scholarly journals Interactions between Party and Legislative Quotas: Candidate Selection and Quota Compliance in Portugal and Spain

2016 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 416-439 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tània Verge ◽  
Ana Espírito-Santo
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Selection Process ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Candidate Selection ◽  
Gender Representation ◽  
Gender Quotas ◽  
Institutional Contexts ◽  
Potential Interactions ◽  
Simultaneous Implementation

About two decades after the introduction of party quotas, in the mid-2000s both Portugal and Spain enacted legislative gender quotas. The simultaneous implementation of party and legislative quotas raises questions about the potential interactions between two types of candidate quotas sharing the same goal – granting gender equality in political representation. Following a feminist institutionalist approach, this article aims at disentangling under what circumstances compliance with legislative quotas is greater. By looking at the different party institutional contexts in which candidates are selected, a double comparative framework is set. Firstly, we examine within country how legislative quotas affect political parties with dissimilar strategies to pursue equal gender representation. Secondly, we analyse across countries how they impact on political parties with differently institutionalized voluntary quotas. The article shows that legislative quotas are nested in political parties’ candidate selection process and that existing gendered practices and norms limit the effective compliance with such measures.

scholarly journals Female street vendors’ (dis)engagement with politics in Rwanda – Orientalising women’s political participation

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-117
Author(s):  
Xia Nan JIN
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Gender Quotas ◽  
Visual Methods ◽  
Feminist Ethnography ◽  
Street Vendors ◽  
Political Decision Making ◽  
Women's Political Participation

Women’s political participation was initiated as an instrument for gender equality yet now is under research scrutiny. Due to gender quotas and other institutionalization of women’s political inclusion, Rwanda has the highest number of women in its parliament – 67%. But is women’s political participation a real tool for gender equality, or is it one that through the artificial guise of women’s political representation sets up an exclusive political space? Apart from women who work in political institutions, who else are participating in politics and how and where are they engaging with politics? Feminists should claim back this discussion, reject neoliberal approach to ‘empower’ women and propose a more distributive and collective agenda. As part of my PhD project regarding women’s (dis)engagement with politics in Rwanda, female vendors drew my attention during my fieldwork in Rwanda. In Rwanda, female vendors are among the groups who are the ‘furthest’ to participate and influence the political decision-making process, yet are heavily influenced by various political policies on a daily base. For example, the by-law forbidding street vendors was initiated in 2015 and further enforced in 2017 was designed to punish street vendors because they build “unfair competition for customers with legitimate businesses paying rent and taxes” . Consequently, many female vendors face a great deal of violence by local forces. Using feminist ethnography as the methodology, I choose visual methods to tell the stories of female vendors. That is, the photography project is designed to elicit stories of ‘what happened when’, and to encourage participants to ‘remember’ past events, and past dynamics on the street, as well as to express their own opinions and ideas. My task is to reconstruct the process of female street vendor’s engagement with politics and in doing so deconstruct the fake formal image of female political participation in Rwanda.

The Supply and Demand Model of Candidate Selection: Some Reflections

2016 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 513-528 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joni Lovenduski
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Selection Process ◽  
Supply And Demand ◽  
Candidate Selection ◽  
Demand Model ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
The Core ◽  
Look Back ◽  
Political Recruitment ◽  
Supply And Demand Model

This contribution takes a look back at the supply and demand model of selection and recruitment, developed by Joni Lovenduski and Pippa Norris in Political Recruitment: Gender, Race and Class in the British Parliament (1995). The core understanding of this model was that candidate selection was an interactive process in which both selectors and aspirants affected outcomes that were organized in several sets of institutions. The model illuminates power in particular institutions – British political parties – and was designed to examine the various effects of the selection process. This contribution reflects on the model and puts forward ideas and arguments about what might be done differently, taking into account the theoretical and methodological innovations of the succeeding generation of scholars who have used the model. It also identifies remaining challenges for research on candidate selection and suggests that the supply and demand model is sufficiently flexible that it can still travel across national, system and party boundaries.

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

2016 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 464-486 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elin Bjarnegård ◽  
Pär Zetterberg
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Candidate Selection ◽  
Gender Quotas ◽  
Playing Field ◽  
Dominant Party ◽  
The Government ◽  
Gender Quota ◽  
The Empirical Analysis ◽  
Party State ◽  
Opposition Parties

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 favour 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 analysing 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, Chama Cha Mapinduzi – (CCM), is able to reconcile gender equality concerns with power-maximizing partisan strategies to a greater extent than the opposition parties.

scholarly journals Introduction

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (04) ◽  
pp. 746-748 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meryl Kenny ◽  
Tània Verge
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Candidate Selection ◽  
Gender Quotas ◽  
Gender And Politics ◽  
Social Bias ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Selection Processes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Recruitment ◽  
The Secret Garden

Twenty years ago, Pippa Norris and Joni Lovenduski published the classic workPolitical Recruitment: Gender, Race and Class in the British Parliament(1995), one of the most comprehensive accounts of legislative recruitment thus far. Seeking to explain the social bias evident in legislatures worldwide, Norris and Lovenduski focused on the central role of political parties, arguing that the outcome of parties’ selection processes could be understood in terms of the interaction between thesupplyof candidates wishing to stand for office and thedemandsof party gatekeepers who select the candidates. Indeed, in most countries, political parties control not only which candidates are recruited and selected, but also are the central actors involved in adopting and implementing candidate selection reforms such as gender quotas. Yet, two decades later, systematic studies of the “secret garden” of candidate selection and recruitment have been few and far between in the gender and politics literature. It therefore seems a particularly appropriate time to revisit the core preoccupations, puzzles, and challenges that remain in the field of gender and political recruitment.

scholarly journals Comparing Candidate Selection: A Feminist Institutionalist Approach

2016 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 370-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elin Bjarnegård ◽  
Meryl Kenny
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Comparative Studies ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Selection Process ◽  
Institutional Context ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Candidate Selection ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Political Dominance ◽  
Key Aspects

This contribution evaluates the theoretical and methodological challenges of researching the gendered dynamics of candidate selection in comparative perspective. It argues that comparative studies should take into account not only the gendered nature of political parties and their wider institutional context, but must also investigate the informal aspects of the selection process and their gendered consequences. The article explores these dynamics by revisiting original in-depth research on the candidate selection process in two different settings – Thailand and Scotland. Using a common analytical framework, the article reflects on this work and points to two key aspects of the interaction between formal and informal rules – the gendered consequences of informal party recruitment and of local influence over candidate selection – which are critically important for understanding the continuity of male political dominance and female under-representation. The article concludes by outlining a research agenda for comparative work on gender, institutions and candidate selection and pointing to future directions for work in this area.

scholarly journals Combining Clientelism and Incumbency Advantage: Political Strategy in Candidate Selection for the 2017 Local Head Election in Bekasi Regency

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-42
Author(s):  
Caroline Paskarina ◽  
Rina Hermawati ◽  
Desi Yunita
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Selection Process ◽  
Political Support ◽  
Candidate Selection ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Incumbency Advantage ◽  
Party Elites ◽  
Selection For ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Selection Of

This article discusses the post-clientelist initiatives used by political parties in the selection of candidates within the party to determine the regent and vice regents nominated for the local election. Candidate selection is the political domain of political parties, but in the context of figure-based politics, parties tend to play more as political vehicle in the candidacy of local head. Through this role, resource exchanges take place between parties and candidates within the internal party candidacy arena. Using qualitative methods through in-depth interviews and observations of candidate selection in the Bekasi Regent 2017 election, this article seeks to reveal how post-clientelist initiatives are used by party elites to optimize the incumbency advantage as main political resource in the candidate selection to determine who will pair the incumbent. The results show that the dominance of party elites in candidate selection process determines how financial resources and political support are optimized to win the incumbent. Decision to choose the vice-regent from the same party while still forming coalitions with other parties indicates that post-clientelistic strategy is operated both internally and externally. This practice confirms the tendency of the candidate selection model to be more inclusive because it involves other parties, but remains pragmatic.

scholarly journals The Irish legislative gender quota: The first election

2017 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 15-35
Author(s):  
Mary Brennan ◽  
Fiona Buckley
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Reform ◽  
General Election ◽  
Candidate Selection ◽  
Descriptive Representation ◽  
Gender Quotas ◽  
Reform Agenda ◽  
Gender Quota ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Do So

Abstract In 2012 legislative gender quotas were introduced as part of the Fine Gael/Labour coalition government’s political reform agenda. The legislation specifies that payments to political parties ‘shall be reduced by 50 per cent, unless at least 30 per cent of the candidates whose candidatures were authenticated by the qualified party at the preceding general election were women and at least 30 per cent were men’. The 30 per cent gender threshold came into effect at the 2016 general election. Research demonstrates that gender quotas work to increase women’s political descriptive representation, but to do so, political parties must engage with them in ‘goodwill’, be ‘wellintentioned’ or place women in ‘winnable seats’. This article examines if this was the case at the 2016 general election. Using statistics, as well as drawing from interviews with party strategists, the article assesses the impact of gender quotas on women’s candidate selection and election. We conclude that parties did embrace the spirit of the gender quota law but resistance remains.

Taiwan's Party Primaries in Comparative Perspective

2001 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chung-li Wu ◽  
Dafydd Fell
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Selection Process ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Candidate Selection ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
European Parties ◽  
Party Institutionalization ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Developed World ◽  
Direct Primary

There has been a lack of research into candidate selection outside the developed world. In this paper we attempt to fill this gap, with a detailed examination of the factors leading to the introduction of party primaries, their operations and their future prospects, in a third wave democracy, Taiwan. Although Taiwan is a late democratizer, the high degree of party institutionalization makes it more appropriate to compare its nomination system with those of older political parties, we particularly contrast it with the leading German and British political parties. Our discussion also finds many similar trends with developments of intra-party democracy in European parties, particularly in terms of a decentralization of candidate selection and reduced mediation between party centre and members. In addition, despite technical changes in electoral campaigning, parties in Taiwan have not abandoned the mass membership model. In Taiwan, direct primary elections have been a controversial subject. By analyzing relevant data, we argue that the core problem of the party primary was its lack of fairness, because party cadres tried to monopolize the candidate selection and thus failed to remain neutral. We find signs that leaders in all parties are wary of allowing inner party democracy to go too far and losing their control over nomination. When the party centre fears the wrong candidates will be selected, they are prepared to manipulate the rules in their favour or re-centralize the selection process.

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