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

Bjarnegård, Elin; Zetterberg, Pär

doi:10.1080/00344893.2011.581077

Cited by 35 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…From this perspective, it would seem promising that electoral gender quotas 2 , which aim at serving as a remedy for the uneven playing field that men and women face in party nomination processes to legislative bodies (Baldez 2007, Bjarnegård and Zetterberg 2011, Krook 2009), have been adopted in many of these states. Of the almost 80 countries across the globe that have introduced some kind of electoral gender quotas 3 in their constitution or electoral code 4 (Quota Project 2015), a significant number are electoral authoritarian regimes (Dahlerup 2007).…”

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confidence: 99%

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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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confidence: 99%

“…Political parties may employ a number of different strategies to comply with the spirit of the quota law and increasing the involvement of women in intra-party selection processes (Bjarnegård and Zetterberg 2011). For instance, parties may increase the number of women in gatekeeping positions of the regular candidate selection process (see e.g.…”

mentioning

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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“…The scholarly consensus as to what should matter for women is not much greater here than in the previous case. In fact, because the effect of horizontal centralization as such has not been distinguished from that of vertical centralization, and most accounts have tended to focus on the former, we are even less certain about what matters here (see summary of literature in, for example, Bjarnegård and Zetterberg 2011).…”

Section: The Size Of the Selectoratementioning

confidence: 94%

“…One way of institutionalizing the manner in which political parties select candidates could be to introduce a quota reform. Certain types of quotas could have the effect of posing a serious challenge to existing ways of selecting candidates, thus destroying the importance of previously influential political networks (Bjarnegård and Zetterberg 2011). Thus, somewhat paradoxically, gender quotas that are designed to increase the number of women in parliament could also bring about less clientelism and political corruption -not because of the increase in women parliamentarians, but because of the reform of candidate selection processes they bring about.…”

Section: Situating the Thai Casementioning

confidence: 98%

Gender, Informal Institutions and Political Recruitment

Bjarnegård

2013

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281

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Series Editors: Johanna Kantola, University of Helsinki, Finland and Judith Squires, University of Bristol, UKThis timely new series publishes leading monographs and edited collections from scholars working in the disciplinary areas of politics, international relations and public policy with specific reference to questions of gender. The series showcases cutting-edge research in Gender and Politics, publishing topical and innovative approaches to gender politics. It will include exciting work from new authors and well-known academics and will also publish high-impact writings by practitioners working in issues relating to gender and politics.The series covers politics, international relations and public policy, including gendered engagement with mainstream political science issues, such as political systems and policymaking, representation and participation, citizenship and identity, equality, and women's movements; gender and international relations, including feminist approaches to international institutions, political economy and global politics; and interdisciplinary and emergent areas of study, such as masculinities studies, gender and multiculturalism, and intersectionality.

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“…Second, quotas may, under certain conditions, alter the ways in which political parties select their candidates (Bjarnegård and Zetterberg 2011). Although quotas are mainly designed to have an impact on the result of the selection process, they may sometimes transform established procedures for selecting candidates by increasing the rule-boundedness, or bureaucratization (or formalization or institutionalization), of the candidate selection process.…”

Section: Party Gatekeepers and The Bureaucratization Of Candidate Selmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Dynamic Relationship between Gender Quotas and Political Institutions

Zetterberg

2013

Pol & Gen

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

Cited by 35 publications

References 21 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

Gender, Informal Institutions and Political Recruitment

The Dynamic Relationship between Gender Quotas and Political Institutions

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