Article

Diverse Parties, Diverse Agendas? Female Politicians and the Parliamentary Party’s Role in Platform Formation

March 2016
European Journal of Political Research 55(3)

Authors:

University of Strathclyde

Parties’ parliamentary delegations contain a multitude of interests. While scholars suspect that this variation affects party behavior, most work on parties’ policy statements treats parties as unitary actors. This reflects the absence of strong expectations concerning when (and how) the parliamentary caucus matters for platform construction, as well as the difficulties inherent in testing such claims. Drawing on the literature on women’s descriptive representation, we argue that the makeup of the parliamentary party likely has important consequences for issue entrepreneurship, the scope of issues represented on the manifesto, and even the left-right position of election platforms. With the most comprehensive party-level study of women’s representation ever conducted, we test our three diversity hypotheses using data on the gender makeup of parties’ parliamentary delegations and the content of their manifestos for 110 parties in 20 democracies between 1952 and 2011. We show that as the percentage of women in the parliamentary party increases, parties address a greater diversity of issues in their election campaigns. Women’s presence is also associated with more left-leaning manifestos, even when controlling for parties’ prior ideological positions. Together, these findings illustrate a previously overlooked consequence of descriptive representation and provide a framework for understanding when and why the parliamentary party influences manifesto formation. They show that diversity—or lack thereof—has important consequences for parties’ policy statements, and thus the overall quality of representation.

Appendix to Diverse Parties, Diverse Agendas by Greene and O'Brien

Data

February 2016

Zachary Greene · Diana Z. O'Brien

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The Effect of Women's Parliamentary Participation on Renewable Energy Policy Outcomes

Article

Full-text available

May 2022

Hannah Salamon

Decreasing CO2 emissions, a top priority of climate change mitigation, requires moving away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy. Research shows that women tend to exhibit more knowledge about climate change, environmental concern, and pro‐environmental behaviour than men. Theories linking descriptive and substantive representation suggest that women representatives better represent women citizens’ policy preferences. Therefore, do higher levels of women's parliamentary participation increase renewable energy consumption? A time‐series cross‐sectional analysis of 100 democracies from 1997 to 2017 provides evidence for such a relationship in both high and middle‐income democracies. Lagged modelling demonstrates that high income states see more immediate effects while they take longer to materialize in middle‐income states. These findings contribute to our growing understanding of women's role in policymaking outside of “women's issues” and offer a means of advancing climate‐friendly energy policy. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

Quotas and Party Priorities: Direct and Indirect Effects of Quota Laws

Article

Nov 2018

Ana Catalano Weeks

In light of increasing numbers of women in politics, extant research has examined the role of women in the parliamentary party on agenda-setting. This paper complements that literature by exploring the effect of a gendered institution theorized to promote both numbers of women and awareness of women’s interests: gender quota laws. I suggest that after a quota law, parties could have incentives to either reduce (backlash effect) or increase (salience effect) attention to women’s policy concerns. Using matching and regression methods with a panel data set of parties in advanced democracies, I find that parties in countries that implement a quota law devote more attention to social justice issues in their manifestos than similar parties in countries without a quota. Furthermore, the paper shows that this effect is driven entirely by the law itself. Contrary to expectations, quota laws are not associated with increases in women in my (short-term) sample; it is thus no surprise that no evidence of an indirect effect through numbers of women is found. I interpret the findings as evidence of quota contagion, whereby quotas cue party leaders to compete on gender equality issues.

The Influence of Gender Stereotypes on Politicians' Behaviour and Voter Attitudes

Thesis

Oct 2022

Lotte Hargrave

Do politicians behave in accordance with gender stereotypes? Does the pressure to do so shift by context and over time? Do voters uphold these stereotypes when they perceive and evaluate politicians' behaviour? Focusing on elites and voters in the United Kingdom, this thesis addresses these questions in three papers. The first paper analyses whether politicians express behavioural styles that are consistent with stereotypes, and how the pressure to do so may have diminished over time. I describe novel quantitative text analysis approaches to measure styles in parliamentary debates between 1997 and 2019 and show that women's styles have changed substantially over time, as they have increasingly adopted styles congruent with "masculine" stereotypes. The second paper investigates whether there are gender differences in the sets of issues that politicians raise, whether women do more to raise women's concerns and experiences across the policy process more broadly, and how the incentive to do so changes with increased political experience. Using quantitative text analysis techniques to measure the issues politicians raise, I find that, among junior politicians, women talk significantly more about stereotypically "feminine" issue areas, but also that this gender gap decreases markedly with increased seniority. However, women continue to refer to women's experiences in a wide range of issue areas throughout their careers. The third paper evaluates whether the styles politicians use influence how voters evaluate them, and whether this matters more for women than it does for men. In a novel survey experiment, I manipulate politician gender and argument style and find that style usage has important consequences for how voters evaluate politicians, but that the effects of style are not conditional on politician gender. Taken together, this thesis provides important theoretical arguments and empirical evidence concerning the dynamic validity of stereotypes in informing elite and voter behaviour in the UK.

When Do Men MPs Claim to Represent Women in Plenary Debates—Time-Series Cross-Sectional Evidence from the German States

Article

Full-text available

Aug 2022

Corinna Kroeber

Extensive scholarly work engages with the growing number of women in legislatures around the world and highlights their role as advocates of women’s interests during parliamentary decision-making processes. This article sheds light on the reactions of men MPs (members of parliament) to this trend by uncovering how women's numerical strength in party parliamentary groups shapes the issues that their men colleagues emphasize when speaking about women during plenary debates. I argue that, the higher the share of women in a party parliamentary group, the more will men representatives emphasize women’s interests in the context of issues they can easily relate to—either because the issues lie in men’s area of responsibility according to ideas about traditional role distributions in the society, for example, the financing of gender equality projects, or because they are part of broader patterns of societal inequality, such as poverty or health. I provide empirical evidence for this argument based on original time-series cross-sectional data from plenary debates in six German states between 2005 and 2021 using a structural topic model. These findings shed light on men’s role as critical actors and have implications for gender equality and the functioning of representative democracy more broadly.

When Do Männerparteien Elect Women? Radical Right Populist Parties and Strategic Descriptive Representation

Article

Full-text available

Mar 2022

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.

The Diminishing Value of Representing the Disadvantaged: Between Group Representation and Individual Career Paths

Article

Full-text available

Feb 2021
BRIT J POLIT SCI

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.

Policy agendas and regime liberalisation: the case of Hong Kong 1975-2016

Thesis

Jan 2019

Nick H. K. Or

This thesis considers how political liberalisation, as a dynamic process, affects policy processes in authoritarian regimes. Prior studies observed either the bargaining process or the information exchange process but not both. These studies consider them as two distinct and competing theoretical perspectives. First, the bargaining perspective asserts that the process of political liberalisation, with the introduction of more inclusive and competitive elections, increases the bargaining costs and make policymaking more difficult. Second, political liberalisation increases the social and political freedom and it enhances information exchange that facilitates policymaking. However, these two processes contradict with each other and create a theoretical puzzle that requires a systematic theoretical and empirical investigation. Building on the punctuated equilibrium theory, this thesis offers a novel bargaining/information exchange hybrid theoretical model to explain policy processes during a period of political liberalisation. Rather than treating the two perspectives as competing explanations, this thesis integrates them by recognising the duality of the electoral system—it is a source of political bargaining as well as a source of information exchange. The liberalisation of the electoral system increases the likelihood of transforming the authoritarian regime from a one-party or one-party-dominant system to a multiparty system. An increased number of political parties in the policy processes intensifies the bargaining process but also increases the information exchange. As such, the changes in bargaining and information exchange processes happen simultaneously as regimes liberalise. The hybrid model contributes to advancement in the field with this refined way of thinking about policymaking during a period of political liberalisation. It captures the complexity and non-linearity of the social and political world. Using a novel and original time-series dataset of legislative bills of the Hong Kong Legislative Council, the analysis adopts the policy content coding system of the Comparative Agendas Project (CAP) to measure legislative attention from 1975 to 2016. Policy processes are measured by legislative speed (i.e., the duration of the legislative process), distribution of policy change (i.e., changes in policy contents in the legislative bills) and issue diversity of the policy agenda (i.e., the concentration of policymakers’ attention across different policy issues). Political liberalisation is measured by the degree of inclusive and competitive elections, while the number of political parties is measured by the effective number of political parties. This thesis uses stochastic process methods to measure distributions of policy change, determining whether policymaking is characterised by a pattern of mostly stable and occasional periods of rapid and radical policy change. Further, it uses time-series analysis and event history analysis to estimate the impact of the number of political parties on policy processes. This thesis has a number of important findings. First, an increase in the number of political parties brings in more information and greater bargaining costs. This effectively slows down the legislative process. Second, it finds that the distribution of policy change is punctuated—characterised by long periods of stasis but also a more frequent occurrence of radical changes—rather than incremental change in Hong Kong’s legislative agenda and it confirms the expectation of the punctuated equilibrium theory. However, as the regime liberalises, the distribution of policy change becomes less punctuated, meaning that there are more frequent and moderate policy adjustments. It suggests that a greater number of political parties facilitates policy change and can be explained by the information model. However, comparing Hong Kong’s distribution of policy change with other advanced democracies provides support for the bargaining model. These puzzling findings show a more inclusive bargaining/information exchange hybrid model is needed to explain policymaking in countries with different degrees of political liberalisation. Third, the study of issue diversity of the policy agenda shows an “inverted-U” curve as the number of political parties increases. It implies that autocrats pay more attention to a wider range of policy topics when the number of political parties increases from a low level whereas the attention to different policy topics shrinks when the number of political parties escalates to an extremely high number. The empirical evidence provides unambiguous support for the bargaining/information exchange hybrid model. Overall, this thesis builds on the punctuated equilibrium theory by offering a novel bargaining/information exchange hybrid model to understand policymaking and tests it systematically with new empirical evidence. It contributes to the understanding of policymaking in authoritarian regimes. It also provides an important insight into the duality of political and other social processes in comparative politics.<br/

The Effects of Women Officeholders on Environmental Policy

Article

Apr 2019

en Studies show that women and girls consistently demonstrate higher levels of concern for the environment than men and boys. Separately, research also indicates that women officeholders pay particular attention to the issues prioritized by their female constituents. Interestingly, despite the consistency of the gender gap in attitudes to environmental issues the literature has paid scant attention to the role of women officeholders in the adoption of environmental policy. The goal of this paper was to start to address that lacuna. Using pooled cross‐sectional time series analyses of environmental standards in 18 Western parliamentary democracies (1990–2012), our initial findings indicate women officeholders are associated with the adoption of higher environmental standards. Abstract zh 女性官员对环境政策产生的作用研究表明，女性和女孩对环境问题的关心一直高于男性和男孩。此外，研究还表明，女性官员对那些由女性选民所优先重视的问题予以特别关注。有趣的是，除去不同性别对环境问题所持态度的持续性差异，现有文献却很少关注女性官员在采纳环境政策一事上所产生的作用。本文目的旨在填补此研究空白。通过对1990‐2012年间18个西方民主国家的环境标准进行（共享式）跨部门时间序列分析，本文得出的初期结果表明，女性官员与“采纳更高的环境标准”有关。 Abstract es Los efectos de las mujeres oficinistas en la política ambiental los estudios muestran que las mujeres y las niñas demuestran consistentemente niveles más altos de preocupación por el medio ambiente que los hombres y los niños. Por separado, la investigación también indica que las mujeres que ocupan cargos públicos prestan especial atención a los temas priorizados por sus electoras. Curiosamente, a pesar de la consistencia de la brecha de género en las actitudes hacia los problemas ambientales, la literatura ha prestado poca atención al papel de las mujeres en la adopción de políticas ambientales. El objetivo de este trabajo es comenzar a abordar ese vacío. Usando análisis agrupados de series de tiempo de estándares ambientales en 18 democracias parlamentarias occidentales (1990‐2012), nuestros hallazgos iniciales indican que las mujeres en cargos públicos están asociadas con la adopción de estándares ambientales más altos.

“Righting” Conventional Wisdom: Women and Right Parties in Established Democracies

Article

Mar 2018

Diana Z. O'Brien

Parties are the key actors shaping women's representation in advanced parliamentary democracies. Based on traditional patterns of feminist organizing, conventional wisdom suggests that parties of the left are the strongest advocates for women. Despite the prevalence of this claim, a burgeoning body of work indicates that parties on the right can—and often do—seek to represent women. To address these competing narratives, this article offers the first large- N, party-level study of women's descriptive and substantive representation over place and time. The results suggest that party ideology continues to affect women's representation: right parties lag behind their left counterparts with respect to women's presence in elected office, and right and left parties address women differently on their platforms. At the same time, there is significant heterogeneity among right parties. Christian democrats, for example, are more likely than conservatives to adopt voluntary gender quotas and make policy claims on behalf of women. The traditional left-right distinction is thus too coarse to fully explain party behavior in these states.

Women's discursive agency in transitional justice policy-making: A feminist institutionalist approach

Article

Full-text available

Sep 2023

Scholars have studied how women’s domestic and transnational civil society activism addresses the gendered nature of transitional justice. In contrast, they have paid scant attention to women’s impact on transitional justice policy-making in institutions. We leverage the feminist institutionalist perspective that makes visible gendered norms, rules, and discourses in institutions. Homing in on women’s influence in parliaments where women are outnumbered by men and marginalised by adversarial discourse, we develop a conceptualisation of women’s discursive agency. Foregrounding discourse in women’s ability to drive change, women’s agency is enacted through their linguistic communication style and substantive normative positions that constitute micro- and macro-level structures of domination. Quantitative and qualitative discourse analysis is applied to a corpus of parliamentary questions about transitional justice in the Croatian parliament from 2004 to 2020. Our results show that women adopt the adversarial style of questioning, which they use to broaden the scope of entitlements and press for reparations for female and male victims. They overcome constraints posed by partisanship and ideology, while constraints of nationalism are less easily broken. The article advances feminist transitional justice by demonstrating how women’s language contributes to dismantling men’s policy domination in institutions, with implications for mixed-sex interactions in non-institutional domains.

Couverture médiatique des enjeux électoraux au Québec de 1994 à 2018

Article

Full-text available

Feb 2023

Résumé Cette étude examine l’évolution de la couverture accordée aux enjeux dans la presse écrite durant les campagnes au Québec de 1994 à 2018. Deux constats ressortent de cette étude. On assisterait d'abord à une diversification de l'ordre du jour médiatique s'expliquant notamment par un recul de la question nationale dans l'espace médiatique au profit d'enjeux comme l'environnement et l'immigration. Le recadrage de la question nationale nettement plus axée aujourd'hui sur la dimension identitaire que sur la question du statut politique du Québec est frappant. Ces changements semblent indiquer la montée d'un axe politique libéral-autoritaire dans la province, alors même que l’émergence du multipartisme ouvre la porte à un réalignement politique durable. Ces observations tendent à confirmer la perspective voulant que l'ordre du jour lors d'une campagne résulte de l'interaction entre les médias, les partis et les électeurs et qu'il offre ainsi un reflet adéquat de l’évolution de la dynamique politique dans une société donnée.

Do Women Make More Protectionist Trade Policy?

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2023

Women have more protectionist trade preferences than men do. We assess whether this well-documented relationship between gender and protectionism in the mass public carries over into a relationship between women’s political representation and (a) party platforms, and (b) governments’ trade policy choices. Looking across countries and over time, we demonstrate that with an increase in women’s representation, political party trade policy positions become more protectionist. For government trade policy choices, we identify more nuanced results. The protectionist effect of women’s representation is limited to the most visible products: consumption goods. Women’s representation has no effect on intermediate inputs, where firm demands for trade liberalization are more pronounced and policy makers are thus constrained in implementing a protectionist agenda. These findings contribute to scholarship on the descriptive–substantive representation link, add a new dimension to our understanding of trade politics, and demonstrate the importance of applying a gendered lens to international political economy research.

A replication of “Women Representation in Parliaments: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis” (Political Studies, 2010)

Article

Nov 2021

Dejene Mamo Bekana

This paper replicates the results of the paper by Krook, M. L. on the Women Representation in Parliaments in 22 developed countries in the west. The data used by Krook was obtained from COMPASSS (COMPArative Methods for Systematic Cross-Case Analysis) and the analysis followed her exact methods and are able to replicate the major findings. However, the paper idetified that krook’s conclusions did not conform to the standard solution (i.e., the intermediate solution) often used in Qualitative Comparative Analysis. By extending the analysis to the standard intermediate solution approach, this replication arrives at differing conclusions. Please see the longer version of the article for details.

Gender and Party Discipline: Evidence from Africa’s Emerging Party Systems

Article

Full-text available

May 2021

Are men and women legislators equally loyal to their parties? We theorize that parties select candidates based on gendered criteria, leading to the (s)election of more disciplined women. Moreover, we argue that gendered expectations about proper behavior limit women legislators’ ability to act independently from their parties. Using surveys from over 800 parliamentarians across 17 African legislatures, we find that women report significantly higher levels of party discipline than do their men copartisans. From this survey data and new legislative speech data, we also find support for our proposed causal mechanisms. Further, we find that among women parliamentarians, party discipline is negatively correlated with the prioritization of womens rights. A qualitative case study of the Namibian Parliament illustrates our findings. We discuss the implications of our results for women’s legislative effectiveness, for the substantive representation of women’s interests in policy making, and for the continued democratization of emerging party systems.

Gender, Justice and Deliberation: Why Women Don't Influence Peacemaking

Article

Full-text available

Feb 2021

Scholars have pinpointed that women's underrepresentation in peacemaking results in gendered outcomes that do not address women's needs and interests. Despite recent increased representation at the negotiating table, women still have a limited influence on peacemaking outcomes. We propose that differences in female and male speeches reflected in the gendered patterns in discourse during peacemaking explain how women's influence is curtailed. We examine women's speaking behavior in transitional justice debates in the post-conflict Balkans. Applying multimethod quantitative text analysis to over half a million words in multiple languages, we analyze structural and thematic speech patterns. We find that men's domination of turn-taking and the absence of topics reflecting women's needs and interests lead to a gendered outcome. The sequences of men talking after men are longer than those of women talking after women, which restricts women's deliberative space and opportunities to develop and sustain arguments that reflect their concerns. We find no evidence that women's limited influence is driven by lower deliberative quality of their speeches. This study of gendered dynamics at the microlevel of discourse identifies a novel dimension of male domination during peacemaking.

Varieties of capital and gender party office in Italy

Article

Full-text available

Feb 2021

This article advances a new approach based on ‘varieties of capital’ to explain gendered upward mobility in political parties. Research on gender political advancement unduly neglects women delegates to national party congresses. Our work seeks to redress the imbalance by drawing on data gathered from 5,122 questionnaires issued to national party delegates at 20 national conventions that took place between 2004 and 2013 in Italy. To analyse the data we develop a new framework based on ‘varieties of capital’. Our approach builds on Bourdieu's three types of personal capital – economic, social and cultural – and interprets the findings borrowing analytical tools from recent feminist institutional theory, especially the concept of homosocial capital. Comparisons of male and female party delegates in terms of background and their political trajectories reveal the persistence of an uneven playing field, with gendered hierarchies in Italian political parties confirming an international pattern.

Broad-appeal agendas: Issue diversity and the centre-right's electoral success

Article

Full-text available

Apr 2021
ELECT STUD

Extant research has focused on the consequences of positional issue shifts that parties associate with their campaigns. Less attention has been paid to the consequences of the breadth of these issue agendas, which we demonstrate is a fruitful avenue for future research. Our analysis compares the effects of “appealing broadly” when employed by mainstream-left and mainstream-right parties and argues that centre-right parties can gain votes by employing this strategy. In contrast, we show that this “broad appeal” strategy is not successful for the mainstream-left in advanced parliamentary democracies. Additional analysis suggests that when controlling for issue diversity, position or salience shifts are not significant predictors of electoral support for centre-right parties. These findings contribute to the literature on party competition, issue competition and ownership, and the advantaged position of contemporary centre-right parties.

Essays in political text: new actors, new data, new challenges

Thesis

Sep 2020

Tom Paskhalis

The essays in this thesis explore diverse manifestations and different aspects of political text. The two main contributions on the methodological side are bringing forward novel data on political actors who were overlooked by the existing literature and application of new approaches in text analysis to address substantive questions about them. On the theoretical side this thesis contributes to the literatures on lobbying, government transparency, post-conflict studies and gender in politics. In the first paper on interest groups in the UK I argue that contrary to much of the theoretical and empirical literature mechanisms of attaining access to government in pluralist systems critically depend on the presence of limits on campaign spending. When such limits exist, political candidates invest few resources in fund-raising and, thus, most organizations make only very few if any political donations. I collect and analyse transparency data on government department meetings and show that economic importance is one of the mechanisms that can explain variation in the level of access attained by different groups. Furthermore, I show that Brexit had a diminishing effect on this relationship between economic importance and the level of access. I also study the reported purpose of meetings and, using dynamic topic models, show the temporary shifts in policy agenda during this period. The second paper argues that civil society in post-conflict settings is capable of high-quality deliberation and, while differing in their focus, both male and female can deliver arguments pertaining to the interests of broader societal groups. Using the transcripts of civil society public consultation meetings across former Yugoslavia I show that the lack of gender-sensitive transitional justice instruments could stem not from the lack of women’s 3 physical or verbal participation, but from the dynamic of speech enclaves and topical focus on different aspects of transitional justice process between genders. And, finally, the third paper maps the challenges that lie ahead with the proliferation of research that relies on multiple datasets. In a simulation study I show that, when the linking information is limited to text, the noise can potential occur at different levels and is often hard to anticipate in practice. Thus, the choice of record linkage requires balancing between these different scenarios. Taken together, the papers in this thesis advance the field of “text as data” and contribute to our understanding of multiple political phenomena.

Women Want an Answer! Field Experiments on Elected Officials and Gender Bias

Article

Full-text available

Aug 2020

Are elected officials more responsive to men than women inquiring about access to government services? Women face discrimination in many realms of politics, but evidence is limited on whether such discrimination extends to interactions between women and elected officials. In recent years, several field experiments have examined public officials’ responsiveness. The majority focused on racial bias in the USA, while the few experiments outside the USA were usually single-country studies. We explore gender bias with the first large-scale audit experiment in five countries in Europe (France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Netherlands) and six in Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Uruguay). A citizen alias whose gender is randomized contacts members of parliament about unemployment benefits or healthcare services. The results are surprising. Legislators respond significantly more to women (+3% points), especially in Europe (+4.3% points). In Europe, female legislators in particular reply substantially more to women (+8.4% points).

Women Want an Answer! Field Experiments on Elected Officials and Gender Bias

Preprint

Full-text available

Jul 2020

Are elected officials more responsive to men than women inquiring about access to government services? Women face discrimination in many realms of politics, but evidence is limited on whether such discrimination extends to interactions between women and elected officials. In recent years, several field experiments have examined public officials' responsiveness. The majority focused on racial bias in the United States, while the few experiments outside the US were usually single-country studies. We explore gender bias with the first large-scale audit experiment in 5 countries in Europe (). A citizen alias whose gender is randomized contacts members of parliament about unemployment benefits or healthcare services. The results are surprising. Legislators respond significantly more to women (+3% points), especially in Europe (+4.3% points). In Europe, female legislators in particular reply substantially more to women (+8.4% points).

When Do Men Represent Women's Interests in Parliament? How the Presence of Women in Parliament Affects the Legislative Behavior of Male Politicians

Article

Full-text available

Feb 2020

Daniel Höhmann

This paper analyzes the conditions affecting male Members of Parliaments' (MPs) proclivity for representing women's interests. It particularly explores whether the presence of female MPs has an effect on men's parliamentary behavior. Three contrasting effects are discussed in the literature: (1) A spillover effect which postulates that men will become more likely to act on behalf of women if the number of female MPs increases, (2) a group-threat effect which creates a hostile backlash among male MPs, or (3) a specialization effect which makes male MPs less likely to represent women because this is typically seen as a function that should be fulfilled by female MPs. Empirically, this paper analyzes the representation of women's issues in parliamentary questions tabled in the German Bundestag (1998-2013) by using automated content analysis. The results support the specialization hypothesis and show that male MPs reduce their intensity of women's representation if the proportion of female MPs is high.

Who Does What Work in a Ministerial Office: Politically Appointed Staff and the Descriptive Representation of Women in Australian Political Offices, 1979–2010

Article

Full-text available

Jun 2019

Women are underrepresented within political institutions, which can (negatively) impact policy outcomes. We examine women’s descriptive representation as politically appointed staff within ministerial offices. Politically appointed staff are now institutionalised into the policy process, so who they are is important. To date, collecting systematic data on political staff has proved impossible. However, for the first time we demonstrate how to build a systematic data set of this previously unobservable population. We use Australian Ministerial Directories (telephone records) from 1979 to 2010 (a method that can notionally be replicated in advanced democratic jurisdictions), to examine political advising careers in a similar manner as elected political elites. We find that work in political offices is divided on gender lines: men undertake more policy work, begin and end their careers in higher status roles and experience greater career progression than women. We find evidence that this negatively impacts women’s representation and their later career paths into parliament.

How Policy Agendas Change When Autocracies Liberalize: The Case of Hong Kong, 1975‐2016

Article

Full-text available

Jun 2019
PUBLIC ADMIN

Nick H. K. Or

This article considers how autocrats decide to expand or narrow the issue diversity of their policy agenda during a period of political liberalization. Prior studies have two competing perspectives. First, political liberalization increases the social and political freedom that enhances information exchange, and thus expands issue diversity. Second, political liberalization decreases government's control of the legislature and thus narrows the issue diversity. This article offers a novel theoretical perspective by combining these two countervailing theories. It predicts a diminishing marginal benefit of information exchange and an increasing marginal bargaining cost. As such, this article argues that issue diversity follows a negative quadratic (inverted‐U) relationship as the regimes liberalize. The analysis of a new and unique dataset of Hong Kong's legislative agenda (1975 to 2016) offers support for this theory. This study contributes to our knowledge of policymaking in authoritarian regimes and the theory of information processing. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Women's representation and European green parties: unlocking the connection

Article

Apr 2019

Naomi Bick

Scholars of comparative politics have increasingly turned to parties to explain the variation in women's representation. However, the literature has not fully considered that green parties may provide unique insight into women's representation due to their longstanding ideological attachment to feminism. To understand the question of women's representation in green parties, this analysis examines green parties in 20 European countries. Relying on data from party websites and quotaproject.org, the following categories were examined: the inclusion of women in leadership positions, the inclusion of enforced gender quotas in party structure, the inclusion of women's party member organizations, the structure of recruitment processes, and the content of party platforms. The results show that European green parties maintain a higher level of commitment to gender equality than their individual parliaments. This piece contributes to the growing literature on green parties by examining the ideological connection between green parties and feminism, as well as studying a larger cross-section of green parties than previous studies.

'A Fair Day's Wage for a Fair Day's Work'? Exploring the connection between the parliamentary work of MPs and their electoral support

Article

Jan 2019

Electoral systems across Europe increasingly invite candidates to build up a personal reputation to earn votes. In this article, we investigate whether parliamentary work can be considered as a personal vote-earning attribute for incumbent MPs based on data of the 2014 elections in Belgium. The results show that when parliamentary work is operationalised in a narrow way (i.e. as the number of bills and the number of oral and written questions of an MP), this has no influence on the amount of preferential votes. When parliamentary work is defined in a broader way (i.e. also including other aspects of the legislative and control function of MPs), parliamentary work has a significant positive effect for MPs from opposition parties. This supports the claim that the number of legislative and control activities is not sufficient to measure the impact of parliamentary work on preferential votes, but that also other aspects of the work should be taken into account.

Gender and Agenda Diversity: Cognitive Differences in Representatives’ Information Processing

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2018

Tevfik Murat Yildirim

en A growing body of research examines the role of information processing on decision making in a variety of organizational settings such as authoritarian and democratic governments, subnational organizations, and market systems. Although an increasing number of scholars point to the importance of cognitive capacities of individuals in explaining macrophenomena, scant attention has been devoted to how individual human beings process incoming information. Utilizing original datasets of parliamentary speeches and the biographies of 1,100 members of parliament (MPs) who served in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey between 2002 and 2011, I explore female–male differences in MPs’ issue attention in the parliament. Drawing together the literatures on political agenda setting, gender studies, and cognitive psychology, I argue that women’s higher potential for empathic response to societal issues (i.e., lower cognitive threshold of urgency for social problems) leads them to speak about a wider range of issues facing society and find strong support for this hypothesis. The conclusion considers potential implications of these findings. Abstract zh 越来越多的研究考察了信息处理在各种组织环境（如威权政治和民主政府，地方组织和市场体系）中的决策作用。虽然越来越多的学者指出个体认知能力在解释宏观现象中的重要性，但很少有人关注个体是如何处理他们所接收的信息的。本文通过使用在2002年至2011年期间土耳其大国民议会中任职的1100名议员（MPs）的议会演说和传记的原始数据集，探讨了议会议员关注的议题中所体现出的性别差异。综合了关于政治议程设置、性别研究和认知心理学方面的文献，本文认为女性有更大潜能对社会问题做出共情反应（即对社会问题所谓紧迫性的认知门槛更低），这使得她们会谈论范围更广泛的社会问题，且本文为这一假设找到了强有力的支撑。结论部分本文认真考虑了这些发现所带来的潜在影响。

Being Heard Above the Noise - The Role of Incumbent Issue Diversity in Election Campaigns

Article

Full-text available

Jun 2020
POLIT BEHAV

Zachary Greene

Historical policy reputations influence voters' perceptions of parties' electoral campaigns. In the face of their recent experiences in office, government parties' thoughtfully crafted electoral messages likely compete for voters' attention with a wealth of broader information about the government's policy activities and priorities. For their message to be heard, incumbent parties must offer a focused policy message that draws voters' attention to the issues they most prioritize. Considering the issue scope of parties' electoral messages, I hypothesize that incumbency status determines the effect issue appeals have on the votes parties receive. Opposition parties may profit from including more issues, but incumbent parties' policy reputations limit the potential benefits from diverse appeals. Using evidence from 25 OECD countries over a 60 year period, I find that parties' incumbent status conditions the effect of issue diversity on parties' aggregate electoral success. Voters reward incumbents for focusing their platforms, but reward opposition parties for diverse appeals. The results for incumbent parties are robust to extensive sensitivity analyses. The theory and evidence broadly suggest that incumbent parties with more focused policy messages can, at least partially, overcome the weight of their past policy reputations.

Gender and opinion–policy congruence in Europe

Article

Sep 2018

Stefanie Reher

Does public policy in Europe reflect women’s preferences equally well as men’s? This study compares the opinions of women and men with concrete policy on a set of 20 issues across a diverse range of policy areas in 31 European countries. It shows that the majorities of men and women frequently prefer the same policy. However, when they disagree, men’s preferences are more likely to be represented. Neither the proportion of women in parliament nor the left–right orientation of the government explains variation in women’s policy representation. Instead, a higher number of parliamentary parties increase the likelihood that policy reflects women’s views. This effect does not seem to be driven by left-libertarian politics or Green parties, even though women’s stronger support for ‘new politics’ issues is an important source of disagreement between men and women.

Climate change communication from cities in the USA

Article

Full-text available

Jul 2018
CLIMATIC CHANGE

Cities in the USA engage in action on climate change, even as the federal government remains resistant to comprehensive climate policy. While experts generally agree that local level adaptation and mitigation policies are critical to avoiding the worst climate impacts, the degree to which cities communicate climate change issues to their constituents has yet to be fully explored. In this article, we evaluate how US cities communicate climate change-related issues, problems, and policies. We use a computer-assisted approach to evaluate climate change efforts by cities by examining the full text of press releases of 82 large cities in the USA. We first identify who discusses climate change, finding that many large cities in the USA address climate change in their public communication. Second, we examine the content of these discussions. Many cities discuss weather-related concerns in conjunction with broad collaborative efforts to address global warming, while city-based policy discussions focus more on energy and transportation efforts. Third, we evaluate the local factors associated with these discussions. We find that the city’s climate vulnerability is particularly influential in shaping the level and timing of climatic communication.

Does women’s descriptive representation matter for policy preferences? The role of political parties

Article

Mar 2018

Although the presence of women has been increasing in several parliaments around the world, we still do not know much about the consequences that their presence has for policy representation. Relying on a rich comparative dataset on prospective MPs’ policy preferences in 12 countries and 87 political parties collected between 2006 and 2012 within the Comparative Candidates Survey, this article aims to understand how political parties interplay with prospective MPs’ sex to affect the latter’s policy preferences. Our results show that the descriptive representation of women makes a difference for policy representation, (i) mainly (though not only) when issues that particularly affect women are at stake and (ii) only concerning issues around which political parties do not yet have settled positions (i.e. uncrystallized issues). There are therefore empirical grounds to support an imposed representation of minority groups to deal with issues that are new on the political agenda.

Political Competition and the Effectiveness of Gender Quotas: Evidence from Portugal

Article

Aug 2023

Ideology and Party Positions on Gender Issues in Spain: Evidence from a Novel Data Set

Article

Jul 2023
Polit Gend

This article introduces new quantitative fine-tuned indicators to objectively measure political parties’ preferences on gender issues. We assess the validity and reliability of these new empirical indicators by analyzing the relationship between ideology and gender positions in decentralized Spain. Using data collected by the Regional Manifestos Project, which for the first time has incorporated a fully fledged gender domain into its coding scheme for content analysis of regional manifestos, we analyze parties’ gender positions on four fundamental dimensions: welfare and the labor market, violence, representation, and values and identity. The results suggest that there is a persistent left-right divide on the last three dimensions: Spanish left-wing parties score significantly higher than right-wing and regionalist parties. However, ideology does not drive parties’ gender positions on welfare and labor market policies; support for gender equality policies on this dimension is so widespread that it can be considered a “valence issue”—all parties, irrespective of their ideology, endorse the same (positive) position.

Gendered Patterns of Committee Assignments—To What Extent Are Women in Parliamentary Party Groups Game Changers?

Article

May 2023
PARLIAMENT AFF

Corinna Kroeber

Committee assignments continue to be gendered with men having higher chances than women to be appointed to the most visible, resourceful and influential committees. I contribute to a better understanding of this phenomenon by investigating to what extent women in parliamentary party groups push for gender parity in committee assignments. The empirical analyses build on original data from the 16 German states between 1990 and 2021. I find no indication that women as leaders of parliamentary party groups narrow sex gaps in appointment to the most prestigious committees, but higher shares of women representatives enhance women’s access to these posts.

The Origins and Consequences of Congressional Party Election Agendas

Book

Feb 2023

Scott R. Meinke

Measuring the Substantive Representation of Women Cross-Nationally: Towards a Composite Index

Article

Feb 2023
Polit Stud Rev

Recent scholarship on women’s substantive representation has expanded from its initial focus on gender inequalities in parliaments and now studies (1) various group interests, (2) in different venues, (3) across different contexts and (4) using different methods and approaches. Building on these advances, we present a new comparative measure of women’s substantive representation. This ‘Substantive Representation Index’ combines eight indicators, linked to two key dimensions of women’s substantive representation, in one composite quantitative index. As such, we offer a consistent modality that allows scholars to measure women’s substantive representation systematically and comparatively across and within democratic countries and over time.

A new focus for left-Wing Parties: The salience of low-Wage work In the electoral manifestos of OECD countries

Article

Nov 2022

Dominic Durocher

The recent mobilization by Living wage movements and unions to raise minimum wages have put the issue of low-wage work at the center of political debates in several countries. To study the position of political parties on this issue, we use electoral manifestos from 18 western democracies from 1990 to 2019. The results show that left-wing parties mention much more often the issue of low-wage work than right-wing parties, especially in countries with a weak degree of corporatism. The different categories of respectively left- and right-wing parties are quite similar in their mentions of low-wage work issues. However, ecologist parties mention low-wage work issues less often than other left parties and radical left parties tend to make broad criticisms of low-wage work more often than center-left parties.

Geschlecht und Demokratie in Österreich

Chapter

Sep 2022

Women’s Role in Promoting Environmental Issues: Evidence from 19 Industrialized Democracies

Chapter

Jan 2022

Corinna Kroeber

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

The role of women’s descriptive representation on same-gender and proximity voting among women

Article

Jun 2022

Benjamin Ferland

The article examines the relationship between the descriptive representation of women in political parties and its effect on same-gender and proximity voting among women. In particular, we examine whether women are more likely to support parties that have more women representatives or a woman party leader. We also consider whether women’s descriptive representation in parties may help women cast a vote that better corresponds to their preferences. To answer these questions, we make use of data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems. We analyse respondents’ vote choice in 55 elections across 14 countries. Overall, our results show that the presence of a woman party leader motivates women to support such a party and that it also encourages women to vote for a party closer to their ideological position. The results, however, do not provide strong evidence that the presence of more women representatives in parties also fosters same-gender and proximity voting among women. Key messages Our results indicate that the presence of women party leaders motivates women to support such parties. The presence of a woman leader also helps women to vote for a party closer to their ideological position. These processes are beneficial for women’s descriptive and substantive representation in the democratic process. </ul

How and Whom Do Women Represent in Legislatures?

Chapter

Feb 2022

The chapter evaluates the relations between substantive, descriptive, and symbolic representation in the Mexican states’ Congresses from 2014 to 2021. Once women gain access to office, political representation aims to ensure that public decisions reflect, to some extent, the interests of the represented group. The research explores what factors allow this representation to be effective. Based on an original database of 46 of 64 subnational legislatures (2 for each of the 23 states) that allowed the registration of 24,397 legislative proposals, it evaluates how many generalist proposals are presented, how many of them can be classified as part of the feminist agenda, which actors present them (men, women, mixed groups) and whether they are approved. The findings show that descriptive representation has a positive, substantive, and statistically significant effect on four of the six operationalizations of substantive representation. The results also reveal that the relation between symbolic and substantive representation is less clear. Only one of the four operationalizations of symbolic representation is statistically significant, and the magnitude of its effect is smaller than that of descriptive representation.KeywordsWomen’s substantive representationArticulation of interestsFeminist agendaMaterialization of interestsObstacles to women’s substantive representation

Let’s Work Together: Bill Success via Women’s Cosponsorship in U.S. State Legislatures

Article

Jun 2021

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.

How parties led by a woman redefine their positions: Empirical evidence for women's green, alternative, and libertarian agenda

Article

Mar 2021

Corinna Kroeber

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

The Effects of Women's Descriptive Representation on Government Behavior

Article

Feb 2021

Jonathan Homola

Does the representation of women in cabinet and party leadership positions affect whether governments are more or less likely to fulfill the policy promises they make during election campaigns? This research note studies the effects of women's descriptive representation in cabinet and party leadership on policymaking by analyzing the pledge fulfillment of parties in 10 European countries, the United States, and Canada. The empirical analysis suggests that governing parties are more likely to fulfill their election promises when levels of women's representation are higher. The results have implications for our understanding of the descriptive and substantive representation of women, as well as for party competition and policymaking more broadly.

How Transnational party alliances influence national parties’ policies

Article

Jan 2021

Previous research reports that parties in established European democracies learn from and emulate the successful election strategies of foreign incumbents, i.e., successful parties are influential abroad. We theorize that—in addition to incumbency (or success)—exchange takes place through transnational party alliances in the European Union. Relying on party manifesto data and spatial econometric analyses, we show that belonging to the same European Parliament (EP) party group enhances learning and emulation processes between national political parties. Estimated short- and long-term effects are approximately two and three times greater when foreign incumbents are in the same EP party group compared to other foreign incumbents. Our results have implications for our understanding of how transnational party groups influence national parties’ policy positions.

Political Speech in Religious Sermons

Article

Jul 2020

Religious leaders and congregants alike report high levels of political discussions in their churches. Yet, direct observations of political topics in a wide set of religious settings are rare. We examine the nature of political speech by clergy with a novel dataset of over 110,000 sermons. Using a computational text analysis approach and multiple forms of validation, we find political content in more than a third of religious sermons and that seven of 10 pastors discuss political topics at some point. Common topics include the economy, war, homosexuality, welfare, and abortion. We then use a geographic data to link the sermons to demographic and political information around the church and to information about the church and pastor to evaluate the variation of political content in sermons. We find that most pastors—across location and denomination—engage around political topics, confirming the intertwined nature of religion and politics in the United States.

Female participation in Parliament. Are we ever going to converge to Scandinavia?

Article

Apr 2020
Econ Syst

Despite the fact that female political participation has been steadily growing over time, women’s representation in politics is substantially lower than their proportion in society. In this paper, we investigate the determinants of women’s representation using a GMM system estimation to address the possible endogeneity. We employ a unique dataset that covers data for 130 countries from 1972 to 2005 in 7 different geographical regions to estimate a dynamic model for women’s representation and calculate each region’s steady state. In general, we find that the steady state values are above each region’s current percentage of women in parliament; however, without changing other variables, no region significantly increases the percentage of women in parliament. Moreover, we find that 66 to 87% of the gap between each region’s steady state with Scandinavia is explained by female secondary education enrollment, labor force participation, and political and economic rights.

The cost of coalition compromise: The electoral effects of holding salient portfolios

Article

Full-text available

Feb 2020

This article highlights the electoral effects of holding salient portfolios within a coalition government. For voters, holding ministries can be seen as a symbol of a party’s success within the coalition. As a voting heuristic, parties not controlling the portfolios on issues important to their platforms signal their failure to achieve these goals. Following this perspective, we hypothesize that the difference between coalition parties that hold salient portfolios and those that do not partially predicts the extent of the electoral cost of coalition participation. Using a data set that covers 11 European parliamentary democracies between 1966 and 2002, we show that for junior coalition partners there is an electoral reward for holding their most salient portfolio. There is also an electoral benefit for a junior partner to hold a larger number of portfolios if they do not control their most salient portfolio. Conversely, holding their most salient portfolio and a larger number of additional ministries results in greater electoral losses in the subsequent parliamentary election. These results indicate that parties’ success at negotiating for their policy priorities in coalition governments holds consequences for their future electoral success.

The Cultural Sources of the Gender Gap in Voter Turnout

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2020

Recent publications argue that the traditional gender gap in voting has decreased or reversed in many democracies. However, this decrease may apply only to some types of elections. Building on prior studies, this article hypothesizes that although women participate at the same or higher rates than men in national elections, they participate less in supranational elections. The authors investigate this possibility empirically by analyzing the evolution of the gender gap in voter turnout in elections to the European Parliament (EP). The article makes three important contributions. First, it shows the presence and stability of the traditional gender gap in EP elections. Secondly, it finds that gender differences in political interest are the main source of this gender gap. Thirdly, these gender differences in political interest are, in turn, context dependent. They are strongly associated with cultural gender differences, which are captured through differences in boys’ and girls’ maths scores.

Female leaders and citizens' perceptions of political parties

Article

Sep 2019

Diana Z. O'Brien

Do female leaders affect voters' perceptions of political parties' placement on the left-right spectrum? Using public opinion data on 269 parties in 35 countries between 1976 and 2016, I show that female-led parties are perceived as more moderate than male-led organizations, even when accounting for voters' prior beliefs about the party and the organization's stated policy positions. I then demonstrate that these results cannot be explained by the policy platforms authored by male- and female-led parties. The electoral manifestos produced by female-headed organizations are neither more left- leaning nor more moderate than those authored under male leaders. Together, these results provide important insights concerning citizens' (mis)perceptions of parties' ideological positions, party leaders' effects on voters behavior, the importance of gender stereotypes in politics, and the policy consequences of women's increased access to power.

Stop, Collaborate, and Listen: Women's Collaboration in US State Legislatures: Women's Collaboration in US State Legislatures

Article

Jan 2018

Collaboration plays a key role in crafting good public policy. We use a novel data set of over 140,000 pieces of legislation considered in US state legislatures in 2015 to examine the factors associated with women's collaboration with each other. We articulate a theory that women's collaboration arises from opportunity structures, dictated by an interaction of individual and institutional characteristics. Examining the effect of a combination of characteristics, we find support for an interactive view of institutions, where women's caucuses accelerate collaboration in Democratic-controlled bodies and as the share of women increases. Collaboration between women also continues in the face of increased polarization in the presence of a caucus, but not absent one. Our findings speak to the long-term consequences of electing women to political office, the importance of institutions and organizations in shaping legislative behavior, and the institutionalization of gender in politics.

Gender Quotas and Women's Political Leadership

Article

Full-text available

Mar 2016

Though more than 100 countries have adopted gender quotas, the effects of these reforms on women's political leadership are largely unknown. We exploit a natural experiment—a 50–50 quota imposed by the national board of the Swedish Social Democratic Party on 290 municipal branches—to examine quotas’ influence on women's selection to, and survival in, top political posts. We find that those municipalities where the quota had a larger impact became more likely to select (but not reappoint) female leaders. Extending this analysis, we show that the quota increased the number of women perceived as qualified for these positions. Our findings support the notion that quotas can have an acceleration effect on women's representation in leadership positions, particularly when they augment the pool of female candidates for these posts. These results help dispel the myth that quotas trade short-term gains in women's descriptive representation for long-term exclusion from political power.

Competing on the issues: How experience in government and economic conditions influence the scope of parties' policy messages

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2015

Zachary Greene

Parties campaign on a range of topics to attract diverse support. Little research, however, looks at why parties narrow or expand the scope of their campaign or shift attention across issues. Focusing only on a single dimension or topic may lead scholars to miss-estimate the magnitude of the effect of parties’ experiences in government or economic context. I propose that electoral conditions influence the scope of parties' manifestos. I test hypotheses using a measure of issue diversity: the Effective Number of Manifesto Issues (ENMI). Based on analysis of 1662 manifestos in 24 OECD countries from 1951 to 2010, the results support the theory. Government parties have higher ENMI. Opposition parties and governments expecting a reward for the economy limit their issue appeals. Tests of the underlying mechanism using data on issue dimensions and policy data provide additional support. These findings have important implications for the study of election strategy and democratic accountability.

Who Responds? Voters, Parties and Issue Attention

Article

Full-text available

May 2014
BRIT J POLIT SCI

Do parties listen to their voters? We address this important question by moving beyond position congruence to explore whether parties respond to the issue priorities of voters. We argue that political parties respond to voters in their election manifestos, but that their responsiveness varies across different party types, namely that large parties are more responsive to voters’ policy priorities while government parties listen less to voters’ issue demands. Additionally, we expect that niche parties are not generally more responsive to voter demands, but that they are more responsive to the concerns of their supporters in their owned issue areas. To test our theoretical expectations, we combine data from the Comparative Manifestos Project with data on the policy priorities of voters from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and various national election studies across 18 European democracies in 63 elections from 1972 until 2011. Our findings have important implications for understanding political representation and democratic linkage.

Going green: Explaining issue competition on the environment

Article

Full-text available

Nov 2013
EUR J POLIT RES

This study addresses the dynamics of the issue space in multiparty systems by examining to what extent, and under what conditions, parties respond to the issue ownership of other parties on the green issue. To understand why some issues become part and parcel of the political agenda in multiparty systems, it is crucial not only to examine the strategies of issue entrepreneurs, but also the responses of other parties. It is argued that the extent to which other parties respond to, rather than ignore, the issue mobilisation of green parties depends on two factors: how much of an electoral threat the green party poses to a specific party; and the extent to which the political and economic context makes the green issue a potential vote winner. To analyse the evolution of the green issue, a time-series cross-section analysis is conducted using data from the Comparative Manifestos Project for 19 West European countries from 1980–2010. The findings have important implications for understanding issue evolution in multiparty systems and how and why the dynamics of party competition on the green issue vary across time and space.

Why Do Parties Change Position? Party Organization and Environmental Incentives

Article

Full-text available

Apr 2013
J POLIT

What motivates parties to change their positions? Earlier studies demonstrate that parties change their position in response to environmental incentives, such as voter shifts. Yet, this work also suggests that parties differ in their responses. What accounts for this variation? We argue and empirically substantiate that differences in party organization explain the divergent responses of parties to environmental incentives. By means of a pooled time-series analysis of 55 parties in 10 European democracies between 1977 and 2003, this study demonstrates how the party organizational balance-of-power between party activists and party leaders conditions the extent to which environmental incentives (mean voter change, party voter change, and office exclusion) drive party-position change. The study’s findings have important implications for our understanding of parties’ electoral strategies as well as for models of representation.

Political Parties and Macroeconomic Policy: Reply to Payne

Article

Full-text available

Mar 1979
AM POLIT SCI REV

Douglas A. Hibbs Jr

This study examines postwar patterns in macroeconomic policies and outcomes associated with left-and right-wing governments in capitalist democracies. It argues that the objective economic interests as well as the subjective preferences of lower income and occupational status groups are best served by a relatively low unemployment-high inflation macroeconomic configuration, whereas a comparatively high unemployment-low inflation configuration is compatible with the interests and preferences of upper income and occupational status groups. Highly aggregated data on unemployment and inflation outcomes in relation to the political orientation of governments in 12 West European and North American nations are analyzed revealing a low unemployment-high inflation configuration in nations regularly governed by the Left and a high unemployment-low inflation pattern in political systems dominated by center and rightist parties. Finally, time-series analyses of quarterly postwar unemployment data for the United States and Great Britain suggests that the unemployment rate has been driven downward by Democratic and Labour administrations and upward by Republican and Conservative governments. The general conclusion is that governments pursue macroeconomic policies broadly in accordance with the objective economic interests and subjective preferences of their class-defined core political constituencies.

The Program-to-Policy Linkage: A Comparative Study of Election Pledges and Government Policies in Ten Countries

Article

Full-text available

The program-to-policy linkage refers to the level of congruence between what political parties promise during election campaigns, as set out in their election programs, and the policies delivered by governments after elections. The program-to-policy linkage is an important element of modern democratic theory. Moreover, institutionalist theories predict variation in the strength of the linkage according to the extent to which parties hold control over the levers of power. For instance, we expect a stronger linkage for parties that go on to form single-party governments that control both the executive and legislative branches after the elections than for parties that must share power with others. In coalition governments, we expect that control over relevant ministerial portfolios is a key explanatory factor. Economic conditions also affect the ability of governing parties to deliver on their policy commitments. In this paper we examine the program-to-policy linkage by focusing on election pledges: campaign policy commitments that are specific enough for researchers to test whether they were fulfilled during the subsequent governing period. We study the fulfillment of 12,128 election pledges made prior to the formation of forty-two governments in ten countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Portugal, Spain, Germany, Bulgaria, the Netherlands, Ireland, and Italy. The analyses pay particular attention to the fulfillment of 7,063 pledges made by parties that controlled the presidency or entered single-party or coalition governments after the elections. The countries and time periods selected contain considerable variation in institutional conditions. The parliamentary governments include single-party governments with parliamentary majorities (in the UK, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Bulgaria), single-party minority governments (in Ireland, Sweden, Spain and Portugal), majority coalitions (in Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Italy and Bulgaria), and minority coalitions (in Ireland and Italy). The US cases include a period in which the Democrats controlled both the Presidency and Congress, as well as periods of divided government. The selected cases also contain variation in economic conditions.

Manifestos, Salience and Junior Ministerial Appointments

Article

Full-text available

Aug 2014
PARTY POLIT

We build on previous theories of junior minister allocation and coalition oversight by incorporating a novel theory of strategic changes in the issues covered in party manifestos. We argue that parties use junior ministerial appointments to oversee their coalition partners on portfolios that correspond to issues emphasized by the parties’ activists when the coalition partner’s preferences deviate from the party’s. The findings, based on a data set of more than 2800 party-portfolio dyads in 10 countries, show significant support for these expectations. We find that party leaders who successfully negotiate for junior ministers to particular portfolios are most concerned about checking ideologically contentious coalition partners in areas of concern to activists. The results also illustrate the usefulness of our dyadic approach for the study of junior minister allocation.

Constructing Accountability: Party Position Taking and Economic Voting

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2012
COMP POLIT STUD

Timothy Hellwig

A positive relationship between economic performance and support for incumbents is routinely taken as evidence that elections work for accountability. Recent investigations into this relationship have examined just how signals from the economy translate into popular support. However, neither selection models nor sanctioning models explicitly incorporate the actions of political elites. This article advances a strategic parties model of economic voting. Political incumbents have incentives to adjust their policy positions in response to economic conditions. When parties advocate distinct positions on economic issues, elections can be understood in terms of economic conditions. But when party positions converge, the quality of economic information declines. Incumbents can thus improve their chances of avoiding blame for a poor economy—or of claiming credit for a good one—by adjusting positions in policy space. Analyses of party positions, economic conditions, and election outcomes in 17 democracies over 35 years support this prediction.

An Integrated Theory of Party Goals and Party Change

Article

Full-text available

Jul 1994

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.

Mean Voter Representation and Partisan Constituency Representation: Do Parties Respond to the Mean Voter Position or to Their Supporters?

Article

Full-text available

Apr 2010
PARTY POLIT

Do political parties respond to shifts in the preferences of their supporters, which we label the partisan constituency model, or to shifts in the mean voter position (the general electorate model)? Cross-national analyses — based on observations from Eurobarometer surveys and parties’ policy programmes in 15 countries from 1973 to 2002 — suggest that the general electorate model characterizes the policy shifts of mainstream parties. Alternatively, when we analyse the policy shifts of Communist, Green and extreme Nationalist parties (i.e. ‘niche’ parties), we find that these parties respond to shifts in the mean position of their supporters. The findings have implications for spatial theories and political representation.

Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics

Book

Dec 1989

Political Survival of Small Parties in Europe

Book

Jan 2011

Jae-Jae Spoon

Gendering Legislative Behavior: Institutional Constraints and Collaboration

Book

Jul 2016

Tiffany D. Barnes

In democracies, power is obtained via competition. Yet, as women gain access to parliaments in record numbers, worldwide collaboration appears to be on the rise. This is puzzling: Why, if politicians can secure power through competition, would we observe collaboration in congress? Using evidence from 200 interviews with politicians from Argentina and a novel dataset from 23 Argentine legislative chambers over an 18-year period, Gendering Legislative Behavior reexamines traditional notions of competitive democracy by evaluating patterns of collaboration among legislators. Although only the majority can secure power via competition, all legislators – particularly those who do not have power – can influence the policy-making process through collaboration. I argue that as women have limited access to formal and informal political power, they collaborate more than men to influence policy-making. Despite the benefits of collaboration, patterns of collaboration vary among women because different legislative contexts either facilitate or constrain women’s collaboration.

Sex, Gender and the Conservative Party

Article

Jan 2012

Representing Women? Female Legislators in West European Parliaments

Book

Jan 2005

Mercedes Mateo Diaz

http://press.ecpr.eu/book_details.asp?bookTitleID=27

Intra-party politics and coalition governments: concluding remarks

Book

Oct 2008

Political survival of small parties in Europe

Article

Jan 2011

Jae-Jae Spoon

"Engagingly written and employing a fruitful mix of comparative research methods, this book explains how and why small parties, while they may not be entirely masters of their own fate, are more than simply corks tossed on the ocean. It adds significantly to our understanding, and deserves to be widely read." -Tim Bale, University of Sussex, UK "Spoon uses innovative methods for examining the effect of green party behavior on their electoral fortunes, electoral presence, and visibility to the public . . . This book makes an important contribution to the fields of niche party fortunes, party politics, and comparative politics in general." -Bonnie Meguid, University of Rochester "Political Survival of Small Parties in Europe offers the rare treat of a small-n comparison that engages with broad political science issues of small party flair, feat, and fate. Mixed methods means that the depth of knowledge about individual cases is balanced with a theoretical ambition. In contrast with many other approaches, Spoon demonstrates the agency of small parties in adapting and using the constraints of their political and institutional environments." -Florence Faucher, Sciences Po-Centre d'études européennes, France It is often thought that small party survival or failure is a result of institutional constraints, the behavior of large parties, and the choices of individual politicians. Jae-Jae Spoon, in contrast, argues that the decisions made by small parties themselves determine their ability to balance the dual goals of remaining true to their ideals while maximizing their vote and seat shares, thereby enabling them to survive even in adverse electoral systems. Spoon employs a mixed-methods approach in order to explore the policy, electoral, and communication strategies of West European green parties from 1980 to the present. She combines cross-national data on these parties with in-depth comparative case studies of two New Politics parties, the French and British green parties, that have survived in similar national-level plurality electoral systems. Both of these green parties have developed as organizations and now run candidates in elections at the local, national, and European levels in their respective countries. The parties' survival, Spoon asserts, results from their ability to balance their competing electoral, policy, and communication goals. Jacket design: Heidi Hobde Dailey.

Party Competition between Unequals: Strategies and Electoral Fortunes in Western Europe

Article

Jan 2008

Bonnie M Meguid

Why do some political parties flourish, while others flounder? In this book, Meguid examines variation in the electoral trajectories of the new set of single-issue parties: green, radical right, and ethnoterritorial parties. Instead of being dictated by electoral institutions or the socioeconomic climate, as the dominant theories contend, the fortunes of these niche parties, she argues, are shaped by the strategic responses of mainstream parties. She advances a new theory of party competition in which mainstream parties facing unequal competitors have access to a wider and more effective set of strategies than posited by standard spatial models. Combining statistical analyzes with in-depth case studies from Western Europe, the book explores how and why established parties undermine niche parties or turn them into weapons against their mainstream party opponents. This study of competition between unequals thus provides broader insights into the nature and outcome of competition between political equals.

The CDU and the Politics of Gender in Germany: Bringing Women to the Party

Article

Nov 2010

Sarah Wiliarty

This book develops the concept of the corporatist catch-all party to explain how the German Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has responded to changing demands from women over the past forty years. Otto Kirchheimer's classic study argues that when catch-all parties reach out to new constituencies, they are forced to decrease the involvement of membership to facilitate doctrinal flexibility. In a corporatist catch-all party, however, societal interests are represented within the party organization and policy making is the result of internal party negotiation. Through an investigation of CDU policy making in the issue areas of abortion policy, work-family policy, and participation policy, this book demonstrates that sometimes the CDU mobilizes rather than disempowers membership. An important lesson of this study is that a political party need not sacrifice internal democracy and ignore its members in order to succeed at the polls.

Partisan Priorities: How Issue Ownership Drives and Distorts American Politics

Article

Jan 2011

Patrick J. Egan

Americans consistently name Republicans as the party better at handling issues like national security and crime, while they trust Democrats on issues like education and the environment – a phenomenon called “issue ownership.” Partisan Priorities investigates the origins of issue ownership, showing that in fact the parties deliver neither superior performance nor popular policies on the issues they “own.” Rather, Patrick J. Egan finds that Republicans and Democrats simply prioritize their owned issues with lawmaking and government spending when they are in power. Since the parties tend to be particularly ideologically rigid on the issues they own, politicians actually tend to ignore citizens' preferences when crafting policy on these issues. Thus, issue ownership distorts the relationship between citizens' preferences and public policies.

The Politics Of Presence

Book

Jan 1995

Anne Phillips

A number of contemporary democracies have introduced measures to ensure a more equitable representation of women and/or ethnic minority citizens within elected assemblies. These measures have included the use of gender quotas in the selection of parliamentary candidates, and the use of ‘race‐conscious’ districting to increase the electoral chances of ethnic minority representatives. Drawing on a distinction between the politics of ideas and the politics of presence, this book explores and defends the case for such measures. The politics of ideas considers accountability in relation to declared polices and programmes, and sees the sex or race of the representative as a matter of relative indifference. In the politics of presence, by contrast, the gender or ethnic composition of elected assemblies becomes a legitimate matter of democratic concern. This book addresses the concern that the case for political presence could encourage essentialist understandings of group identity or group interest. It argues against an either/or alternative between the politics of ideas and the politics of presence and for a new combination of these two models of representation.

Issue Ownership in Presidential Elections, with a 1980 Case Study

Article

Aug 1996
AM J POLIT SCI

John R. Petrocik

Theory: This paper develops and applies an issue ownership theory of voting that emphasizes the role of campaigns in setting the criteria for voters to choose between candidates. It expects candidates to emphasize issues on which they are advantaged and their opponents are less well regarded. It explains the structural factors and party system variables which lead candidates to differentially emphasize issues. It invokes theories of priming and framing to explain the electorate's response. Hypotheses: Issue emphases are specific to candidates; voters support candidates with a party and performance based reputation for greater competence on handling the issues about which the voter is concerned. Aggregate election outcomes and individual votes follow the problem agenda. Method: Content analysis of news reports, open-ended voter reports of important problems, and the vote are analyzed with graphic displays and logistic regression analysis for presidential elections between 1960 and 1992. Results: Candidates do have distinctive patterns of problem emphases in their campaigns; election outcomes do follow the problem concerns of voters; the individual vote is significantly influenced by these problem concerns above and beyond the effects of the standard predictors.

You’ve Got Some Explaining To Do The Influence of Economic Conditions and Spatial Competition on Party Strategy

Article

May 2015

Although a voluminous literature has shed light on the relationship between economic conditions and government accountability, most studies in this literature have implicitly assumed that the actions of competing political parties are either irrelevant or that they cancel each other out. In this paper, we take an important first step toward relaxing this strong assumption. We develop and test a set of theoretical propositions from the issue competition literature about the amount of emphasis that parties place on the economy during election campaigns. We test these propositions with an estimation technique that properly situates the motivations of rival elites within the context of spatial party competition using a spatial autoregressive model. On a sample of 22 advanced democracies from 1957 to 2006, we find strong support for the proposition that parties with a greater role in economic policymaking respond to worsening economic conditions by increasing their emphasis on the economy during election campaigns. We also find strong evidence of spatial contagion effects as parties respond positively to the campaign strategies of ideologically proximate parties. This finding reveals a fundamental link in the chain of economic accountability and has important implications for the study of party competition.

Brave Rebels Stay Home: Assessing the Effect of Intra-Party Ideological Heterogeneity and Party Whip on Roll-Call Votes

Article

Feb 2013

Andrea Ceron

Sanctions and homogeneity of intra-party preferences are the two main pathways to party unity in roll-call votes. However, only a few works have managed to properly measure the degree of polarization within the party, and therefore the link between ideological preferences and parliamentary voting behaviour has not yet been fully tested. Looking at the internal debates held during party congresses and analysing motions presented by party factions through quantitative text analysis, the present article provides a new measure of intra-party polarization that is exogenous to the parliamentary arena. This measure is used to disentangle the effect of ideological heterogeneity on MPs voting behaviour, net of the party whip. Our results show that factional heterogeneity negatively affects party unity. This effect, however, is conditional on the strength of whipping resources available to the party leader. When the electoral system or the intra-party candidate selection process allows strong discipline to be enforced, the negative effect of heterogeneous preferences on party unity is lower or no longer significant. However, since absences can be a strategy by which to express dissent while avoiding sanctions, they should be considered as an additional voting option and this is crucial to understanding the impact of intra-party heterogeneity on party unity.

Women Politicians: Transforming Westminster?

Article

Jan 1996
PARLIAMENT AFF

Pippa Norris

На материалах исследования британского парламента показывается, как гендер влияет на политические позиции, приоритеты и роли депутатов. Для женщин-политиков наиболее близки острые социальные проблемы и права женщин. По сравнению с коллегами–мужчинами женщины-депутаты придают большее значение работе в своем избирательном округе, чем в самом парламенте. В целом же автор отмечает, что гендерный разрыв среди политиков довольно незначительный и большее представительство женщин может изменить политическую повестку дня и общий политический стиль британского парламента к лучшему.

Westminster's World: Understanding Political Roles

Article

Jan 1994
FOREIGN AFF

Representation from Above: Members of Parliament and Representative Democracy in Sweden

Article

Jun 1998

Sex, Gender and the Conservative Party: From Iron Lady to Kitten Heels by Sarah Childs and Paul Webb

Article

Feb 2015

Ronnee Schreiber

Rising to the Top: Gender, Political Performance, and Party Leadership in Parliamentary Democracies

Article

Feb 2015
AM J POLIT SCI

Diana Z. O'Brien

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.

Voice, Trust, and Memory: Marginalized Groups and the Failings of Liberal Representation

Article

Jul 2001

Intra-Party Democracy and Party Responsiveness

Article

Nov 2012

Ron Lehrer

This study examines whether parties respond to their supporters or to the median voter position. Party leaders require the support of the 'selectorate', which is defined as the group that has influence in party leadership selection. Inclusive parties, which rely on rank-and-file membership to select their leaders, will respond to their members. Exclusive parties, which rely on office-seeking members for leadership selection, will respond to the median voter position. Thus, intra-party institutions that (dis)enfranchise party members are crucial for understanding whether a party responds to their supporters (or to the median voter position). Using data from 1975-2003 for six West European countries, this article reports findings that inclusive parties respond to the mean party supporter position. While there is evidence that exclusive parties respond to the median voter position in two-party systems, this finding does not extend to multiparty systems. This study has implications for the understanding of intra-party institutions and political representation.

Leadership Competition and Disagreement at Party National Congresses

Article

Jul 2016
BRIT J POLIT SCI

Recent advances to the theory of issue ownership suggest that voters change their impressions of parties’ competencies in response to parties’ experiences in government. We add that parties’ evaluations depend on their success in fostering a cohesive image by managing diverse intra-party interests. We predict that voters’ impressions of parties’ internal discord negatively affect their assessments of parties’ policy competencies. Furthermore, voters’ choice of parties will also depend on perceptions of the parties’ coherence and competence. Using individual-level analysis of party evaluations in Germany, we test predictions from our theory using a new survey that contains questions on parties’ policy coherence and issue competence. The results hold important implications for the study of intra-party politics, issue competition and vote choice. Key Words: Public Opinion, Issue Competence, Issue Ownership, Party Politics, Electoral Behaviour

Which Issues Do Parties Emphasise? Salience Strategies and Party Organisation in Multiparty Systems

Article

Sep 2014

Party system issue agendas are formed by the topics that individual parties decide to address, and these salience decisions are likely to be strategic. Two key strategies are commonly discussed in the literature: parties’ focus on (1) issues that they have ownership over and (2) issues that currently concern voters. Yet it is not known what explains the extent to which parties pursue each of these strategies. This paper argues that aspects of party organisation influence which salience strategy is pursued. Parties that have more resources will be able to ‘ride the wave’ of current concerns while parties with fewer resources are more likely to focus on their best issues. Furthermore, policy-seeking parties with strong activist influence will be less likely to ‘ride the wave’ and more likely to follow issue ownership strategies. An analysis of 105 election manifestos from 27 elections in 17 countries shows that aspects of party organisation are indeed strong and robust moderators of issue ownership strategies. Limited, albeit mixed, evidence is also found that party organisation affects the use of ‘riding the wave’ strategies. These results have important implications for our understanding of electoral campaigns, party competition and voter representation.

Mapping the Language of Women's Interests: Sex and Party Affiliation in the Bundestag

Article

Jun 2013
POLIT STUD-LONDON

Christina Xydias

This study maps the language that legislators use to define women's interests in the context of contemporary Germany. Using party groups' manifestos from the 2005 legislative elections and personal interviews with members of the 16th Bundestag (2005–9), the study compares female and male legislators within parties and female legislators across parties, with particular attention to how these interviewees' language cleaved to and from their party scripts (parties' positions on and language regarding women's interests). The map that emerges from this analysis suggests that legislators' language in talking about women's interests is mediated by sex and party affiliation in combination, such that female and male legislators differ within each party and female legislators differ across parties. The study shows that female legislators across parties share an emphasis on the inadequacy of formal equality in yielding women's equality in practice, but they diverge markedly in the policies that they recommend to address this problem. Much previous research on women's representation has focused on the finding that female legislators advocate for women at higher rates than their male colleagues, underplaying both the significant variation among female legislators as well as the contributions of conservative female legislators.

Inclusion and Democracy

Book

Apr 2002

Iris Marion Young

This controversial new look at democracy in a multicultural society considers the ideals of political inclusion and exclusion, and recommends ways to engage in democratic politics in a more inclusive way. Processes of debate and decision making often marginalize individuals and groups because the norms of political discussion are biased against some forms of expression. Inclusion and Democracy broadens our understanding of democratic communication by reflecting on the positive political functions of narrative, rhetorically situated appeals, and public protest. It reconstructs concepts of civil society and public sphere as enacting such plural forms of communication among debating citizens in large-scale societies. Iris Marion Young thoroughly discusses class, race, and gender bias in democratic processes, and argues that the scope of a polity should extend as wide as the scope of social and economic interactions that raise issues of justice. Today this implies the need for global democratic institutions. Young also contends that due to processes of residential segregation and the design of municipal jurisdictions, metropolitan governments which preserve significant local autonomy may be necessary to promote political equality. This latest work from one of the world's leading political philosophers will appeal to audiences from a variety of fields, including philosophy, political science, women's studies, ethnic studies, sociology, and communications studies.

Democratic Representation in Europe. Diversity, Change and Convergence

Book

Jan 2007

The Importance of Attention Diversity and How to Measure It

Article

May 2014
POLICY STUD J

Studies of political attention often focus on attention to a single issue, such as front-page coverage of the economy. However, examining attention to a single issue without accounting for the agenda as a whole can lead to faulty assumptions. One solution is to consider the diversity of attention; that is, how narrowly or widely attention is distributed across items (e.g., issues on an agenda or, at a lower level, frames in an issue debate). Attention diversity is an important variable in its own right, offering insight into how agendas vary in their accessibility to policy problems and perspectives. Yet despite the importance of attention diversity, we lack a standard for how best to measure it. This paper focuses on the four most commonly used measures: the inverse Herfindahl Index, Shannon's H, and their normalized versions. We discuss the purposes of these measures and compare them through simulations and using three real-world datasets. We conclude that both Shannon's H and its normalized form are better measures, minimizing the danger of spurious findings that could result from the less sensitive Herfindahl measures. The choice between the Shannon's H measures should be made based on whether variance in the total number of possible items (e.g., issues) is meaningful.

Do Parties Respond? How Electoral Context Influences Party Responsiveness

Article

Apr 2014
ELECT STUD

Government versus Opposition at the Polls: How Governing Status Affects the Impact of Policy Positions

Article

Apr 2012
AM J POLIT SCI

We argue that governing status affects how voters react to extreme versus moderate policy positions. Being in government forces parties to compromise and to accept ideologically unappealing choices as the best among available alternatives. Steady exposure to government parties in this role and frequent policy compromise by governing parties lead voters to discount the positions of parties when they are in government. Hence, government parties do better in elections when they offset this discounting by taking relatively extreme positions. The relative absence of this discounting dynamic for opposition parties, on the other hand, means that they perform better by taking more moderate positions, as the standard Downsian model would predict. We present evidence from national elections in Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, 1971–2005, to support this claim.

Bounded oligarchy: How and when factions constrain leaders in party position-taking

Article

Dec 2012
ELECT STUD

Andrea Ceron

This work investigates the process of position-taking, focussing on the factional bargaining within the party. Exploiting two recently built datasets that estimated the policy positions of Italian parties and factions from 1946 to 2010, we investigate if and to what extent factions bind the party leader in choosing the platform. We find confirmation for the idea that party positions are linked to factional preferences. Overall, the party works as a ‘bounded oligarchy’. Furthermore, the electoral payoff of party unity increases the impact of factional constraints when general elections approach. In line with the cartel party theory, however, autonomous leaders who are directly elected by a wider selectorate can get rid of factional ties choosing more moderate and vote-maximizing platforms.

Issue Competence and Vote Choice for Parties in and Out of Power: An Analysis of Valence in Britain, 1979 - 1997

Article

Jun 2012

Will Jennings

This article develops the reward-punishment issue model of voting using a newly collated aggregate measure of issue competence in Britain between 1971 and 1997, revealing systematic differences between governing and opposition parties in the way citizens' evaluations of party competence are related to vote intention. Using monthly Gallup ‘best party to handle the most important problem’ and vote intention data, time series Granger-causation tests give support to a classic issue reward-punishment model for incumbents. However, for opposition parties this reward-punishment model does not hold: macro-issue competence evaluations are Granger-caused by changes in vote choice or governing party competence. An explanation is offered based upon the differentiating role of policy performance and informational asymmetries, and the implications are considered for comparative studies of voting, public opinion and for political party competition.

Supplemental Materials for "What Moves Parties? The Role of Public Opinion and Global Economic Conditions in Western Europe

Article

This paper contains supplemental materials for "What Moves Parties? The Role of Public Opinion and Global Economic Conditions in Western Europe" (hereafter Adams-Haupt-Stoll 2007). We initially discuss the substantive significance of the variables from the original Model 1 from Adams- Haupt-Stoll 2007 and provide the variance-covariance matrix of the coefficients for this model. We then both present and discuss additional results. With respect to the latter, most (but not all) build upon Model 1. Models 7-11 and 32-35 are alternative model specifications. Models 12-13 employ a different measure of the public opinion shift variable. (These models must be fit using reduced sets of cases relative to the original due to missing data on the alternative measure.) Models 14-16 re-code the Dutch D66 as a non-leftist (specifically, a liberal) party. Model 17 employs three year running averages of the global economy variables instead of election year values in Model 4. Finally, Models 18-31 are estimated using different sets of cases, including multiply imputed instead of list-wise deleted data sets. Country-election cycle clustered robust standard errors are reported in parentheses throughout unless otherwise noted. Two significant digits are always carried. Levels of significance are indicated in the tables as follows: significant at the � = 0.01 level, ***; significant at the � = 0.05 level, **; significant at the � = 0.10 level, *. All reported significance levels are for two-sided tests and were calculated prior to rounding. Note that a t-distribution with C 1 degrees of freedom was employed in hypothesis tests, where C is the number of clusters (country-election cycles).

Beyond collective representation: Individual members of parliament and interest representation in the Netherlands

Article

Dec 2004

In political representation research it is now generally recognised that in parliamentary systems political parties rather than individual members of parliament are the key actors in the process of political representation. However, this focus on political parties might have led to an underestimation of the role of individual members of parliament in this process, even in purely parliamentary systems. It tends to neglect the efforts of representatives to secure particular benefits for individuals or groups in their constituencies. In this paper we will address the question to what extent these forms of representation are part of the repertoire of activities of members of the Dutch parliament as compared to other European parliaments.This article was written when both authors were fellows at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS). The parliamentary study on which it is based was supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research.

Inviting More Women to the Party: Gender Quotas and Women's Substantive Representation in Germany

Article

Dec 2007

Christina Xydias

Four of the five major political parties in Germany have voluntarily adopted gender quotas of some kind, and these quotas have assisted in increasing the number of women in the Bundestag to nearly one-third of its membership. While their impact on women's descriptive representation (the presence of women in elected decision-making roles) is relatively clear, research is needed to assess whether this descriptive representation in fact links to women's substantive representation (attention to women's interests in debate and in legislation). Through a content analysis of Bundestag plenary debates discussing laws sponsored or cosponsored by the Committee on Families, Seniors, Women, and Children, this study hypothesizes and tests several ways in which women legislators may be more likely than men to draw attention to women constituents and their interests. Using individual-level data, the study concentrates on gender and the implementation of a gender quota in any individual speaker's party as explanatory variables, and it incorporates indicators of both feminist and traditional notions of women's issues as response variables. Results of statistical analyses indicate that women do speak more frequently and more substantively in this set of debates, and it appears that the presence of a gender quota independently enhances attention to these issues.

Women, parties and platforms in post-industrial democracies

Article

Dec 2010
PARTY POLIT

Miki Caul Kittilson

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.

Gender and Representation Among Legislative Candidates in Australia

Article

Oct 1992
COMP POLIT STUD

Some feminist theory suggests that women have different value priorities compared to men, which should lead to different political perspectives and political behavior among candidates for elected office. By contrast, the theory of responsible party government predicts that there should be few gender-based differences in perspectives and behavior among candidates, due to party discipline. Studies conducted in the United States and elsewhere, however, have consistently shown that legislators are district-oriented, irrespective of party affiliation. In this article, the authors apply multivariate analysis to matched mass-elite survey data collected during the 1987 Australian federal election to analyze the policy views of male and female candidates and to compare them to attitudes among their constituents. For candidates, party dominates political attitudes, with much less influence for constituency opinion and little at all for gender except on the question of advancement for women. These findings are somewhat at variance from similar studies in the United States and Britain.

Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics

Article

Jan 1989

German MPs and their roles

Article

Mar 1997

Werner J. Patzelt

Parliamentary role structures do not come into being as a consequence of the MPs’ behavioural preferences alone. In the German case, five constructive features constitute the casting mould within which the roles of MPs are formed: ‘team formation effects’ of the parliamentary system of government; professionalisation and division of labour within a ‘work parliament'; the fact that German MPs are, and hence behave as, party leaders; and role‐shaping effects both of interest groups and of constituency work. Based on a survey conducted in 1994 among all 2,800 German MPs, and on a return rate of about a third, the effects thereof are described. Subsequently, the ‘role partners’ or ‘counter roles’ of German parliamentarians are presented, and data on role orientations, role behaviour, role conflicts and parliamentary socialisation are discussed. Role orientations and role behaviour of German representatives are clearly correlated, and both match quite well the functional logic of representative democracy. On balance it may be stated that the average German MP is doing a good job.

Incentives To Cultivate A Personal Vote: A Rank Ordering of Electoral Formulas

Article

Dec 1995
ELECT STUD

Seat allocation formulas affect candidates' incentives to campaign on a personal rather than party reputation. Variables that enhance personal vote-seeking include: (1) lack of party leadership control over access to and rank on ballots, (2) degree to which candidates are elected on individual votes independent of co-partisans, and (3) whether voters cast a single intra-party vote instead of multiple votes or a party-level vote. District magnitude has the unusual feature that, as it increases, the value of a personal reputation rises if the electoral formula itself fosters personal vote-seeking, but falls if the electoral formula fosters party reputation-seeking.

Diverse Parties, Diverse Agendas? Female Politicians and the Parliamentary Party’s Role in Platform Formation

Abstract

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