Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T22:04:31.266Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Gender, Incumbency and Party List Nominations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2018

Stephen A. Meserve ,
Daniel Pemstein  and
William T. Bernhard
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study assesses how political parties’ candidate selection strategies influence women’s descriptive parliamentary representation. Focusing on proportional elections, it explores what determines whether parties place women in viable list positions. Evaluating party rankings at the individual level, it directly examines a mechanism – party nomination – central to prevailing explanations of empirical patterns in women’s representation. Moreover, it jointly evaluates how incumbency and gender affect nomination. This study uses European Parliament elections to compare a plethora of parties, operating under numerous institutions, in the context of a single legislature. It finds that gender differences in candidate selection are largely explained by incumbency bias, although party ideology and female labor force participation help explain which parties prioritize the placement of novice women.

Keywords

candidate selectionEuropean Parliamentgenderincumbency advantage
Type
Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 50 , Issue 1 , January 2020 , pp. 1 - 15
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Department of Political Science, Texas Tech University (email: [email protected]); Department of Criminal Justice and Political Science, North Dakota State University (email: [email protected]); Department of Political Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (email: [email protected]). We would like to thank our reviewers and seminar participants at the University of Illinois for helpful comments. This project was supported, in part, by the European Union Center at the University of Illinois, and by the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Mississippi. Data replication sets are available in Harvard Dataverse at: https://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/GLL3UW, and an online appendix is available at: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123417000436.

References

REFERENCES

Black, J., and Erickson, Lynda. 2003. Women Candidates and Voter Bias: Do Women Politicians Need to be Better? Electoral Studies 22 (1):81–100.10.1016/S0261-3794(01)00028-2Google Scholar
Burrell, Barbara. 1992. Women Candidates in Open-Seat Primaries for the US House: 1968-1990. Legislative Studies Quarterly 17 (4):493–508.10.2307/439863Google Scholar
Caul, Miki. 2001. Political Parties and the Adoption of Candidate Gender Quotas: A Cross-National Analysis. Journal of Politics 63 (4):1214–1229.10.1111/0022-3816.00107Google Scholar
Dahlerup, Drude, and Freidenvall, Lenita. 2011. Electoral Gender Quota Systems and Their Implementation in Europe. Directorate General for Internal Policies. Available from http://www.europarl.europa.eu/studies.Google Scholar
Darcy, Robert, Welch, Susan, and Clark, Janet. 1994. Women, Elections, and Representation. New York: Longman.Google Scholar
EES. 2010. European Parliament Election Study 2009, Candidate Study, Advance Release. Technical Report. Available from www.piredeu.eu.Google Scholar
Griffin, John. D., Newman, Brian, and Wolbrecht, Christina. 2012. A Gender Gap in Policy Representation in the U.S. Congress? Legislative Studies Quarterly 37 (1):35–66.10.1111/j.1939-9162.2011.00034.xGoogle Scholar
Hinojosa, Magda. 2012. Selecting Women, Electing Women: Political Representation and Candidate Selection in Latin America. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Interparliamentary Union. 2012. Women in National Parliaments. Available from http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/world.htm Google Scholar
Iversen, Torben, and Rosenbluth, Frances. 2008. Work and Power: The Connection Between Female Labor Force Participation and Female Political Representation. Annual Review of Political Science 11:479–495.Google Scholar
Iversen, Torben, and Rosenbluth, Frances. 2010. Women, Work, and Politics: The Political Economy of Gender Inequality. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Kittilson, Miki C. 2006. Challenging Parties, Changing Parliaments: Women and Elected Office in Contemporary Europe. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.Google Scholar
Krook, Mona Lena. 2009. Quotas for Women in Politics: Gender and Candidate Selection Worldwide. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195375671.001.0001Google Scholar
Krook, Mona Lena, Lovenduski, Joni, and Squires, Judith. 2009. Gender Quotas and Models of Political Citizenship. British Journal of Political Science 39 (4):781.10.1017/S0007123409990123Google Scholar
Kunovich, Sheri L, and Paxton, Pamela. 2012. Pathways to Power: The Role of Political Parties in Women’s National Political. American Journal of Sociology 111 (2):505–552.10.1086/444445Google Scholar
Matland, Richard E. 1998. Women’s Representation in National Legislatures: Developed and Developing Countries. Legislative Studies Quarterly 23 (1):109–125.10.2307/440217Google Scholar
Matland, Richard E., and Studlar, Donley T.. 1996. The Contagion of Women Candidates in Single-Member District and Proportional Representation Electoral Systems: Canada and Norway. Journal of Politics 58 (3):707–733.10.2307/2960439Google Scholar
Matland, Richard E., and Studlar, Donley T.. 2004. Determinants of Legislative Turnover: A Cross-National Analysis. British Journal of Political Science 34 (1):87–108.10.1017/S000712340300036XGoogle Scholar
Meserve, Stephen A., Pemstein, Daniel, and Bernhard, William T. 2008. Replication Data for: Gender, Incumbency, and Party List Nominations, doi:10.7910/DVN/GLL3UW, Harvard Dataverse, V1.Google Scholar
Norris, Pippa. 1985. Women’s Legislative Representation in Western Europe. West European Politics 8:90–101.10.1080/01402388508424556Google Scholar
Norris, Pippa. 1987. Politics and Sexual Equality: The Comparative Position of Women in Western Democracies. Boulder, CO: Wheatsheaf Books.Google Scholar
Norris, Pippa. 1993. Conclusions: Comparing Legislative Recruitment. In Gender and Party Politics, edited by Joni Lovenduski and Pippa Norris, 309–330. London: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Norris, Pippa. 2004. Electoral Engineering: Voting Rules and Political Behavior. New York: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511790980Google Scholar
Norris, Pippa, and Lovenduski, Joni. 1993. If Only More Candidates Came Forward: Supply-Side Explanations of Candidate Selection in Britain. British Journal of Political Science 23 (3):373–408.Google Scholar
Pemstein, Daniel, Meserve, Stephen A., and Bernhard, William T.. 2015. Brussels Bound: Policy Experience and Candidate Selection in European Elections. Comparative Political Studies 48 (11):1421–1453.10.1177/0010414015581682Google Scholar
Reynolds, Andrew. 1999. Women in Legislatures and Executives of the World: Knocking at the Highest Glass Ceiling. World Politics 51:547–572.10.1017/S0043887100009254Google Scholar
Rosenbluth, Frances, Salmond, Rob, and Thies, Michael F.. 2006. Welfare Works: Explaining Female Legislative Representation. Politics and Gender 2 (2):165–192.Google Scholar
Rule, Wilma. 1981. Why Women Don’t Run: The Critical Contextual Factors in Women’s Representation. Western Political Quarterly 34:60–77.10.2307/447890Google Scholar
Rule, Wilma. 1987. Electoral Systems, Contextual Factors, and Women’s Opportunity for Election to Parliament in Twenty-Three Democracies. Western Political Quarterly 40 (3):477–498.Google Scholar
Salmond, Rob. 2006. Proportional Representation and Female Parliamentarians. Legislative Studies Quarterly 31 (2):175–204.Google Scholar
Samuels, David. 2001. Incumbents and Challengers on a Level Playing Field: Assessing the Impact of Campaign Finance in Brazil. The Journal of Politics 63 (2):569–584.10.1111/0022-3816.00079Google Scholar
Schwindt-Bayer, Leslie A. 2005. The Incumbency Disadvantage and Women’s Election to Legislative Office. Electoral Studies 24 (2):27–44.Google Scholar
Schwindt-Bayer, Leslie A.. 2009. Making Quotas Work: The Effect of Gender Quota Laws on the Election of Women. Legislative Studies Quarterly 34 (1):5–28.Google Scholar
Studlar, Donley T., and McAllister, Ian. 1991. Political Recruitment to the Australian Legislature: Toward an Explanation of Women’s Electoral Disadvantages. Western Political Quarterly 44:467–485.10.2307/448790Google Scholar
Thames, Frank C., and Williams, Margaret S.. 2010. Incentives for Personal Votes and Women’s Representation in Legislatures. Comparative Political Studies 43 (12):1575–1600.Google Scholar
Welch, Susan, and Studlar, Donley T.. 1990. Multimember Districts and Representation of Women: Evidence from Britain and the United States. The Journal of Politics 52 (2):391–412.10.2307/2131899Google Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Meserve et al. Dataset

Dataset

https://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/GLL3UW
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Meserve et al. supplementary material

Appendix

Download Meserve et al. supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 132.4 KB