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Candidate selection and recruitment has been notably described as the “secret garden” of politics—an obscure process, often hidden from view, that is regulated largely by internal party rules, informal practices, and power relationships (cf. Gallagher and Marsh 1988). In this contribution, we contend that informal party practices and their gendered consequences are critically important for understanding the continuity of male political dominance and female underrepresentation. Rather than make a strict separation between formal and informal rules in the recruitment process, we argue that gender politics scholars must instead identify and empirically investigate the specific combinations of such rules that impact upon women's and men's political participation in parties. The proposed approach allows for a more nuanced understanding of the bounded nature and variable outcomes of institutional innovation and party change.

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.Keywords: candidate selection, gender, feminist institutionalism, political parties, informal institutions Investigating the gendered and institutional dimensions of the opportunity structures within political parties is essential in order to explain women's chronic minority status in politics as well as the persistence of male dominance. The small but growing body of work on gender, political parties and candidate selection has contributed many important insights about the

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.

How is political violence gendered? We connect the traditional political violence literature’s emphasis on categorizing attacks to the gender and politics literature’s analysis of the barriers to women’s political participation. Our framework separates gendered political violence into three elements. Gendered motives appear when perpetrators use violence to preserve hegemonic men’s control of politics. Gendered forms emphasize how gender roles and tropes differentially shape men’s and women’s experiences of violence. Gendered impacts capture the subjective meaning-making processes that occur as different audiences react to political violence. This approach offers researchers and policymakers greater analytic precision regarding how political violence is gendered.

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Election violence is an important issue from a number of perspectives. Understanding the causes and consequences of violations of personal integrity is always relevant, but election violence adds a different dimension to this already serious issue: it also violates electoral integrity and decreases democratic quality (Norris 2013). Therefore, election violence should be studied as a simultaneous violation of personal and electoral integrity. In this contribution, I define election violence as occurring when (1) the goal of the act is to affect an electoral outcome or prevent someone from running in an election, and (2) the means by which it is carried out violates the personal integrity of individuals involved in the electoral process.

Political parties sometimes set up formal criteria to define the pool of potential candidates. This article represents the first large-scale comparative analysis of potential unintended gendered consequences of these formal selection criteria for parliamentary representation. Using unique data on 101 political parties in 32 African, Asian, and postcommunist European countries, we find that there is indeed a relationship between formal selection criteria and men’s and women’s political representation. Criteria that concern ethnic or geographic background and intraparty experiences are harmful to women. On the other hand, gendered consequences are not as pronounced as a result of criteria concerning qualifications or requirements in relation to electability. Taken together, the analysis points to the need to pay increased attention to formal selection criteria and how this under-researched aspect of candidate selection shapes the parliamentary representation of underrepresented groups.