scholarly journals Do party primaries punish women? Revisiting the trade-off between the inclusion of party members and the selection of women as party leaders

2021 ◽  
pp. 135406882198896
Author(s):  
Javier Astudillo ◽  
Andreu Paneque
Keyword(s):  
Original Data ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Leadership Selection ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Female Candidates ◽  
Party Members ◽  
Mixed Gender ◽  
Selection Of

This paper examines the effect of party primaries on women’s chances of winning a leadership contest in eight Western parliamentary countries since 1985. By doing so, we revisit an ongoing debate about a possible trade-off between the democratic values of ‘inclusion’ of party members and ‘representation’ of excluded groups that this type of selection method may involve. Using an original data set consisting of 608 candidates who participated in 168 leadership mixed-gender contests at the national or regional level, we show that female candidates perform worse under party primaries. This finding holds even after controlling for the type of candidate competing. We therefore sustain the argument that this leadership selection mechanism, in its current format, involves a trade-off between ‘inclusion’ and ‘representation’.

Subverting the Organizational Cartel: Explaining Cross-Party Leadership Selection in U.S. State Houses

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 475-483
Author(s):  
Matthew N. Green
Keyword(s):  
House Of Representatives ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
State Level ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Leadership Selection ◽  
Majority Party ◽  
Party Ideology ◽  
Level I ◽  
Selection Of

In the U.S. House of Representatives, the majority party constitutes an organizational cartel that monopolizes the selection of chamber leaders. But in state legislatures, that cartel power is sometimes circumvented by a bipartisan bloc that outvotes the leadership preferences of a majority of the majority party. Drawing from an original data set of instances of cross-party organizational coalitions at the state level, I use statistical analysis to test various hypotheses for when these coalitions are more likely to form. The analysis reveals that party ideology does not adequately explain the violation of these cartels; rather, violations depend on the costs associated with keeping the party unified and the benefits that come from selecting the chamber’s top leadership post. This finding underscores the potential vulnerability of organizational cartels and suggests that governing parties are strategic when deciding how fiercely to defend their cartel power.

Portugal

2021 ◽  
pp. 675-691
Author(s):  
Jorge M. Fernandes ◽  
Miguel Won
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Analysis ◽  
Sharp Increase ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Legislative Organization ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Party Members ◽  
Positive Effect

In this chapter, we examine the Portuguese case whose institutional design makes it a paradigm of party-centered legislative debates. Together with the closed-list proportional representation electoral system, the rules-induced centrality of parties in legislative organization creates strong incentives for party leaders to keep tabs on party members on the floor. In this chapter, we describe the formal and informal rules of legislative debate in Portugal. Using an original data set from 1999 through 2019, our empirical analysis yields three key results. First, women continue to be sidelined from floor access, not only in the opportunities to take the floor but also in the length of speeches they deliver. Second, seniority has a positive effect in increasing the likelihood of taking the floor. Third, our results point out to a sharp increase in the likelihood of taking the floor and making long speeches, which corroborates our general theoretical expectations in the volume.

Turnout Rates in Closed Party Leadership Primaries: Flash and Fade Out?

2014 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 218-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bram Wauters
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Learning Theory ◽  
Motivation Theory ◽  
Participation Rates ◽  
Party Leadership ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Mobilization Theory ◽  
Party Members ◽  
First Time ◽  
Selection Of

The organization of primaries in which all party members can participate is increasingly used by political parties to select their leader. We focus here on one of the consequences of these procedures – participation rates. Based on general participation theories (mobilization theory, instrumental motivation theory and learning theory) in combination with insights into the introduction and functioning of leadership primaries, we expect that the first time a party organizes leadership primaries, participation rates will be high, but that they will decline gradually afterwards. We have focused on direct member votes for the selection of party leaders in Belgium, Israel and Canada. Our results show that participation rates are not influenced by how many times such a contest is held in a party (only first-time participation tends to be higher), but mainly by how competitive the contest is.

Intraparty Democracy and the Selection of Parliamentary Candidates: the Belgian Case

1974 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Obler
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Party Members ◽  
Selection Of

Leaders and activists in most Western political parties, appreciating Schattschneider's adage1 that parties are controlled by those who control nominations to public offices, jealously guard their right to choose parliamentary candidates. They realize that candidates play a crucial role in shaping voters’ images of the parties as well as in formulating the party policies. Not surprisingly, candidates are usually recruited through rather oligarchical procedures. Extra-parliamentary party leaders normally pick the nominees in closed private meetings and then submit their choices to rank-and-file party members and/or delegates who nearly always grant their approval. Such procedures reduce the role of party members to one of docile acquiescence, and completely exclude party voters.

Minority Governments and Pledge Fulfilment: Evidence from Portugal

2016 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 335-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Moury ◽  
Jorge M. Fernandes
Keyword(s):  
Original Data ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
Elected Officials ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Opposition Party ◽  
Opposition Parties

In an age of rampant distrust and disaffection, pledge fulfilment is important for the quality of delegation between voters and elected officials. In this article, we make an empirical appraisal of pledge fulfilment in Portugal. Do Portuguese minority governments fulfil their pledges? How do they fulfil those pledges? What is the role of opposition parties? Using an original data set with over 3,000 electoral pledges for three Socialist governments, as well as interviews with former ministers and party leaders, our evidence suggests that: (1) minority governments fulfil at least as many pledges as their majority counterparts; (2) the main opposition party manages to extract the most policy benefits; and (3) economic conditions and cohabitation situations matter for pledge fulfilment.

Centralized or decentralized personalization? Measuring intra-party competition in open and flexible list PR systems

2019 ◽  
pp. 135406881985571
Author(s):  
Jérémy Dodeigne ◽  
Jean-Benoit Pilet
Keyword(s):  
Original Data ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Electoral Rules ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Two Measures ◽  
Over Time

This article offers a comparative analysis of electoral intra-party competition in four countries – Belgium, the Czech Republic, Finland and Luxembourg – based on an original data set of 79,621 candidates and 3150 party lists covering the last quarter century (1994–2017). We use two measures to describe the nature of intra-party competition over time, across countries and across party lists: a Gini coefficient and a measure of the effective number of candidates. First, in terms of change over time (personalization) – unlike hypothesized in the presidentialization thesis – there is no concentration of intra-party competition around a few leaders over time. Second, in terms of the dynamics of concentration of votes (personalized politics), the results invite to move beyond the clear-cut divide found in the literature between centralized and decentralized forms of personalized politics. Instead, personalized politics is best described by the concept of ‘elitization’, meaning the concentration of most votes on a medium-sized group of candidates (5–10 per lists). Finally, three sets of factors condition intra-party electoral competition: the electoral rules organizing preference votes, the level of elections (European, national and regional) and the presence on the party lists of incumbent politicians (party leaders, ministers and parliamentarians).

Firms, Governments, and WTO Adjudication: Japan's Selection of WTO Disputes

2007 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 274-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina L. Davis ◽  
Yuki Shirato
Keyword(s):  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Business Environment ◽  
The Political ◽  
Trade Disputes ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Business Officials ◽  
Wto Dispute Settlement ◽  
Government Report ◽  
Selection Of

What explains the selection of cases for WTO adjudication? This article explores the business conditions under which industries lobby their home government to use the WTO adjudication process and the political factors that influence government decisions. It explains the industry pattern of selection for international trade disputes as a function of the velocity of the business environment. While WTO adjudication is seen as costly and slow, a positive ruling brings broad benefits in terms of deterrence against future discrimination. Firms in static industries will invest in WTO dispute settlement to achieve these benefits, but firms in industries shaped by dynamic competition have high opportunity costs that make them less willing to pursue adjudication. This argument accounts for why there are fewer WTO cases about electronics industry issues than there are likely incidences of protectionist measures. Since Japan is a leading exporter and provides a government report with unique data on potential WTO disputes, it was chosen to test the argument in greater depth. Interviews with Japanese business officials and statistical analysis of an original data set provide support for the argument. The authors conclude that the passive attitude toward WTO adjudication by Japan's largest export industry, electronics, and the sensitivity of Japan's diplomatic relations with China have constrained the cases that Japan files. These findings suggest that the effectiveness of the WTO for dispute settlement is conditional upon the time horizon of the industry and the political relations among members.

Personal leaders and party change: Italy in comparative perspective

2015 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fortunato Musella
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
The United States ◽  
Party Change ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Party Leadership ◽  
New Parties ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
New Procedures ◽  
Selection Of

IntroduzioneParty leaders have become more powerful and autonomous actors in recent years by developing a direct and personal relationship with citizens. As anticipated in the United States (Lowi, 1985), the rise of the ‘personal leader’ seems to have occurred in many European democracies, both in old parties and in more recently formed parties, with a widespread tendency for them to be promoted and controlled by individual leaders. Nevertheless, party leadership remains quite a neglected theme in political science. Through a data set including ~500 party presidents in 13 democracies, this article focusses on the personalization of party leadership by comparing Italy with other Western countries. More particularly, new procedures for the selection of party chairs, the centralization of power in political parties, and the new role of party leaders in the legislative/governmental arena are analysed, given their importance to such a process. The article summarizes new data on the party leaders’ characteristics, with regards to their political backgrounds, how they are elected, how long they stay in office, and whether they become prime minister or enter the executive. In this way, we are able to see how some new parties are created from the outset as highly personalized and centralized parties (Forza Italia being the paradigmatic case), whereas other older parties have also evolved in a personalized direction.

scholarly journals Committee chair selection under high informational and organizational constraints

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 547-558 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mihail Chiru ◽  
Sergiu Gherghina
Keyword(s):  
Fixed Effects ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Logit Models ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Privileged Access ◽  
Committee Chair ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Conditional Logit ◽  
Members Of Parliament ◽  
Organizational Constraints

This article draws on major theories of committee organization to explain committee chair selection in contexts with high informational and organizational constraints. We test our theoretical expectations through a series of fixed effects conditional logit models run on an original data set which includes all legislators who have served in the Romanian Chamber of Deputies from 1992 to 2012. The findings indicate that sector knowledge matters more for committee chair selection in the first post-communist terms, while chair seniority and party credentials acquire relevance later on. The effect of sector knowledge is stronger than that of chair seniority for the committees that the members of parliament perceive to be the most important, while party leaders have privileged access to the chair position irrespective of how salient the committee is.

The Partisan Basis of Procedural Choice: Allocating Parliamentary Rights in the House, 1789–1990

1996 ◽  
Vol 90 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah A. Binder
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Model ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
Institutional Development ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Majority Party ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Procedural Rights ◽  
Procedural Choice

Conventional accounts of the institutional development of Congress suggest that expansion of the size and workload of the House led members to distribute parliamentary rights narrowly: Majority party leaders accrued strong procedural powers while minority parties lost many of their parliamentary rights. I offer an alternative, partisan basis of procedural choice. Using an original data set of changes in House rules, I present a statistical model to assess the influence of partisan and nonpartisan factors on changes in minority procedural rights in the House between 1789 and 1990. I find that short-term partisan goals—constrained by inherited rules—shape both the creation and suppression of rights for partisan and political minorities. Collective institutional concerns and longer-term calculations about future parliamentary needs have little impact on changes in minority rights. The findings have important theoretical implications for explaining both the development of Congress and the nature of institutional change more generally.

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