Effective Quotas, Relative Party Magnitude, and the Success of Female Candidates

Abstract

The extraordinary success of gender quotas in the 1998 Peruvian municipal elections defies conventional wisdom in electoral studies. This article evaluates several institutional variables that are prominently featured in the literature and several others that were “discovered” in Peru, using pooled ordinary least squares regression models and original data sets. Two of the newly discovered variables—effective quotas and seats guaranteed by the effective quota and the relative magnitude of the largest party—were the most important determinants of female electoral success at the provincial level and in districts outside Lima, whereas collective action stimulated by quota legislation made a difference in the capital. In contrast, district magnitude—widely considered to be the most important variable in party-list systems—had no impact. The article extends its principal findings beyond Peru, argues that quotas can follow diverging logics in different electoral systems, and suggests directions for future research.

Individual and Contextual Constraints on Ideological Labels in Latin America

“…Las listas abiertas, contrariamente a lo afirmado por trabajos anteriores (Schmidt 2009;Matland 2006Matland y 2005Schmidt y Saunders 2004;Shugart 1994), perjudican las oportunidades electorales de las mujeres. No obstante, la superioridad de las listas cerradas, tal como trabajos anteriores han señalado (Jones 2009;Jones et al 2012), es condicional a su interacción con cuotas de género.…”

“…Además, el uso de información agregada implica cierta inconsistencia entre teoría y evidencia: mientras las explicaciones teóricas han sido diseñadas al nivel del distrito electoral, los test con N grande emplean información agregada a nivel nacional. Mientras esta literatura, en pos de incrementar la cantidad de observaciones (King et al 1994), acepta cierto sacrificio en la calidad de los datos, tanto los estudios de caso (Jones 2004;Schmidt y Saunders 2004;Matland 1993;Matland y Studlar 1996Matland y Taylor 1997;Jones y Navia 1999;Alles 2008Alles , 2007Welch y Studlar 1990) como los estudios de área con N medianas (Jones 2009;Jones et al 2012) permiten una mejor correspondencia entre teoría y datos utilizando distritos, listas partidarias o legisladores individuales como unidades de análisis. En este sentido, el presente artículo recoge tanto las preocupaciones por el timing (Roberts et al 2013) Los diseños de investigación con un número limitado de casos, tal como ha sido señalado en trabajos seminales sobre análisis comparado (Lijphart 1971), exigen un uso cuidadoso de la similitud y la diferencia.…”

Quotas, Quotas Everywhere: From Party Regulations to Gender Quotas for Corporate Management Boards. Another Case of Contagion

“…Gender quotas are considered to be successful whenever they contribute to redressing the sex imbalance in the sector targeted. The conditions under which quotas do improve the descriptive representation of women were studied, with an emphasis on the features of the electoral system to which the gender quotas were added (see, for instance, Araú jo and García 2006;Htun and Jones 2002;Jones 2004Jones , 2009Matland 2006;Schmidt and Saunders 2004;Schwindt-Bayer 2009;Silwa et al 2011;Tremblay 2008;Tripp and Kang 2008). When it comes to gender quotas applied to corporate management, the question of whether and under what conditions they raise the number of women has been less addressed.…”

Introduction: Gender Politics and Party Regulation. Quotas and Beyond

“…The adoption of party quotas in industrial democracies has also been studied by Caul (2001), who finds that the presence of women in the highest ranks of political parties and the adoption of quotas by other political parties in the system are among the most important factors contributing to the adoption of candidate gender quotas. In addition to studying the path to the adoption of quotas per se, a growing number of works use quotas to explain the successful election of female candidates in municipal (Schmidt and Saunders 2004) or provincial elections (Jones 1998). Jones (2009) warns, however, that the contribution to the electoral success of female parliamentarian candidates is not given a priori, but depends on how quotas are designed.…”