Do Electoral Quotas Work after They Are Withdrawn? Evidence from a Natural Experiment in India

Abstract

D o electoral quotas for women alter women's chances of winning elections after they are withdrawn? I answer this question by examining an unusual natural experiment in India in which randomly chosen seats in local legislatures are set aside for women for one election at a time. Using data from Mumbai, I find that the probability of a woman winning office conditional on the constituency being reserved for women in the previous election is approximately five times the probability of a woman winning office if the constituency had not been reserved for women. I also explore tentative evidence on the mechanisms by which reservations affect women's ability to win elections. The data suggest that reservations work in part by introducing into politics women who are able to win elections after reservations are withdrawn and by allowing parties to learn that women can win elections.

International Politics and the Spread of Quotas for Women in Legislatures

“…Gender quotas are one of the key institutional innovations in the politics of the late twentieth century+ 11 They come in three forms+ Reserved seats are set aside for women in parliaments+ Legislative quotas require a certain percentage of political parties' nominees to be women+ Voluntary party quotas involve individual parties promising to nominate a certain percentage of women+ Collectively, the 4+ See, for example, Keck and Sikkink 1998;and Finnemore 1996+ 5+ Hafner-Burton 2005+ 6+ See Beckwith 2003andCaul 2001+ 7+ See Krook 2006;Ellerby 2009;andDahlerup 2006+ 8+ Krook 2006, 207-8+ 9+ This article also focuses on a theoretically relevant subset of quotas, legal quotas, as I explain in the next section, whereas Krook 2009 focuses on the full spectrum of quotas+ 10+ See Tripp and Kang 2008;Bhavnani 2009;Wolbrecht and Campbell 2007;andChattopadhyay andDuflo 2004+ 11+ See Krook 2009, who also provides a more comprehensive discussion of the varieties of gender quotas+ first two categories are called legal quotas and usually require amendments to constitutions or electoral laws+ Quotas can apply to the local or national level of a political system+ Quotas can be large~South Korea's 50 percent legislative quota in 2004! or small~Nepal's 5 percent legislative quota in 1990!, although the most common size is 30 percent+ Finally, legislative quotas can be weakly enforced France reduces noncompliant parties' public funding!…”

Gender Quotas and Women's Political Leadership

“…Recent empirical research has shown that gender quotas can reduce this negative perception by providing first-hand experience with female leadership. Bhavani (2009) illustrates that the selection of women as Indian village leaders via a quota policy improves women's access to this elected position even after the quota is removed. Beaman et al (2009) show that after having two female leaders, Indian villagers' confidence in female leaders' competence improved.…”

Removing Quotas, Maintaining Representation: Overcoming Gender Inequalities in Political Party Recruitment

“…By analyzing local level politics, in which certain constituencies are randomly reserved to female contestants, the analysis shows that the probability of a woman winning the election is approximately five times higher in a constituency which used to be reserved for women than in a constituency with no previous experience of quotas. The study concludes that the quota experience has taught political parties that women indeed are electable (Bhavnani, 2009). …”

“…Hitherto, there is little research on how quotas can be removed whilst maintaining a high level of women's political representation (for an exception see Bhavnani, 2009). The possible link between quotas and political recruitment practices is yet to be established.…”