formal and informal level, but the interplay between the two. Research focusing on the gendered dimensions of political opportunity structures is, therefore, required to look beyond the codified party rules to chart women's access to high office and comprehend the interaction between formal and informal dimensions (O'Brien, 2015;Sahin-Mencutek, 2016;Verge and Claveria, 2018). ...
... Alongside an awareness of the hidden life of institutions, any analysis of gendered opportunity structures also requires sensitivity to context (Kenny and Mackay, 2009). Comparative research on female party leadership reveals significant variation in women's access to positions of power and accounts for the impact that institutional and cultural variations may have (Caul, 2001;Kittilson, 2006;O'Brien, 2015). Political parties are subject to various endogenous and exogenous factors that can either restrict or open up women's access to positions of leadership. ...
... In terms of ideology, left-wing political parties have traditionally been presented as more receptive to calls for greater gender equality and interventionist measures to facilitate the selection of women candidates than those on the right (O'Neill and Stewart, 2009). However, a classic left-right distinction obscures other ideological factors and, therefore, fails to sufficiently explain women's political recruitment (Norris, 1995;O'Brien, 2015). The influence of party ideology is further complicated in cases with ethno-national divisions, as in Northern Ireland. ...
The office of political party leader remains one that women rarely occupy. In the largest comparative study of party leadership to date, only 10.8% were women. One region which has made significant advances in this area is Northern Ireland. Since 2015, the two largest parties, Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist Party, have experienced a rapid feminisation of their leadership. Such a development is particularly remarkable given Northern Ireland’s historically poor record on gender equality. This article explores the puzzle of gendered leadership change in Northern Ireland to reveal that the transition was primarily facilitated through the parties’ informal practices rather than embedded structural change. In doing so, it demonstrates the relative importance of party- and system-level factors on women’s political presence. As a power-sharing democracy, this case also provides comparative insights for those interested in addressing persistently low levels of female representation in post-conflict settings.
... For instance, several studies indicate that female ministers and prime ministers tend to have higher levels of education and experience in other political offices compared with men Jalalzai 2013, 81-82;Müller-Rommel and Vercesi 2017;Verge and Astudillo 2018). Furthermore, to survive in office, female party leaders have to be more successful in elections than their male colleagues (O'Brien 2015). In this sense, longer duration in less prestigious positions constitutes another exceptional qualification that gatekeepers might demand from female but not male aspirants for prestigious executive positions. ...
... However, we are confident that these variables do not induce omitted variable bias because there is no systematic evidence indicating that men tend to be better qualified when first entering the executive than women. Studies comparing the preparedness of male and female ministers produce mixed results depending on the type of political experience they take into account and the political system they study Murray 2010;O'Brien 2015;Verge and Astudillo 2018). In the context of European democracies, Verge and Astudillo (2018) find that female members of (regional) executives are even better equipped for the job than their male counterparts. ...
... Because of a lack of complete data on the sex of party leaders in coalition governments, we address the biasing effect that the sex of the party leader might have for our findings through two additional tests. First, we merged our data with information on the sex of party leaders compiled by O'Brien (2015), which allows us to test the robustness of our evidence for a subsample of 548 ministers from six countries while taking this 15. Given that many ministers are independent (N = 761) or belong to (minor) parties not included in the MARPOR data set (N = 940), the sample size decreases for this test, but the findings are robust to this modification. ...
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 responsibility for a highly prestigious portfolio. We argue that the time it takes for ambitious politicians to prove themselves suitable for this type of cabinet position depends on their sex and the degree to which the policy area for which they are responsible reinforces stereotypical expectations about their personality traits. Empirical evidence from event history analysis of original data including detailed information on all ministerial careers in 27 European countries between 1990 to 2018 supports these propositions. These findings reveal that even highly qualified women politicians who are already members of the executive face additional barriers during their political careers.
... The literature on recruitment and gender also emphasizes the importance of intra-party dynamics for the career advancement of women. Women's successful political careers are shaped by favourable conditions within their party, for example, during crises (e.g., Beckwith, 2015), when the position seems to be particularly unattractive (O'Brien, 2015). In a similar vein, party ideology is a crucial determinant of women's representation, with left parties being more responsive to group representation demands and more "women-friendly" than rightist parties (Caul, 2001;Norris & Lovenduski, 1995;Paxton & Kunovich, 2003). ...
... In addition, gender and political recruitment studies argue that the career profiles of women ministers and prime ministers are different and often exceptional; they specifically tend to be marked by higher levels of experience in other political offices compared to their male colleagues (e.g., Jalalzai, 2013;Müller-Rommel & Vercesi, 2017;Verge & Astudillo, 2019). In addition to that, even if the overall number of women as party leaders increases, they tend to meet higher demands (O'Brien, 2015), and once in office need to perform better in elections than their male colleagues in order to survive . Beyond the level of party leaders and executives, such as when running for legislative office, evidence suggests that women tend to be better qualified than men (for an overview see Bauer, 2020). ...
While women have increasingly gained access to the position of opposition leader, we still know very little about their pathways to that office. Therefore, this article seeks to uncover the dynamics and patterns that distinguish the ascendency of women politicians to the office of opposition leader from a comparative perspective. In this article, opposition leaders are understood as the parliamentary party group leaders of the largest non-governing party in a given legislative assembly, which marks the closest equivalent to the Westminster understanding of leaders of the opposition that continues to dominate international notions of opposition leaders and oppositional leadership in parliamentary democracies. We draw on data from opposition leaders in 28 parliamentary democracies between 1996–2020 to identify opportunity structures that allow women opposition leaders to emerge across countries. In addition, we test how factors on the individual level (e.g., previous experience in party and parliament as well as in government) and at the party level (e.g., ideology) affect the likelihood that a parliamentary opposition leader is a woman. Our analyses demonstrate that the share of women in parliament significantly increases the likelihood that at least one of the parliamentary opposition leaders of the past 25 years was a woman. Moreover, opposition leaders in leftist parties are more likely to be women than their more rightist counterparts. Surprisingly, and contrary to our expectations, previous political experience does not shape the probability of women becoming opposition leaders. Thus, overall, the institutional and ideological contexts of selecting parliamentary opposition leaders seem to matter more than the experience and qualifications of individual candidates.
... Numerous works have certified that women face multiple barriers to attain public office, either in the legislative or the executive branch. A common finding in candidate selection studies is that women "play by a differentand often more demandingset of rules" than men (O'Brien, 2015(O'Brien, , 1036. Women are regarded as outgroup members, whilst men embody the "ideal" candidate (Bjarnegård & Kenny, 2016, p. 385; see also Niven, 1998;Tremblay & Pelletier, 2001). ...
... As for survival in public office, existing research has found that women experience higher party deselection rates and thus have a much shorter tenure than their male peers in parliament (De Wardt et al., 2020;Lawless & Theriault, 2005;Vanlangenakker et al., 2013). Similarly, studies examining survival in cabinets show that female ministers are much more likely to be let go than male ministers (Escobar-Lemmon & Taylor-Robinson, 2015), and women's tenure as party leaders is typically shorter than men's (O'Brien, 2015;O'Neill & Stewart, 2009). Furthermore, the different value accorded to political capital resources when possessed by either the ingroup or the outgroup shapes length of tenure. ...
While the multiple barriers women face to attain public office have been vastly documented, the operation of insider/outsider dynamics within political parties’ top decision-making bodies remains largely under-researched. This article provides new theoretical and empirical insights on how interpersonal resources create ingroups and outgroups in parties’ national executive committees—the body that manages the day-to-day functioning of the extra-parliamentary party organization. Our comparative analysis of Spanish political parties in the period 1975–2020 documents that interpersonal resources are unevenly distributed across gender. Most crucially, we show that these resources play out differently for women and men members, with embeddedness in party networks only helping the latter attain positional power and extend their tenure in party office. These heterogeneous effects suggest that top decision-making party bodies do not just reflect existing gender inequalities but reinforce them in significant ways, rendering women member outsiders on the inside.
... Several studies show that women face many challenges when trying to enter politics. (O'Brien, 2015) The way women are portrayed in politics influences the way women think about justice and equality. (Ramli et al., 2022) Because of society considers gender equality to mean that women and men have the same opportunities and rights. ...
Gender equality is still considered taboo in Indonesia. The stigma that women are weak, unable to lead or even interfere in politics is still widely heard in the general public. However, this stigma can be broken with Law number 22 of 2007 concerning Election Organizers which regulates the composition of the election implementation by paying attention to the representation of women at least 30%, in other words, the representation of women in politics has been legalized in law. The reality is that in fulfilling this quota, especially in Banten Province, it has not been filled to the fullest. The purpose of this writing is to optimize women's representation in the politics of legislative elections for 2024. The research approach uses a qualitative deductive with a qualitative descriptive method by trying to describe the phenomenon of strategies for optimizing women's representation in politics, judging from the facts on the ground that the 2019 legislative elections in Banten Province have not met the quota of 30 %. The results of the study obtained several strategies, namely inviting women to participate in the political arena, outreach and political education for women, improving the quality of women's resources and the role of the mass media to support and strengthen women's political participation in the public sphere.Keyword: Women's Representation, Politics, Legislative Elections
... Women are very much under-represented in Pacific politics as both legislators and leaders. While women's political leadership is an increasingly large area of scholarship, both globally (see Jalalzai, 2013;O'Brien, 2015) and in the Pacific Islands region (see Cox et al., 2020;, how and why women assume the role of opposition leader is far less studied. Rather, the focus is on the obstacles to participation and influence, which in the Pacific include financial, cultural, and institutional barriers (see Baker, 2018;Fraenkel, 2006;Huffer, 2006;Zetlin, 2014). ...
Parliaments in the Pacific Islands are among the most male-dominated in the world. Yet despite the odds, there is a cohort of women who have been elected and won senior roles. This article adds to an emerging literature that examines the gendered pathways to political influence in the region by focusing on the hitherto overlooked role of the opposition leader. It uses a biographical approach to consider the pathways in and through this role by four women opposition leaders: Fiame Naomi Mata’afa (Samoa), Hilda Heine (Marshall Islands), Dame Carol Kidu (Papua New Guinea), and Ro Teimumu Kepa (Fiji). We parse out factors that explain the success of these leaders while also identifying barriers that have prevented their emergence in other Pacific states. We identify two main ways in which women politicians have used the position of leader of the opposition: first, the conventional understanding of the role as a path to power; and second, the less well-understood role of defending and protecting democratic norms and institutions. The latter can be interpreted as a version of the “glass cliff” phenomenon where women leaders assume key positions in times of crisis. Our findings thus highlight that while in the Pacific the role of leader of the opposition can be a path to power, the relatively few women leaders who have taken on this role have used it in diverse and varied ways.
... For example, Verge and Astudillo (2019: 733) find that party seniority matters only for men, when it comes to returning to public office. Moreover, O'Brien (2015) observe that women are more likely than men to leave top political office once their party has suffered from poor electoral performance. ...
(accepted in 'Italian Political Science') Three cabinets (Conte I, Conte II, and Draghi) entered office during the 18th legislative term in Italy. In spite of the significant ideological differences between them, no full alternation of parties in government occurred. The largest party in parliament – the Five Star Movement – participated in all the three cabinets, while the League and the Democratic Party took part in two of them (the League in the Conte I and Draghi, the Democratic Party in the Conte II and Draghi); other minor parties entered the Conte II and Draghi as well. Did party continuity lead to ministerial stability? This article puts the 18th legislative term in perspective, through a longitudinal comparison of all Italian partisan cabinets from 1994 to 2022 (15 cabinets). In particular, it aims to account for continuity and changes within the Italian ministerial elite across different cabinets, also controlling for the gendered aspect of cabinet reselections and promotions. It answers the following questions: what makes ministerial reselection likely? Do political and personal background count to be reappointed and promoted? Based on original data, the analysis shows that remarkable previous political experience, age, and time matter. In contrast, the type of portfolio held in cabinet and gender do not have a significant impact. In this context, the 18th legislative term appears in line with the general pattern, but it distances itself from other terms defined by party continuity across multiple cabinets. The article contributes to the debates about personnel turnover, representation, and policy-makers stability in democratic cabinets
... First, scholars studied the processes leading to the introduction of changes in the selectorate (Astudillo & Detterbeck, 2020 ;Cross & Blais, 2012;Denham, 2009;Gauja, 2017;Wauters, 2014). Second, scholars also investigated the effects of leadership elections: e.g. on the level of competitiveness (Kenig, 2009;, responsiveness (Lehrer, 2012), the presence of women party leaders (O'Brien, 2015;Wauters & Pilet, 2015), and electoral performance (Andrews & Jackman, 2008;Pedersen & Schumacher, 2015;Wauters & Kern, 2021). Rather surprisingly, the actual functioning of leadership elections has largely been neglected so far. ...
Procedures of party leadership selection have attracted considerable scholarly attention in recent years, but voting motives of party members in leadership elections have not been fully studied yet. This paper presents a new model of voting in party leadership elections that is inspired by previous models that were mostly tailored to more exclusive selectorates (such as the parliamentary party). We adopt an inductive research strategy that is based on an open question in member surveys that were held on the occasion of three Belgian party leadership elections. As a result, we obtain a comprehensive model with eight different vote motivations: policy positions, electability, competence, perceptions of personality traits, socio-demographic characteristics, personal relationships, party-organisational reasons and negative voting. Our findings also show that the kinds of motivations that are put forward by members are dependent upon the number of contenders.
... Além disso, conceber que essas são organizações generificadas é dizer que a dimensão de gênero constitui um eixo de hierarquização e desigualdade no interior das estruturas partidárias, conforme defendem Lovenduski (1993), Caul (1999Caul ( , 2001, Kittilson (1997Kittilson ( , 2011Kittilson ( , 2013, O'Brien (2012O'Brien ( , 2013O'Brien ( , 2015, Johnson (2005Johnson ( , 2014, Araújo (2005), Barreira e Gonçalves (2012), Santos, Paula e Seabra (2012), Roza, Llanos e Garzón de la Roza (2010) e Monzoy (2011Monzoy ( ), Álvares (2008, Sacchet (2005Sacchet ( , 2011 e Sacchet e Speck (2012a, 2012b. Cabe, pois, avaliar se e em que medida os partidos desenvolvem estratégias para fomentar a representação política de mulheres. ...
... As outlined above, we argue that elite positions have a positive impact on women politicians' representation in the media. Minor opposition parties and parties that are struggling electorally, i. e., lost seat shares in recent elections, are more likely to allow women to assume power positions (O'Brien, 2015), making it more difficult for them to gain media coverage. In 2019, however, for the first time one of the major parties in Austria, the Social Democrats, were headed by a women top candidate, Pamela Rendi-Wagner; the first woman in the party's 130-year long history. ...
The underrepresentation of women politicians in the media is a persistent feature in many contemporary democracies. Gender bias in election coverage makes it harder for women to reach positions of power in politics. Drawing on the special circumstances in Austria during the 2019 election campaign which saw the first female top candidate of a major party and a caretaker government containing equal numbers of men and women and which was led by the country’s first woman as chancellor, we examine the effect of these developments on women politicians’ representation in campaign coverage. We draw on quantitative content analysis of Austrian newspaper articles (N = 16,125) during four national parliamentary election campaigns (2008, 2013, 2017 and 2019). We show that for women politicians the media ceiling is slowly lifting at best, but that positions of power provide the most promising ways to evade gendered media bias.
... Among the autocracies in our study, however, only one has a parliamentary system (Ethiopia). Other studies examine whether women presidents and prime ministers assemble more inclusive cabinets than do male leaders and find mixed evidence (O'Brien 2015;Stockemer 2018). None of the autocracies in our study has had a woman president or prime minister. ...
What explains variation in the inclusion of women in authoritarian cabinets? We theorize that leaders of electoral autocracies are affected by changing international norms of democracy and women's rights to appoint women ministers. We propose two hypotheses. First, increasing dependence on aid from democratic donors encourages leaders of electoral autocracies to appoint more women ministers. Second, electoral autocrats uprooting democratic traits appoint more women ministers to minimize the reputational costs of their autocratization. Using data from authoritarian regimes in 38 African countries between 1973 and 2013, we find that increases in aid from democracies are associated with modest increases in women's share of cabinet seats. As our theory suggests, this relationship holds only in electoral autocracies in more recent years when norms of gender equality have been strongest. Conversely, we find no evidence that autocratization periods are associated with increases in women's cabinet share. Additionally, we show that supply-side factors and the politics of multi-ethnic coalition building appear to explain differences in women's cabinet seat share in autocracies.
... In Europe, women make up just over 30% of country lower house members, in the US and Canada it is, respectively, 27.0 and 30.5% . Party leaders in the post-war period have been overwhelmingly men (O'Brien, 2015), and the same holds for prime-ministers and cabinet members . ...
To explain women's underrepresentation in politics, supply-side factors receive much empirical support, emphasizing the low numbers of women on the ballot. Whether demand from voters also contributes to the problem is less clear, however, as both observational and experimental research shows that average voters are not less likely to vote for women candidates. We argue that voters actually do play a role, although not all voters to an equal extent. More precisely, we expect the gender bias in the electorate to be conditional upon partisanship and propose two mechanisms through which this materializes: political gender attitudes and/or gender stereotypes. Although the conditionality of voters' gender bias based upon partisanship is convincingly shown to exist in the US, much less is known about it in the European context, while its multi-party political systems lend themselves well for a more detailed differentiation between party families. We expect that right, and especially populist radical right, voters are biased in favor of men politicians, while left, and especially green left, voters are biased in favor of women politicians. We test our hypotheses with a large-scale vignette experiment ( N = 13,489) in the Netherlands, and show that there is indeed a (slight) preference for women representatives among Green party voters, and a clear preference for men candidates among voters of populist radical right parties. Moderate left-wing or right-wing voters, however, show no gender bias. Thus, although right-wing populist parties have electoral incentives to be hesitant about promoting women politicians, most other parties face no electoral risk in putting forth women politicians.
... Organizational scholars have also reported on another common pattern that may result in worse media coverage for relatively successful women. Studies have found that women and minorities are more likely to be promoted to risky and precarious leadership positions, with higher turnover rates and professional instability, a phenomenon that some have referred to as a "glass cliff" (Cook and Glass 2013;O'Brien 2015;Ryan and Haslam 2005). When organizations are in crisis, for example in the form of a scandal, very poor financial performance, or a political party losing its seat share, they often look for a change of pace. ...
Past quantitative studies have shown that most media coverage is of men. Here we ask if the scarce coverage that women get is qualitatively different from that of men. We use computer-coded sentiment scores for 14 million person names covered in 1,323 newspapers to investigate the three-way relationship between gender, fame, and sentiment. Additional large-scale data on occupational categories allow us to compare women and men within the same profession and rank. We propose that as women’s fame increases their media coverage becomes negative more quickly when compared to men (a “paper cut”), because their violation of gender hierarchies and social expectations about typical feminine behavior evokes disproportionate scrutiny. We find that while overall media coverage is much more positive for women than for men, this difference disappears and even reverses at higher levels of fame. In encyclopedic sentiment data we find no biographic basis for women’s disproportionate decline in media coverage sentiment at high fame, consistent with the conjectured double standard in media discourse.
... We argue that a fourth party-level factor-the gender composition of vote share-is critical to understanding the trends in women's political party representation over time and across and within party families. Building on previous research suggesting a role of vote and seat losses for party feminization (Campbell 2016;Childs and Webb 2012;Eagle and Lovenduski 1998;O'Brien 2015) and drawing on the insights of previous work on strategic women's representation (e.g., Erzeel and Rashkova 2017;Kittilson 2006;Valdini 2012), we develop and empirically test a new theory of the conditions under which parties engage in strategic descriptive representation. ...
Radical right populist (RRP) parties are often described as Männerparteien , predominantly led by, represented by, and supported by men. Yet recently, these parties have elected more women. Under what conditions do we see this increase in women MPs? This paper presents a novel argument of strategic descriptive representation : electorally struggling RRP parties with large gender gaps in voter support increase their proportion of women MPs to attract previously untapped women voters. To test this argument, we develop the most comprehensive dataset to date on women MPs and gender differences in voter support across Europe and over time, covering 187 parties in 30 countries from 1985 to 2018. Our analyses confirm that RRP parties engage in strategic descriptive representation when they are both struggling electorally and suffering from a gender gap in support. Additional models reveal that this tactic is largely unique to RRP parties.
... Previous work on support for gender quotas fails to account for why public opposition to this policy persists even as traditional gender norms diminish and support for women in politics grows (alexander 2012;O'Brien 2009). in addition, the existing literature cannot explain why the opposition is particularly strong among young men. the lack of support among young men for gender inclusive policies raises important concerns. ...
Despite increasing efforts to implement legislative gender quotas, many countries still encounter substantial popular opposition to this policy. Previous work cannot explain why opposition to legislative gender quotas persists, particularly among young men, a group believed to be open to diversity. We develop and test a theoretical framework linking group threat to men's attitudes toward legislative gender quotas. While the salience of perceived group threat could trigger men's opposition to legislative gender quotas, we expect that this effect will be more profound among young men due to the heightened degree of economic insecurity experienced by younger generations. Using original survey experiments in South Korea, this study demonstrates the strong influence of group threat in the formation of negative attitudes toward legislative gender quotas among young men. These effects, however, are not mediated by traditional gender norms. Our findings have significant implications for the study of gender and politics and democratic representation.
... Институциональное предпринимательство/ Институциональная работа [Bartram et al., 2020;O'Brien, 2015] (Э) Трансформационное лидерство [Sheehan, Garavan, Morley, 2020;Edelbroek, Peters, Blomme, 2019;Bhatti et al., 2020;Tuominen, Martinsuo, 2019;Afsar, Umrani, 2019] (Э) [Bums, 1978;Bass 1985;Bass, Riggio, 2006] (C) Расширенное действие [Meyer, 2010] (С) Обобщая, следует отметить, что все рассмотренные концепции и связанные с ними понятия в разной форме отмечают важность проактивного поведения человека по отношению к среде, особенно в контекстах, где рамки поведения постепенно размываются, становятся более гибкими, податливыми для инициа тивы со стороны «действия» по отношению к «структуре» (например, экономическая сфера, отношения в семье или образование [Сорокин, Фрумин, 2020]). Отдельно отметим растущее внимание к агентности детей [Поливанова, Бочавер, Нисская, 2017], которая определяется, в частности, как связь между деятельностью и волей [Rotman, 2017]. ...
Накопленный в период глобальной пандемии опыт показывает, что способность к самостоятельному инициативному действию является ключевой для эффективного функционирования и развития многих общественных институтов, например в сфере образования или труда. Несмотря на их высокую практическую актуальность, вопросы «(трансформирующей) агентности», то есть проактивного изменения социальных институтов и структур через индивидуальное действие, по-прежнему занимают периферийное место в мейнстриме социальных наук. Более того, широкий спектр соответствующих наработок из разных дисциплин, а также из экспертного дискурса пока остается несистематизированным. Социологическая концептуальная рамка «структура — действие» дает возможность классифицировать релевантные понятия и наработки.
Разработанная классификация может выступить базой для создания целостных и комплексных моделей «(трансформирующей) агентности», позволяющих преодолеть привычные для мейнстрима социальных наук представления о приоритетном значении «внешних» структур и институтов по отношению к трансформационному потенциалу действия. Подобный «разворот» в академических и экспертных дискуссиях адекватен практическим задачам и вызовам, с которыми столкнулся мир на фоне продолжающейся глобальной пандемии.
Благодарность. В данной научной работе использованы результаты проекта, выполненного в рамках Программы фундаментальных исследований НИУ ВШЭ.
Авторы выражают благодарность Тимофею Редько и Алле Бородиной (оба — НИУ ВШЭ) за помощь в сборе и систематизации библиометрической информации.
... The power of her position would also point us toward being unlikely to find gendered effects. Very few women serve as the leaders of their parties in parliamentary democracies generally (O'Brien 2015), and the structure of German politics and the power of the chancellor constrain women's access to this powerful position. (Beckwith 2015;Xydias 2013). ...
Voters evaluate politicians not just by what they say, but also how they say it, via facial displays of emotions and vocal pitch. Candidate characteristics can shape how leaders use—and how voters react to—nonverbal cues. Drawing on role congruity expectations, we study how the use of and reactions to facial, vocal, and textual communication in political debates varies by candidate gender. Relying on full-length videos of four German federal election debates (2005–2017) and a minor party debate, we use video, audio, and text data to measure candidate facial displays of emotion, vocal pitch, and speech sentiment. Consistent with our expectations, Angela Merkel expresses less anger than her male opponents, but she is just as emotive in other respects. Combining these measures of emotional expression with continuous responses recorded by live audiences, we find that voters punish Merkel for anger displays and reward her happiness and general emotional displays.
... When legislative debates have high stakes for the party brand, leaders may prefer to take the stand to avoid the dangers of agency loss and shirking (Proksch & Slapin, 2012). Because parliamentary party leadership positions continue to be dominated by men (O'Brien, 2015), this should result in an enduring gender gap in prime-time debates, even after the gender quota reform. ...
Democratic societies increasingly look into gender quotas as a means to increase women’s representation in politics. Yet even as women occupy more seats, meaningful barriers may remain to their incorporation in the legislature. Our paper draws on quantitative and interview data from Portugal to explore patterns in women’s legislative participation before and after the adoption of a gender quota. While the gender gap in floor time decreases post-quota, important gender imbalances remain. After the quota, women remain underrepresented in the most politically salient legislative debates and are subject to stigmatization in floor access. Our findings suggest that gender quotas chip away at, but do not shatter, glass ceilings for women in politics.
... Effective polities with well-functioning institutions and high levels of adherence to rules, both formal and informal, appear better able to deal with a global pandemic. Conversely, less effective polities are not just less likely to elect women leaders but are more likely to remove them in difficult times (O'Brien, 2015;O'Neill et al., 2021). ...
Informed by scholarship on gendered leadership, feminist institutionalism, and policy failures, the article asks whether hypermasculine leadership traits – displayed in rhetoric, behavior, and symbols – contributed to a failure in the timely implementation of appropriate policy measures and the clear and effective communication of new rules to citizens to gain their trust and widespread compliance, with an important impact on the effectiveness of early Covid policy responses. From this preliminary study, it appears that the reluctance of hypermasculine leaders to take the pandemic seriously and implement or adhere to mitigation measures, contributed to incoherent policy-making, poor and confused communication, reducing levels of public trust, and contributing to high rates of infection and death. The article also highlights hypermasculine leadership styles’ contextual specificity, by exploring in greater depth how UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s particular form of English elite white hypermasculinity influenced his policy responses and communication strategies.
... Detta stämmer väl med den svenska utvecklingen där en sådan norm etablerades på 1990-talet. I motsats till vad som ofta förväntas så korrelerar dock inte kvinnligt ledarskap med en hög andel kvinnor i regeringen, tvärt om har kvinnliga ledare visat sig vara mindre benägna att utse kvinnor, sannolikt för att leva upp till manliga ledarskapsideal och undvika anklagelser om favorisering (O'Brien 2015). Även om det inte finns en direkt relation, pekar flera studier på att kvinnliga förebilder är viktiga. ...
What is the impact on symbolic representation of female leaders who are seen as failures? Do women from political dynasties elicit symbolic representation? I answer these questions by analyzing how Park Geun-hye’s election as the first woman president of South Korea and her subsequent impeachment shaped voters’ perceptions of women’s potential and contribution as political leaders. Utilizing an original survey and focus groups, I argue that South Korean voters overall did not recognize Park’s election as the country’s first female president as a symbol of women’s political empowerment because of her dynastic background and her failure to promote women-friendly policies. Although she received credit for being the historic first, women across the political spectrum were concerned that the epic failure of the first female president would reinforce voters’ reluctance to vote for women. This study emphasizes the importance of adopting an intersectional approach in studying symbolic representation.
Tässä artikkelissa selvitetään, miten näkemykset sukupuolten tasa-arvosta politiikassa ovat muuttuneet viimeisen 20 vuoden aikana ja miten naisten läsnäolo kuntapolitiikassa heijastuu sukupuolten tasa-arvoa koskeviin näkemyksiin nais- ja miespuolisten kuntavaaliehdokkaiden keskuudessa. Tutkimuksessa tarkastellaan suhtautumista naisten deskriptiiviseen edustukseen eli sukupuolikiintiöiden tarpeellisuuteen kunnan toimielimissä sekä naisten substantiiviseen edustukseen eli sukupuolten tasa-arvoa koskevien kysymysten saamaan huomioon päätöksenteossa. Empiirisessä analyysissa hyödynnetään kuntavaaliehdokkaille tehtyjä kyselytutkimuksia vuosilta 2000 ja 2021. Tutkimuksen tulokset osoittavat, että nais- ja miesehdokkaiden asenteet sukupuolten tasa-arvoa kohtaan politiikassa eroavat merkittävästi toisistaan. Naisehdokkaille sukupuolten tasa-arvon vahvistaminen on selvästi tärkeämpi kysymys kuin miesehdokkaille. Asenteet sukupuolten tasa-arvoa kohtaan ovat kuitenkin viimeisten 20 vuoden aikana muuttuneet myönteisemmiksi pääasiassa siksi, että miesten asenteet ovat muuttuneet. Tulokset osoittavat myös, että kun naisten läsnäolo poliittisella areenalla on vahvempi, naisten deskriptiivisen edustuksen merkitystä painotetaan vähemmän.
Previous studies uncovered a negative relationship between the proportion of women in public office and corruption. These findings have inspired anti‐corruption programs around the world. It remains unclear, however, whether there is a causal link between the share of women in office and malfeasance. For instance, gender differences in political experience or access to corruption networks might explain this relationship. We leverage the gradual implementation of gender quotas in Spain to isolate the effects of female descriptive representation on public misconduct and adjudicate between alternative explanations. The analyses suggest a causal link between gender and malfeasance in office: the reform generated an exogenous increase in the share of women elected, which led to a decrease in corruption that was sustained over time. This finding enhances our understanding of the effect of public officials' characteristics on policy outcomes, and of the role of parity laws in promoting political change.
El propósito general de este libro es analizar la insurrección de las mujeres en México para ser consideradas ciudadanas en igualdad de condiciones que los hombres, centrándonos en el contexto sociopolítico en el que se presentaron las manifestaciones de reivindicación de sus derechos políticos: el voto femenino, su participación en los partidos políticos y el acceso a los cargos públicos. Pero también se encontrará en estas líneas un panorama actualizado del comportamiento político de las mujeres, de su participación como militantes y dirigentes en los partidos políticos, la representación política de las mujeres en los diferentes niveles y cargos públicos, así como el estado de avance o estancamiento de la agenda de mujeres, es decir, de la representación sustantiva.
While parties have a large role in influencing the representation of women, much less is known of how voters perceive parties’ efforts to promote female candidates. Existing evidence from the literature suggests that, on an aggregate level, voters value female candidates at least to the same extent as male candidates. Meanwhile, evidence points both towards a general under-representation of women in politics as well as large differences between left-leaning and right-leaning parties when it comes to selecting female lead candidates and members of parliament (MPs). This study investigates voters’ preferences for gender representation inside political parties. Using a single vignette survey experiment in five European countries, I show that voters have strong preferences for equal descriptive representation of men and women in political parties and prefer women as lead candidates. Women have larger preferences for equal representation than men, while ideological differences are comparatively small.
El presente artículo tiene como objetivo reflexionar, con perspectiva de género, sobre el liderazgo político y el estilo comunicativo en Twitter (1078 tuits) durante la campaña electoral andaluza de 2018. Analizamos, a través de un análisis del contenido cuantitativo, las posibles brechas de género. Los datos recabados demuestran que las mujeres políticas esgrimen un estilo comunicativo particular y son más visibles en la red social, colocando temas femeninos en la agenda y esgrimiendo un estilo de liderazgo fuerte y personalista cercano a las organizaciones partidistas en sus territorios. Cabe seguir profundizando en comprobar si nuestro marco de análisis y conclusiones puede trasladarse o explicar dinámicas similares en otras realidades o si, por el contrario, variables institucionales o contextuales definen más consistentemente la comunicación política de los líderes. Palabras clave: campañas electorales; comunicación política; género; liderazgo político; Twitter
Increasing the share of women in politics is often promoted as a means to reduce corruption. Recent studies indicate the importance of considering the gender gap in corruption as a dynamic, rather than static, phenomenon. Our study combines data from surveys and incentivized behavioral games among 400 inexperienced and experienced local politicians in West Bengal, India. We find no gender gap in attitudes toward corruption. However, in incentivized games, inexperienced female politicians are more honest than their male counterparts. No such gender gap exists among experienced politicians. Drawing on a theoretical discussion of four possible mechanisms, we find that the apparent increase in dishonest behavior among female politicians is associated with lower risk aversion and stronger political networks. Our findings indicate that women, like men, are socialized into their local political culture and that benefits from changing who is elected may be short‐lived unless that culture is also changed.
The study explored the determinants of voter behaviour in the electoral context, which focuses on swing and stronghold constituencies in Ghana, where two major political parties have dominated the political space, and alternated power since the return to constitutional rule in 1993. Primary data were gathered from 400 registered voters in three most populous swing and stronghold constituencies and triangulated with secondary data from elections held between 2000–2020 in Ghana. The results show that long-term factors such as ideology and party identity are critical in determining voter choices in stronghold constituencies while short-term factors such as campaign messages and appeal of the personality contesting the elections are some of the factors considered by the electorate in swing constituencies. The study noted that the two political parties in Ghana, the National Democratic Congress, and the New Patriotic Party, have explored both long and short-term factors to sustain their dominance in stronghold constituencies.
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 by a woman or experiencing growing numbers of women in their parliamentary group should put more emphasis on environmentalist and ecologist positions in their manifestos, but less emphasis on productionist statements. In a two-step analysis, this contribution provides support for women’s green agenda. Firstly, an analysis of data from the World Value Study shows that women are more likely than men to display environmental-friendly and anti-growth attitudes in industrial democracies around the globe. Secondly, an investigation combining data from the MARPOR Project with data on women’s representation in parties reveals that the importance of environmentalist and ecologist issues in party manifestos increases as women gain grounds in party offices. However, the empirical evidence also indicates that productionist statements do not automatically become less frequent in return. Beyond the difference women can make for parties’ orientation towards green or growth policies, these insights lead me to conclude that parties might easily add new green ideas to their agenda, but struggle to drop established growth positions.KeywordsIndustrialized democraciesParty manifestosParty changePartiesGreen-growthWomen
This article considers whether quota or parity laws designed to improve the representation of women in plurinominal elections have a spillover effect to uninominal elections. It tests empirically the effects of quota and parity legislations implemented in Ecuador for plurinominal elections on the proportion of women elected as mayors. Based on an unpublished database, our results show that, after the implementation of such legislation, the probability of a woman being elected as mayor almost doubles (ceteris paribus). We also find evidence that a possible causal chain effect of the documented spillover effects is the increasing importance of female role models, motivated by institutional changes shaped by the new legislation. Este artículo analiza si las leyes de cuotas o de paridad, elaboradas para mejorar la representación de mujeres en elecciones plurinominales, surten el efecto “derrame” sobre las elecciones uninominales. Para probar esta propuesta, recurrimos al análisis de los efectos de las leyes de cuotas y paridad implementadas en Ecuador para elecciones de legisladores (plurinominales) en la proporción de alcaldesas electas. Usando una base de datos inédita, nuestros resultados demuestran que, después de la implementación de la ley de paridad, las probabilidades de que una mujer sea elegida alcaldesa prácticamente se duplican (ceteris paribus). El artículo también encuentra evidencia de que una posible cadena causal que justifica la idea del efecto “derrame” es el incremento de modelos a seguir femeninos, creados por los cambios institucionales derivados de la nueva legislación. 本文衡量了多代表选举中用于提升女性代表比例的配额或平等选举法是否对单一代表选举产生溢出效应。本文从实证上检验了厄瓜多尔多代表选举执行的配额法及平等选举法对女性市长比例产生的效应。通过使用一项未发表的数据库，我们的研究结果显示，在执行这类法律后，女性被选为市长的概率几乎增加了一倍（其他条件不变的情况下）。我们还发现证据证明，溢出效应可能的因果链是不断增加的女性模范重要性，后者由新法律制定的制度变革所驱动。
Recent research examines when and why women join rebel groups as combatants. However, we are only beginning to understand how their presence affects rebel group behaviour and conflict dynamics more generally. I address this gap by analysing how women's participation influences two dimensions of rebel behaviour: their relationship to civilians and their fighting performance. I argue that a greater number of female rebels decreases civilian victimization, but also reduces rebel combat performance. I test these propositions using time-varying district-level data from the Nepalese civil war. The results support both expectations. These findings increase our understanding of the effects of women's participation in civil war.
Do incumbents have an electoral advantage and if so, do these advantages differ across gender? In this study, I estimate the electoral advantages enjoyed by incumbents in 10 Canadian federal elections, across 3059 ridings, from 1990 to 2021. Using a regression discontinuity design, I compare men and women who have very narrowly won or lost elections on three different indicators: propensity to run again, probability of winning the next election, and vote share. I find that women incumbents are just as likely to run again in subsequent elections as men incumbents. However, women who lose an election appear to be more likely to quit politics compared to men who lose an election. I do not find clear incumbency effects for probability of winning at the next election and vote share.
In a 2021 Special Issue in European Political Science, Anika Gauja and Karina Kosiara-Pedersen review the sub-field of party politics research. In doing so, they argue party politics scholarship reflects the broader development of the political science discipline, illustrating the evolving relationship between politics researchers and the organisations they study. In this reply, we argue that the party politics sub-field reflects the wider discipline in another crucial respect—it continues to marginalise gender politics scholarship. We demonstrate that a gendered lens fundamentally transforms key questions in the field around what party politics scholars study, and how and why they conduct their research, with relevant consequences for whose work is included. In failing to engage with this scholarship, “mainstream” party politics scholars are (re)producing unequal power relations and hierarchies within the discipline, while also depriving themselves of the capacity to address fully key questions of representation, democracy, continuity and change.
Media attention is an invaluable electoral asset, and structurally less media attention given to female candidates and politicians could be detrimental to women’s representation. While research has found equal amounts of coverage devoted to male and female politicians in the US and Canada, a gender gap persists in European countries. This article examines whether differences in the political position and background of men and women account for this gender gap. A computer-assisted content analysis of national dailies in six European countries during one full legislative cycle is combined with extensive background information of 3039 MPs. The results confirm that even after controlling extensively for individual differences, female parliamentarians in Europe are less visible in the news than their male counterparts.
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at: https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2021.1988387 .
Numerous European leaders have formed cabinets that contain equal numbers of women and men. But forming a gender-equal team at the center of the European Union remains a particularly difficult undertaking. This article analyses the case of Ursula von der Leyen, who, in 2019, set out to form a gender-equal college of commissioners. It analyses why von der Leyen’s first leadership project did not initially succeed and assesses the longer-term prospects of gender equality in the European Commission. Employing a framework drawn from studies of Commission leadership, commissioner selection, and gendered executives, it conceptualizes Commission presidents-elect as constrained selectors. Even with personal dispositions that support gender equality and access to powerful institutional resources, treaty-based rules and situational settings obstruct the ability of presidents-elect to achieve their representational goals. In the future, even presidents-elect who are strongly committed to gender equality will likely struggle to achieve fully balanced colleges.
We study how officeholder gender affects issue accountability and examine whether constituents evaluate women and men legislators differently on the basis of their policy records. Data from 2008 through 2018 show that constituents’ approval ratings and vote choices in US House elections are more responsive to the policy records of women legislators than of men legislators. These patterns are concentrated among politically aware constituents, but we find no evidence that the results are driven disproportionately by either women or men constituents or by issues that are gendered in stereotypical ways. Additional analyses suggest that while constituents penalize women and men legislators at similar rates for policy incongruence, women legislators are rewarded more than men as they are increasingly aligned with their constituents. Our results show that accountability standards are applied differently across legislator gender and suggest a link between the quality of policy representation and the gender composition of American legislatures.
Political institutions in the United States have become increasingly polarized. This paper asks how gender has been part of party polarization’s institutionalization and what consequences gender has on relations of power in increasingly divisive legislative work. Drawing on interviews with 21 New Hampshire state representatives and archival legislative and committee leadership records, I analyze the process and changing meanings of partisanship in the everyday work of the legislature. As this state’s moderate conservative caucus disbanded and the Republican Party lost its long‐standing control, more divisive Republican alliances masculinized legislative politics as combative. Meanwhile, the newly competitive Democratic Party began to actively showcase women as party and committee leaders. State representatives’ accounts demonstrate the gendered meanings and consequences of party polarization in the legislative workplace beyond what is captured by traditional measures of ideological polarization. These findings show how gender polarization produces new forms of institutionalized political inequalities in the hierarchical legislative workplace.
Not all pieces of legislation introduced for consideration are equally likely to be successful. The characteristics of legislation’s cosponsors can influence bill passage rates. Despite facing marginalization in legislative bodies and more electoral vulnerability, women are effective lawmakers. We argue that one way by which women overcome marginalization and gendered expectations of performance is bill success from legislation cosponsored with other women. Testing this expectation on bills (140,000+) introduced in U.S. state legislatures in forty states in 2015, we find increased bill success from women’s cosponsorship with each other and women from the other party. Using variation in the share of women in legislative chambers and in legislative leadership, we find evidence to suggest that women’s success emerges both from marginalization and gendered opportunities.
Party leaders are often regarded as crucial to a party’s success. Successful leaders tend to be big personalities who dominate their party’s organisation, policy development, and electoral campaigns. But does that control come with a price? We test to see if such leaders damage their parties in the medium term. This happens because strong leaders might be ceded too much control of the party organisation, policy and electoral strategy. We specifically hypothesise that political parties will go through a period of leadership instability and electoral decline after strong leaders step down. Using a dataset with elections under party leaders in nine countries over a 25-year period, and a qualitative case study, we find some evidence for the theory, which should prompt further research of the question.
While women are underrepresented in politics, recent improvements in women's representation in legislative and executive bodies have spurred academic interest in the effects of electing women on a wide array of outcomes. Effects on bureaucracies, however, have received less attention. Do women mayors reform local bureaucracies differently than their men counterparts? We take advantage of rich administrative data from Chile to explore the effects of having a woman mayor on the size and gender composition of municipal bureaucracies. Using a regression discontinuity design in close electoral races, we find that women mayors reduce the size of local bureaucracies while simultaneously increasing the share of women public employees. Our findings thus show that women mayors' approach to bureaucratic reform once in office differs from that of their men counterparts, and contribute to existing research on the consequences of electing women.
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 evidence, based on data for nineteen developed democracies around the world between 1995 and 2018, reveals that parties led by a woman tend to emphasize green, alternative, and libertarian issues. In particular, anti‐growth, environmental protection, and freedom and human rights become more prominent elements of party manifestos under women's leadership. Overall, these findings stress the importance of critical actors and the conditions under which the presence of women in political offices translates into responsiveness towards female citizens. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved
Why do some political parties have a higher share of elected women? Analysing all parties in the European Parliament (EP) from 1979–2019, we test the effect of five party characteristics (their ideology, age, size, female leadership, and intra-party gender quotas) on their share of female Members (MEPs). We find a higher share of female MEPs in green, liberal and leftist parties and in parties with a female leader. Party gender quotas increase the likelihood to have at least one female MEP.
Does enhanced descriptive representation lead to substantive representation? Legislators who share descriptive features with disadvantaged groups do not necessarily represent their group interests. Instead, Members of Parliament (MPs) strategically choose when to engage with the policy topic of their corresponding groups. MPs represent their respective group at the beginning of their career because it confers credibility when they have no legislative track record and few opportunities to demonstrate expertise. These group-specific efforts are replaced by other legislative activities at later stages of their careers. The authors apply this theoretical expectation across four disadvantaged groups – women, migrants, low social class and the young – and thereby offer a broad perspective on descriptive representation. Their sample consists of a unique data base that combines biographical information on German MPs with topic-coded parliamentary questions for the period 1998 to 2013. The study demonstrates the diminishing value of representing the disadvantaged across different types of MPs.
We study the degree of formal influence that rank-and-file members have on the selection of party leaders in the five English-speaking Westminster countries: Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. We find that in recent years there has been a general, though not universal, trend towards granting party members greater influence in the choice of their leader. We observe that the decision to broaden the selectorate has been made by most parties in the UK, Canada and Ireland, while parties in Australia and New Zealand have generally resisted reform. We set out a series of four hypotheses explaining the decisions made by parties in the first three countries. We show that this organizational reform is adopted by parties in opposition, in the aftermath of an electoral setback and by new parties. We also find a strong contagion effect within party systems. Finally, we offer an explanation for why the Australian and New Zealand cases have resulted in less change.
There is a scarcity of women at the apex of political power, as well as a lack of methods to disentangle the potential sources of this under-representation. This article suggests a four-step method to test for whether women’s under-representation can be explained by the existence of a “glass ceiling.” We emphasize that this concept implies discrimination in promotions within the political organization, that the discriminatory promotions increase in severity at the top levels of power, and that they increase in severity during an individual’s career trajectory. The proposed method is applied to subnational politics in Sweden, a long-standing world leader in women’s descriptive representation. The results support the conjecture that a glass ceiling is hindering elected women’s rise to political power in this context.
In this paper we explore the "glass cliff" form of discrimination. We review archival and experimental evidence of the glass cliff and identify multiple processes as having the potential to contribute to the phenomenon. We also outline a range of potential reactions to the phenomenon, and we elaborate strategies for eliminating glass cliffs, but, as with other forms of (gender) discrimination, we argue that these depend on the capacity for disadvantaged groups to overcome resistance on the part of those who are motivated to maintain the status quo.
Scholars of gender and politics are interested in understanding whether female and male legislators represent women constituents differently. A key piece of this puzzle is to understand if female legislators exhibit different legislative preferences than male legislators. Yet, extant research using roll call data to measure legislative preferences results in mixed findings. I argue that while male and female legislators are likely to display distinct preferences these differences are difficult to detect using roll call data since it is highly structured by party influences. I address this shortcoming by drawing on an original data set that uses cosponsorship data to measure legislative preferences. Like roll call data, cosponsorship data can be used to recover ideal point estimates. One key difference is that, since cosponsorship behavior is less structured by party pressures, it is more useful for examining intra-party differences such as gender. I analyze original data from 18 provincial legislative chambers in Argentina over a 16-year period of time. I find statistically significant gender differences in approximately 90% of the chambers. This study provides evidence that gender does influence legislative preferences. While this is only one small piece of the puzzle, it is important for understanding women’s representation.
The passage of electoral gender quotas raises questions about why male elites would support policies that seemingly go against their self-interests. Recent work on France suggests that quota adoption is self-interested because male legislators benefit from alleged voter bias against female candidates. This article evaluates this explanation as a means for understanding quota adoption globally. It argues that the key actors are not legislators but political parties. Developing an alternative causal story centered on “party pragmatism,” it finds that decisions to introduce quotas are rational and consistent once a range of incentives—ideological, electoral, and strategic—are taken into account.
This article surveys the growing research programme on the duration of cabinet ministers. It examines some of the conceptual and methodological issues confronting research, including the nature and measurement of durability, ministerial terms and techniques. It considers some of the theories and hypotheses that have been generated by researchers. Using evidence from studies from around the world, it argues that institutional factors, including regime type, constitutional and parliamentary rules, and party systems, affect ministerial durability. Personal ministerial characteristics, such as gender, education and age, also affect durability. It examines future avenues of research in this field.
Globally, there is a significant gender gap in political engagement between men and women; however, this gender gap varies both across countries and within countries over time. Previous research has argued that the inclusion of women in elite political positions encourages women’s political engagement at the citizen level—by augmenting women’s symbolic representation—and can reduce this gender gap. Using Afrobarometer data from 20 African countries across four waves of surveys from 1999 to 2008, we employ an interactive multilevel model that controls for the sex of the respondent, the percentage of women in the legislature, and the interaction of these two variables. We find that as women’s descriptive representation increases, the political engagement gender gap diminishes. This finding is robust across several measures of political engagement. Our findings suggest that the incorporation of women into political institutions encourages the political engagement of women at the citizen level.
Women have recently made dramatic gains in electoral politics, winning a number of high profile positions of national leadership and a record number of seats in parliaments around the world. This article surveys and analyzes these developments, seeking to understand why women’s representation has increased in some countries but not in others, as well as what these patterns indicate about changes in the status of women in political life. It concludes with some reflections on the gendered nature of the public sphere and what these shifts might mean for women as a group.
The authors present a theory that seeks to explain why parties change their political strategies, organizational characteristics and issue positions. Whereas most of the existing literature on party change deals with party systems, the focus here is on individual parties. Whereas much of the literature views parties as responding more or less gradually to socioeconomic change, change is here regarded as a discontinuous outcome of specific party decisions linked to party goals. This approach is placed in the literature by reviewing extant theories of party change. Our theory itself is initially advanced in a discursive section which suggests that change does not `just happen', but instead results from leadership change, a change of dominant faction within the party, and/or an external stimulus for change. The article then presents a more formal exposition of this theory, consisting of definitions, assumptions, and a series of testable propositions. It concludes with illustrative examples of this theoretical framework.
The processes of replacement of party leaders are well-published events in media outlets across the world's democracies, but are scarcely analysed by political scientists. In this article we examine the extent to which incumbent party leaders are able to control their own fate in the face of various types of challenges that herald a possible end to their rule. It discusses three related research questions derived from this main objective: (1) what makes incumbents quit? (2) How do incumbents respond to various types of triggers heralding a possible end to their rule? (3) To what extent does incumbent behaviour prior to and following succession affect the fortunes of their successors and their party? We draw on a four-country–eight-party data set of leadership successions between 1945 and 2005, and on findings of in-depth studies of Australian cases to show that not only do Australian leaders get challenged and replaced more frequently than do other leaders, but they are also forced to combat more internal rivalry than their counterparts elsewhere.
This article reports the first empirical findings based on data from a major study of party change. Hypotheses are developed linking party change to both internal and external factors. The data provide support for the conclusion that electoral performance alone is not sufficient as an explanation for parties’ decisions to change, and that new leaders and/or dominant factions may indeed make a difference. This leads the authors to suggest that ‘the burgeoning field of theoretical and empirical work on party change should focus even more attention on internal decision‐making processes’.
SECURING ORDERLY TRANSITION OF POWER FROM ONE RULER TO another is a classic problem for polities of any kind. Historically, ruler succession episodes were often marred by fierce competition and infighting among members of the ruling elite. Even in stable democratic systems with effective electoral and other procedures for replacing heads of government, leadership rotation within political parties retains some of these brutal qualities. Party leadership successions are mostly ad hoc affairs, frequently rooted in either the incumbent's state of mind, dissatisfaction with the incumbent's performance within the party, or internal power struggles. Comparative studies find that party leadership successions often generate widespread uncertainty, agony and even trauma within parties and thus they weaken rather than consolidate or strengthen a party's public support base.
The main purpose of this study is to examine the impact of quotas on the mobilisation of politically under-represented groups. This topic was analysed through two case studies of women in local politics in India and Germany. Gender quotas have changed the political landscape in both countries to a considerable degree. Firstly, most of the women interviewed in both countries began their political careers without political ambitions. Secondly, many female politicians enhanced their (feeling of) competence only during incumbency. Thirdly, once active in politics, most of the interviewees developed political ambitions. The last and by no means least important fact about the mobilisational capacity of quotas is that they not only change the political representation in terms of gender, but also in respect to class, caste, social and educational background.
A critical justification for heightening the number of women in elective office is that women will promote policies that improve women's equality and autonomy. When and how does women's descriptive representation matter for policy outcomes? The focus on policy outcomes offers an essential test of whether having more women in office makes a difference for citizens’ daily lives. Systematic analyses of 19 democracies from 1970 to 2000 reveals that women's parliamentary presence significantly influences the adoption and scope of maternity and childcare leave policies. Women's political presence trumps the ideology of the party in power.
A role congruity theory of prejudice toward female leaders proposes that perceived incongruity between the female gender role and leadership roles leads to 2 forms of prejudice: (a) perceiving women less favorably than men as potential occupants of leadership roles and (b) evaluating behavior that fulfills the prescriptions of a leader role less favorably when it is enacted by a woman. One consequence is that attitudes are less positive toward female than male leaders and potential leaders. Other consequences are that it is more difficult for women to become leaders and to achieve success in leadership roles. Evidence from varied research paradigms substantiates that these consequences occur, especially in situations that heighten perceptions of incongruity between the female gender role and leadership roles.
In this study, it is theorized that party websites play a distinctive role in two regards: (i) they function as a pluralistic civic forum by facilitating the voice of oppositional challengers and increasing the visibility of minor and fringe parties, so that attentive citizens can learn more about the range of electoral choices; (ii) in addition, party websites function as a channel for political participation by facilitating interactive linkages between citizens and parties. The debate about the function of the Internet for pluralism and participation is laid out in Part I. The supply-and-demand research design, including content analysis of 134 websites (supply) and surveys of the public using party websites (demand), in the 15 European Union member states, drawn from the Spring 2000 Eurobarometer, is outlined in Part II. The evidence for patterns of party competition in European party websites is examined in Part III and in Part IV the use of party websites among West Europeans is analyzed. Compared with traditional mediated channels, substantial evidence is presented that party websites play a distinctive role in the process of political communications.
In modern democracies political parties exist because (1) they reduce transaction costs in the electoral, parliamentary and governmental arenas and (2) help overcome the dilemma of collective action. In Western Europe political parties are the central mechanism to make the constitutional chain of political delegation and accountability work in practice. Party representatives in public office are ultimately the agents of the extra-parliamentary party organization. In order to contain agency loss parties rely on party-internal mechanisms and the institutionalisation of party rights in public rules and, in contrast to US parties, they apply the full range of ex ante and ex post mechanisms. Generally, the role of party is weaker the further down the chain of delegation.
This book is a comparative study of the rules, norms, and behaviour surrounding political party leadership. The primary analysis includes twenty-five parties in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom from 1965 onwards. The topics examined include methods of leadership selection and removal, and the nature of leadership politics. The themes of the book include intra-party democracy, with an emphasis on the relative roles of the parliamentary and extra-parliamentary groups, and the causes of organizational reform within parties. Particular attention is paid to change over time and to differences among parties with explanations offered for both. Considerable attention is paid to the trend of expanding the leadership selectorate including consideration of why many parties are adopting this reform while others resist it. Data, collected from more than 200 leadership elections, are analysed to consider issues such as the competitiveness of leadership contests, the types of individuals who win the contests, and the longevity of leaders. The influence of different methods of selection and removal on these issues is also examined. Much of the analysis is based on in-country interviews conducted with active politicians, former and current party leaders, political journalists, and officials of the extra-parliamentary parties. Extensive use is also made of a comprehensive review of party documents related to leadership selection. Many real-life examples from all five countries are used to illustrate the central concepts and themes. A separate chapter considers the applicability of the findings from the Westminster systems to parties in other parliamentary and presidential systems. The concluding chapter makes a normative argument for methods of leadership selection and removal that include both a party's parliamentarians and its grassroots activists. © William P. Cross and André Blais, 2012. All rights reserved.
It Still Takes A Candidate serves as the only systematic, nationwide empirical account of the manner in which gender affects political ambition. Based on data from the Citizen Political Ambition Panel Study, a national survey conducted of almost 3,800 “potential candidates” in 2001 and a second survey of more than 2,000 of these same individuals in 2008, Jennifer L. Lawless and Richard L. Fox find that women, even in the highest tiers of professional accomplishment, are substantially less likely than men to demonstrate ambition to seek elective office. Women are less likely than men to be recruited to run for office. They are less likely than men to think they are qualified to run for office. And they are less likely than men to express a willingness to run for office in the future. This gender gap in political ambition persists across generations and over time. Despite cultural evolution and society's changing attitudes toward women in politics, running for public office remains a much less attractive and feasible endeavor for women than men.
The process of selecting cabinet ministers often takes place behind closed doors, including weighing the need to balance or manage factions within the president's party and/or coalition partners; addressing demands for diversity in the cabinet, such as appointment of women or other historically underrepresented groups; sending signals about the administration's policy agenda; and enabling the president to have people he or she trusts close at hand. On the other hand, ministerial exits are usually less private affairs. In some cases they come after weeks of public or congressional scrutiny and criticism of ministers for policy failures or follow extended speculation about who will lose their seat when the president reshuffles the cabinet. Some ministers depart to pursue lucrative private-sector opportunities. Other ministers switch posts but stay in government. How ministers exit can have implications for the administration since a president who is frequently forced to shuffle the cabinet or sack ministers looks ineffective, and comparisons to rats and sinking ships are difficult to avoid in the wake of excessive changes. At the same time, an administration with zero turnover may also not be healthy, as it would suggest that presidents are staidly bound to their initial course of action and unable (or unwilling) to adapt to changing circumstances.
This book explores the ways in which political parties, in contemporary parliamentary democracies, choose their leaders and then subsequently hold them accountable. The authors provide a comprehensive examination of party leadership selection and accountability both through examination of parties and countries in different institutional settings and through a holistic analysis of the role of party leaders and the methods through which they assume, and exit, the office.
Campaign organizers and the media appear to agree that voters' perceptions of party leaders have an important impact in elections: considerable effort is made to ensure that leaders look good, speak well, and that they are up in the polls. In contrast, the academic literature is much more divided. Some suggest that leaders play an important role in the vote calculus, while others argue that in comparison to other factors, perceptions of leaders have only a minimal impact. This study incorporates data from thirty-five election studies across seven countries with varying institutional environments, and takes both a broad and in-depth look at the role of leaders. A few noteworthy conclusions emerge. First, voters evaluate leaders' traits in terms of two main dimensions: character and competence. Second, voters perceive leaders within the framework of a partisan stereotype in which the party label of the leader imbues meaning; more specifically, leaders of Conservative parties are seen to be more competent while Left leaders are seen to have more character. Third, and most importantly, leaders matter: they affect voters' decisions and have a discernible effect on the distribution of votes in an election. Fourth, there are consistent differences in the perception of party leaders according to voters' level of political sophistication. While all voters evaluate party leaders and consider leaders in their vote calculus, the more sophisticated do so the most. This book argues that personality plays an important role in elections, and that in a healthy democracy, so it should.
Historically, both Belgium and the Netherlands are archetypes of ‘consociational democracies’. These are characterized by broad multi-party coalitions, numerous power-sharing devices, and fragile checks and balances in order to ensure due influence for all relevant parties and minority groups. Hence, the overarching logic of these consensus democracies seems to represent an obstacle to a process of presidentialization.
However, we argue that the need for strong leadership resulted in more prominent and powerful positions for the (parliamentary) party leaders and Prime Ministers. We present evidence of a process of presidentialization that gained momentum a decade earlier in the Netherlands (from the 1970s onwards) than it did in Belgium (from the 1980s).
It is interesting to note that the increased autonomy of Prime Ministers is not due to constitutional amendments, but tends to be linked to the increased decision-making role for the inner cabinet, the professionalization of the Prime Minister’s Office, and the growing attention the audiovisual media give to the Prime Minister.
Similarly, parliamentary party leaders in The Netherlands and extra-parliamentary party leaders in Belgium grew stronger through an accumulation of power and resources at the leader’s office, personalized campaigning and a centralization of control over inner party selection procedures, and party leadership selection.
Theory: Group identity and issue salience theories are used to explore the impact of candidate gender on voting behavior in congressional elections. Hypotheses: Support for women congressional candidates will be higher among voters who share certain demographic and attitudinal characteristics. Methods: Logistic analysis of the 1992 American National Election Study data is conducted. Results: Women voters are more likely to support women House candidates than are men and are also more likely to use gender-related issue positions in determining their vote choice when there is a woman candidate. In Senate elections, issues are much more important to determining vote choice than in House elections. Here women again exhibit distinctly different issue concerns than men and employ a greater number of gender-related issue concerns in their evaluations.
This article reviews research on the evaluation of women and men who occupy leadership roles. In these experiments, the characteristics of leaders other than their sex were held constant, and the sex of the leader was varied. These experiments thus investigated whether people are biased against female leaders and managers. Although this research showed only a small overall tendency for subjects to evaluate female leaders less favorably than male leaders, this tendency was more pronounced under certain circumstances. Specifically, women in leadership positions were devalued relative to their male counterparts when leadership was carried out in stereotypically masculine styles, particularly when this style was autocratic or directive. In addition, the devaluation of women was greater when leaders occupied male-dominated roles and when the evaluators were men. These and other findings are interpreted from a perspective that emphasizes the influence of gender roles within organizational settings.
Since the 1960s, new left-socialist or ecology parties have appeared in approximately half of the advanced Western democracies. These parties have a common set of egalitarian and libertarian tenets and appeal to younger, educated voters. The author uses macropolitical and economic data to explain the electoral success of these left-libertarian parties. While high levels of economic development are favorable preconditions for their emergence, they are best explained in terms of domestic political opportunity structures. There is little evidence that these parties are a reaction to economic and social crises in advanced democracies. The findings suggest that the rise of left-libertarian parties is the result of a new cleavage mobilized in democratic party systems rather than of transient protest.
Political parties are central to modern democracy and the selection of its leader is one of the most crucial decisions for any political party to make. Yet, the analysis of party leadership survival is still in its infancy. The pioneering research has been confined to few countries and decades and has focused exclusively on performance-related explanations. While performance is an obvious determinant of party leader survival, generations of research on party organizations suggest that intra-party factors should matter, too. We argue that, while the political performance of a party leader (winning elections, securing government participation) is important, intra-party support and the rules of leadership selection add substantively to our understanding of why party leaders survive or fall. We test these expectations on a new data set covering all leaders of Austrian parties between 1945 and 2011. The results of our statistical analysis support our claim and show that intra-party factors have a considerable impact on party leader survival
The authors argue that the gender composition of party gatekeepers—those responsible for candidate recruitment— plays a crucial role in either encouraging or discouraging women candidates to run for office. Using an original data set that includes constituency-level information for all parties and candidates in the 2004 and 2006 Canadian national elections, the authors find support for this proposition. Women candidates are more likely to be nominated when the gatekeeper—the local party president—is a woman rather than a man. The results underline the importance of informal factors for understanding women’s political underrepresentation.
Are presidential cabinets gendered institutions? This important question has been ignored for Latin America to date. In this article, the authors propose four benchmarks for evaluating whether presidential cabinets should be classified as gendered institutions. If they are we should observe (1) that there are differences in career length, continuity, and mobility between men and women; (2) that women receive feminine domain posts and men masculine ones; (3) that masculine ministries offer greater potential for upward mobility; and (4) that women must be better qualified than men to receive appointments. Using data from eighteen Latin American countries from 1980 to 2003, the authors analyze the degree to which cabinets conform to these criteria. They conclude that even though women are starting to gain appointments to high-profile and to masculine domain cabinet posts, the overall evidence supports the conclusion that there are gendered patterns to cabinet appointments.
Will women transform party politics? As a group of relative newcomers to parties, women may contribute to shaping parties' policy agendas and to changing party rules. A party-level perspective allows for examination of the national-and party-level contextual influences that condition the effect of women on party platforms. Systematic analysis of a broad range of 142 political parties in 24 post-industrial democracies from 1990 to 2003 illuminates the dynamic relationship between women's political power and party politics. Drawing on the Comparative Manifestos Project data and original party-level data, the multi-level analyses reveal that women's rising numbers among a party's parliamentary delegation and among its leadership committee contribute to an emphasis on social justice in the party programme, and to the adoption of gender quota policies. Furthermore, for welfare state expansion, the effect of women MPs is amplified by the presence of a women's organization within the party.
Today the proportion of German politicians who are female is at an all time high. This has largely been achieved via quotas and most of the main parties now operate some kind of quota system. But have quantitative improvements in female representation in been matched by qualitative improvements? This article seeks to answer this question by looking not only at the number of women in parliaments and other collective bodies, but also in the highest echelons of power. It outlines each party's policies regarding the promotion of women and the factors which enhance or hamper their impact. A brief comparison of female political representation in eastern and western Germany is also provided. The author argues that measures such as quotas have increased the number of female German politicians but still do not guarantee them equal access to positions of real power. Furthermore, the incorporation of pro-equality principles into party statutes has not automatically led to their assimilation into party cultures, especially in the case of well-established parties which only recently addressed the gender imbalance in their ranks.
The last two decades saw a significant shift in party leaders' selection methods. As part of a wider phenomenon of intra-party democratization, many parties opened their leadership selection procedure to wider selection bodies (selectorates). Such a step was expected to reduce the parties' elitist and oligarchic tendencies by attracting more leadership aspirants and producing more competitive contests. This study aims to evaluate whether these expectations materialized – do wider selectorates produce more competitive leadership contests? Using the selectorate's level of inclusiveness as the explanatory variable, this paper explores 143 leadership contests to see whether these expectations materialized. Several operative indicators are used to evaluate the level of competitiveness. The main conclusion is that larger selectorates tend to attract more leadership candidates, but also tend to produce less competitive contests.
Many recent discussions of the decline of party are predicated on the assumption that the Duverger/socialist mass-party model is the only model for parties. We contend that this assumption is misconceived, that the mass-party model is only one, temporally limited and contingent model, and that it is necessary to differentiate notions of adaptation and change from notions of decline or failure. Following an analysis of how various models of party can be located in terms of the relationship between civil society and the state, we contend that the recent period has witnessed the emergence of a new model of party, the cartel party, in which colluding parties become agents of the state and employ the resources of the state (the party state) to ensure their own collective survival. Finally, we suggest that the recent challenge to party is in fact a challenge to the cartel that the established parties have created for themselves.
In this article, we compare the experiences of male and female party leaders at the provincial and federal levels in Canada between 1980 and 2005 and test several hypotheses regarding gender and party leadership. The Canadian case provides an excellent case study given the relatively large number of women (21 in total) who held the position of party leader during the time period in question. The case study reveals that major parties are less likely to elect women as their leaders, while parties on the ideological left are more likely than other parties to select women. The leadership races won by women are as competitive, if not more so, than those won by men, although the mandate secured by women leaders is less overwhelming. Not surprisingly, then, men are found to enjoy longer tenures as leaders than women, and, moreover, to enjoy greater electoral success.
The rational choice tradition has generated three models of competitive political party behavior: the vote-seeking party, the office-seeking party, and the policy-seeking party. Despite their usefulness in the analysis of interparty electoral competition and coalitional behavior, these models suffer from various theoretical and empirical limitations, and the conditions under which each model applies are not well specified. This article discusses the relationships between vote-seeking, office-seeking, and policy-seeking party behavior and develops a unified theory of the organizational and institutional factors that constrain party behavior in parliamentary democracies. Vote-seeking, office-seeking, and policy-seeking parties emerge as special cases of competitive party behavior under specific organizational and institutional conditions.
Recent archival and experimental research has revealed that women are more likely than men to be appointed to leadership positions when an organization is in crisis. As a result, women often confront a “glass cliff” in which their position as leader is precarious. Our first archival study examined the 2005 UK general election and found that, in the Conservative party, women contested harder to win seats than did men. Our second study experimentally investigated the selection of a candidate by 80 undergraduates in a British political science class to contest a by-election in a seat that was either safe (held by own party with a large margin) or risky (held by an opposition party with a large margin). Results indicated that a male candidate was more likely than a woman to be selected to contest a safe seat, but there was a strong preference for a female rather than a male appointment when the seat was described as hard to win. Implications for women's participation in politics are discussed.
Even though theorists disagree over the ability of newly mobilised interests to engage meaningfully with established parties, limited empirical research has probed the institutional circumstances under which outsiders ‘break in’. Second-wave feminist movements since the 1970s offer an important case study opportunity; they not only attracted women to mainstream political activism – including at top elite levels – but also challenged parties in organisational as well as policy terms. Focusing on the years 1975 and following, when nine women mounted ten campaigns to be party leaders across the Canadian ideological spectrum, this study examines how selection processes, electoral competitiveness and left/right positioning shaped elite-level success. It concludes that women's ability to win top posts was facilitated by weak electoral competitiveness and positioning outside the political right, meaning victorious candidates assumed positions of responsibility in parties that were far from the corridors of power.
[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 112(3) of
Psychological Bulletin (see record
2008-10512-001). Some of the numbers in the Value columns of Table 1, page 11, were aligned incorrectly. The corrected version of Table 1 is provided in the erratum.] Reviews research on the evaluation of women and men that occupy leadership roles. While holding the characteristics, except for sex, constant and varying the sex of the leader, these experiments investigated whether people are biased against female leaders and managers. Although this research showed only a small overall tendency for Ss to evaluate female leaders less favorably than male ones, this tendency was more pronounced under certain circumstances. Specifically, women in leadership positions were devalued relative to their male counterparts when leadership was carried out in stereotypically masculine styles, especially when this style was autocratic or directive. Also, the devaluation of women was greater when leaders occupied male-dominated roles and when the evaluators were men. Findings are interpreted from a perspective that emphasizes the influence of gender roles within organizational settings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
“When we inaugurate a President of the United States we give a man the powers of our highest office.”Richard Neustadt, preface to the first edition of Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents, 1960
Using qualitative and quantitative techniques, this article compares nearly all cases of women presidents and prime ministers in power between 1960 through 2007. In a comparative gender analysis, I focus on the impact of institutional and structural factors on the ways in which women acquire their positions and on the type of executive authority exercised. Women are more likely to enter office when their powers are relatively few and constrained. The political systems in which they lead generally feature fragmented executive power arrangements, including a dual executive structure. Women also enter in politically unstable contexts and in countries lacking political institutionalization, frequently as members of privileged groups. Findings indicate that comparative politics research needs to explore the gendered connections between executive positions and authority, power, and independence.