Hierarchies of Representation: The Re-distributive Effects of Gender and Youth Quotas

Belschner, Jana; Paredes, Marta Garcia de

doi:10.1080/00344893.2020.1778510

Cited by 22 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 41 publications

(62 reference statements)

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“…Interestingly, the only case of a maximum voting age is in the Holy See, where voting rights in Papal elections are restricted to cardinals under 80. Another recent development is the introduction of youth quotas in national parliaments, either in the form of legislated candidate quotas—for example, Tunisia and Kyrgyzstan—or reserved seats—for example, Rwanda (Belschner & Garcia de Paredes, 2020; Dobbs, 2020). These corrective measures, however, remain quite rare and have ambiguous effects (Belschner & Garcia de Paredes, 2020; Dobbs, 2020; Stockemer & Sundström, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gerontocracy in a comparative perspective: Explaining why political leaders are (almost always) older than their constituents

Magni-Berton

Panel

2020

Sociology Compass

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Gerontocracy, in its narrowest sense, refers to political systems ruled by elderly people, whether de jure or de facto. Although formal gerontocratic rules are progressively disappearing, contemporary political systems are still governed by individuals who are significantly older than the mean voter. This article reviews existing explanations for the prevalence of gerontocracy. To summarize main findings, gerontocracy cannot be explained by the leadership qualities of older rulers: aging leaders do not perform better in office and voters seem to be aware of it. Instead, existing research suggests that gerontocracy can be explained by strategic considerations. In autocracies, the selectorate tends to choose aging leaders in order to reduce their expected tenure length. In democracies, voters are more likely to select experienced candidates, which they expect to be more effective at advancing the interests of their constituency: this premium put on experience mechanically lengthens political careers and increases the age of the average politician. Finally, older voters, which participate more in politics, tend to prefer older politicians, because they (correctly) expect them to better defend their own interests.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gerontocracy in a comparative perspective: Explaining why political leaders are (almost always) older than their constituents

Magni-Berton

Panel

2020

Sociology Compass

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“…Among others, studies have started to tackle youth representation in certain regions and countries, including South Asia (Joshi 2015), Morocco (Belschner 2021; de Paredes and Desrues 2021), Tunisia (Belschner 2021; Dobbs 2020), Ghana (Gyampo, 2015), the United States (Curry and Haydon 2018), and in the European Parliament (Stockemer and Sundström 2018a, 2019). In addition, there is budding research looking at youth representation from a global lens (e.g., Stockemer and Sundström, 2018b; IPU 2018, 2021), as well as studies that tackle the question of intersectionality (i.e., whether young women face even stronger underrepresentation in parliaments than young men do; Belschner and Garcia de Paredes 2021). Yet, such studies only have limited temporal and geographical scope.…”

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confidence: 99%

Introducing the Worldwide Age Representation in Parliaments (WARP) data set

Stockemer

Sundström

2022

Social Science Quarterly

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The absence of young adults in elected legislative assemblies is a democratic deficit with potentially severe repercussions. Yet, research is rarely able to address the issue of age group representation systematically because we are lacking empirical information on the age distribution in parliaments. The Worldwide Age Representation in Parliaments (WARP) data set remedies this dearth of data. It provides information about the numerical presence of age groups in parliaments, spanning across the globe and over time and includes age data on legislators, such as the share of members of parliament (MPs) aged 30 years or under, 35 years or under, or 40 years or under. The data set also reports measures that compare the presence of legislators aged 30 years or under, aged 35 years or under, aged 40 years or under, aged 41 to 60 years, as well as aged 61 years or over in relation to the same age group in the general population of a given country. Moreover, it includes gendered figures, such as the presence of young female MPs. The WARP data set contains data for more than 700 elections in 149 countries, so far, and is freely available online. It allows for a novel analysis of the age composition of legislatures. KEYWORDS data set, parliaments, youth representationAbout 25 years ago, Norris (1997) described the composition of parliaments around the world as follows: Legislators tend to be men, members of the country's ethnic majority group, wealthy, and middle-aged or older. Over the past years, some aspects of this picture have changed. While still miles away from being representative of the socioeconomic or demographic traits of the population, many parliaments across the globe have become more diverse, not the least having a larger share of women present in national decisionmaking bodies (Arendt 2018;Sobolewska et al. 2018;Tripp and Kang 2008). Yet, the same shift has not happened with age representation. The presence of young adults-those aged 35 years or below-has not increased over the past decades and continues to hover around 10 percent of legislators globally. The share This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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“…They easily adapt to the proportional rule (PR) when votes are converted into mandates. Most countries with high female participation have this type of electoral system: this figure is about twice that of the states that use majoritarianism [Belschner, de Paredes 2021].…”

Section: Political Process Regulatory Gender Quotasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender Quotas for Political Participation and the Case of Georgia

Amiantova

Bitsadze

2022

Vestn. Ross. univ. družby nar., Ser. Politol.

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The current study focuses on the key elements limiting the political representation of women in the modern world. In order to eliminate discrimination, some countries introduce gender quotas for political participation. Studying the legal framework of modern Georgia shows that, despite the existing common legal basis for the equality of women and men, the reality in political life is different. The lack of effective quota mechanisms significantly weakens the realization of womens civil and political rights. Stereotypical attitudes and perceptions about the role of women in society are the main barriers to recruiting in the political and administrative deployment. Considering the gender aspect of political representation as a complex problem necessitated a systematic approach. The historical and comparative method was used to study the evolution of gender equality. A separate group of methods used in the article was made up of the political and legal analysis of empirical database national statistics. The article shows how the Georgian Parliament affects the position of women in politics by introducing mandatory quotas for national and local government elections, increasing the likelihood of women running, being elected and appointed.

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Hierarchies of Representation: The Re-distributive Effects of Gender and Youth Quotas

Cited by 22 publications

References 41 publications

Gerontocracy in a comparative perspective: Explaining why political leaders are (almost always) older than their constituents

Gerontocracy in a comparative perspective: Explaining why political leaders are (almost always) older than their constituents

Introducing the Worldwide Age Representation in Parliaments (WARP) data set

Gender Quotas for Political Participation and the Case of Georgia

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