Candidate Selection, Political Parties, and Democracy

Hazan, Reuven Y.; Rahat, Gideon

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199572540.003.0010

Cited by 37 publications

(90 citation statements)

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“…For instance, parties may increase the number of women in gatekeeping positions in the regular candidate selection process (see, for example, Cheng and Tavits 2011), such as by introducing quotas to intra-party positions and by selecting women to reserved seats in the same way as candidates to constituency seats. Or they may decide to delegate the candidate selection process for reserved seats to a women’s wing or similar body (Hazan and Rahat 2010).…”

Section: Parties Implementing Gender Quotas On An Uneven Playing Fieldmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender Equality Reforms on an Uneven Playing Field: Candidate Selection and Quota Implementation in Electoral Authoritarian Tanzania

Bjarnegård¹,

Zetterberg²

2016

Gov. & oppos.

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This article investigates the dynamics that gender quota reforms create within and between government and opposition parties in electoral authoritarian dominant-party states. A dominant-party state regularly holds relatively competitive elections, but the political playing field is skewed in favor of the government party. We investigate the circumstances under which gender quotas' goal of furthering political gender equality within political parties can be reconciled with parties' electoral concerns. We address these issues by analyzing the implementation of reserved seats by the three largest parties in the dominant-party state of Tanzania. The empirical analysis suggests that the uneven playing field leaves an imprint on the specific priorities parties make when implementing candidate selection reforms. Because of large resource gaps between parties, the ruling party CCM is able to reconcile gender 2 equality concerns with power-maximizing partisan strategies to a larger extent than the opposition parties. states has an even stronger strategic component related to inter-party competition than is the case in many advanced democracies. Party leaderships in dominant-party states thus face two concerns, based on two different inequalities, when implementing the quota reform. On the one hand, in the spirit of the quota law they should use it to strengthen women's political power within the party. On the other hand, party leaderships are hard pressed to implement the reform in a manner that primarily strengthens the party vis-à-vis other parties. While the first concern would prompt parties to select candidates who work 'for women', the second concern would rather have parties look to recruit party-loyal candidates. KeywordsUsing a feminist rational choice institutionalist perspective that brings together questions of gender, strategy, institutions, power and change (cf Driscoll and Krook 2009), this article aims, more specifically, to examine the extent to which parties in electoral authoritarian dominant-party regimes are able to reconcile the ever-present party electoral strategies with 5 the newer gender equality concerns that arise as a consequence of the quota policy.Entrenched informal practices as well as rational vote-maximizing behavior are important in order to fully understand the potential impact of any reform seeking to transform gender hierarchies (cf Kenny 2013). Our approach is also explicitly comparative, in that we want to see whether and how the possibilities for reconciling gender equality goals with electoral strategies vary across parties in dominant-party regimes.Our empirical analysis concentrates on the implementation of electoral gender quotas in a typical electoral authoritarian regime characterized by unfair competition between political parties: Tanzania. More specifically, we examine the implementation process of reserved seats (or special seats, as they are called in Tanzania) within the dominant party Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) and the two biggest opposition parties Chadema an...

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Section: Parties Implementing Gender Quotas On An Uneven Playing Fieldmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender Equality Reforms on an Uneven Playing Field: Candidate Selection and Quota Implementation in Electoral Authoritarian Tanzania

Bjarnegård¹,

Zetterberg²

2016

Gov. & oppos.

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“…Candidate selection is at the core of what political parties stand for and what they do (cf. Ranney 1981: 103) – it ‘influences the balance of power within the party, determines the composition of parliaments, and impacts on the behaviour of legislators’ (Hazan and Rahat 2010: 3). Yet, while the important role of parties in shaping access to political office is widely recognized, there have been surprisingly few systematic studies into the ‘secret garden’ of candidate selection and recruitment.…”

Section: Gender and Party Politics Scholars: Talking Past Each Other?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Acknowledging the impact of unequal gender relations, in turn, will allow party politics scholars to provide a more complete and accurate account of internal reform processes and intraparty power struggles. An example of this can be found in current debates over internal party democracy, the increasing trend among parties in Western democracies aimed at democratizing and decentralizing internal structures and candidate selection processes (see, for example, Cross and Katz 2013; Hazan and Rahat 2010; Rahat and Hazan 2001). We would argue that any analysis of these trends is partial at best if attention is not paid to the discrimination faced by some groups with regard to their access and opportunities to participate effectively within the party organization.…”

Section: Bridging Gender Politics and Party Politics Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Similarly, trends to democratize and decentralize candidate selection procedures – including the introduction of broad-based membership ballots and primaries – have gendered consequences. However, those party politics scholars who have looked at the differential impact of primaries on women and men have contented themselves with highlighting that this selection method usually produces fewer women candidates and with providing relatively superficial explanations such as the underlying coordination problems of inclusive selectorates (Hazan and Rahat 2010) and the conservative attitudes of party members towards women candidates (Rahat 2007). This focus on sex rather than on gender fails to notice the gendered processes embedded in primaries: this selection method tends to benefit incumbents, who are mostly men; inclusive selectorates (citizens or party members) typically vote for the most popular candidates, whose popularity cannot but reflect the vertical segregation within parties and institutions, as well as asymmetrical access to party patronage networks (Franceschet and Piscopo 2014; Verge and de la Fuente 2014).…”

Section: Bridging Gender Politics and Party Politics Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Opening Up the Black Box: Gender and Candidate Selection in a New Era

Kenny¹,

Verge²

2016

Gov. & oppos.

103

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Recent global developments, including the feminization of parliaments and the rise of gender quotas, have transformed the ways in which parties and legislatures operate. This introduction to the special issue 'Candidate Selection: Parties and Legislatures in a New Era' puts these recent developments in context, making the case for revisiting the 'secret garden' of candidate selection in light of this 'new era' in politics. It sets out a critical dialogue between party politics and gender politics scholarship and points to the need for more research on how political parties facilitate or block women's access to political office. Building on the burgeoning research on gender and political recruitment, it outlines how a gendered and institutional approach allows us to retheorize candidate selection processes and opens up new avenues for empirically examining the pathways prior to election. The article then introduces the papers in this special issue and concludes by evaluating the main implications of gendering analyses of candidate selection and party politics more broadly. THE FEMINIZATION OF POLITICS -THAT IS, THE POLITICAL INCLUSIONof women and women's policy concerns -has transformed the social and political context within which parties and legislatures operate. Women activists have been key players in debates over political representation and constitutional and institutional design around the world and have mobilized in social movements at the local, national and global level, as well as within formal organizations such as political parties (Krook 2006). While women are still numerically under-represented in politics, the overall trend is upward, and dramatic jumps in women's political presence have occurred in a diverse range of countries worldwide.

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“…In recent years, clear evidence has emerged from several countries that traditional notions of party membership have come under challenge, with non-members or supporters playing key roles in party activities conventionally associated with formal party members ( Cross and Gauja, 2014a , 2014b ; Fisher et al, 2014 ; Gauja, 2015a , 2015b , 2015c ; Gauja and Jackson, 2016 ; Hazan and Rahat, 2010 ; Kosiara-Pedersen et al., 2012 ; Mjelde, 2015 ; Rahat et al, 2014 ; Sandri and Seddone, 2015 ; Scarrow, 2015 , Webb et al, 2016 ). Parties are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain membership organizations and, in response to declining membership rates, are experimenting with new organizational styles to develop links with supporters – non-members ( Scarrow, 2015 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

District-level explanations for supporter involvement in political parties

et al. 2017

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Traditional analyses of grass roots involvement in political parties have focussed almost exclusively on formal members. However, recent analyses across a range of democracies have shown that non-members (supporters) are playing important roles within political parties, including election campaigning, candidate and leader selection, online policy deliberations and even policy formation. The growing literature on this topic suggests that the involvement of supporters may be a function of party structure and availability of online recruitment. Using new data collected at the 2015 British general election, this article extends the examination of supporter involvement but challenges these assumptions. It shows that supporter activity is better explained by responses to electoral factors and that the focus on online recruitment seriously underplays the enduring importance of human contact.

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Candidate Selection, Political Parties, and Democracy

Cited by 37 publications

References 0 publications

Gender Equality Reforms on an Uneven Playing Field: Candidate Selection and Quota Implementation in Electoral Authoritarian Tanzania

Gender Equality Reforms on an Uneven Playing Field: Candidate Selection and Quota Implementation in Electoral Authoritarian Tanzania

Opening Up the Black Box: Gender and Candidate Selection in a New Era

District-level explanations for supporter involvement in political parties

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