When Do Männerparteien Elect Women? Radical Right Populist Parties and Strategic Descriptive Representation

Weeks, Ana Catalano; Meguid, Bonnie M.; Kittilson, Miki Caul; Coffé, Hilde

doi:10.1017/s0003055422000107

Cited by 42 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 94 publications

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“…On the other hand, some parties may use this effect strategically. For instance, populist radical-right partieswho are strongly disliked by mainstream partisans (Harteveld, Mendoza, and Rooduijn 2021; Helbling and Junkunz 2020; Reiljan and Ryan 2021)-may use women's representation to enhance their affective standing in the general public (see Weeks et al 2022). Given that opposition to extremist parties-particularly those that promote illiberal, antidemocratic stances-is arguably justified, it is troubling if these parties can defuse this hostility simply by promoting women.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Can’t We All Just Get Along? How Women MPs Can Ameliorate Affective Polarization in Western Publics

Adams

BRACKEN²,

Gidron³

et al. 2022

Am Polit Sci Rev

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Concern over partisan resentment and hostility has increased across Western democracies. Despite growing attention to affective polarization, existing research fails to ask whether who serves in office affects mass-level interparty hostility. Drawing on scholarship on women’s behavior as elected representatives and citizens’ beliefs about women politicians, we posit the women MPs affective bonus hypothesis: all else being equal, partisans display warmer affect toward out-parties with higher proportions of women MPs. We evaluate this claim with an original dataset on women’s presence in 125 political parties in 20 Western democracies from 1996 to 2017 combined with survey data on partisans’ affective ratings of political opponents. We show that women’s representation is associated with lower levels of partisan hostility and that both men and women partisans react positively to out-party women MPs. Increasing women’s parliamentary presence could thus mitigate cross-party hostility.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Political parties have even sought to capitalize on these beliefs. Weeks et al (2022), for example, argue that radical-right parties strategically increase their proportion of women MPs in order to defuse their extremist image and expand their support beyond their base. We thus posit the following:…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Can’t We All Just Get Along? How Women MPs Can Ameliorate Affective Polarization in Western Publics

Adams

BRACKEN²,

Gidron³

et al. 2022

Am Polit Sci Rev

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show abstract

“…Parties may, for example, compose lists differently after an electoral loss, hoping to attract new voters with new - and possibly more diverse - candidates. Weeks et al (2023), for example, introduce a novel concept of strategic descriptive representation which suggests that parties will increase their number of women MPs after an electoral loss with large gender gaps in voter support to attract previously untapped women voters. They empirically confirm this strategy among European radical right populist parties.…”

Section: A Conceptual Multi-stage and Multi-actor Model Of Intra-part...mentioning

confidence: 99%

A multi-stage and multi-actor perspective on intra-party competition: Introduction to the symposium

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Coffé

2023

Party Politics

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In contemporary representative democracies, political competition is not only taking place between political parties but also within parties. Hitherto, research on such intra-party competition has been mostly focused on the electoral dimension, mainly looking at the distribution of preference votes among co-partisans running on the same party list. In this introduction to our symposium on intra-party competition, we argue that intra-party competition occurs in other stages of the electoral cycle than elections and involves the strategic behaviour of more actors than electoral candidates. We present an original conceptual model that introduces a multi-stage and multi-actor perspective on intra-party competition, including three stages (the nomination stage, the electoral stage and the post-electoral stage) and three key actors (voters, politicians and parties). Based on our novel conceptual model, we provide examples of strategic behaviour of each actor in each of the stages. We further introduce each contribution of this symposium and present how each contribution relates to our multi-stage and multi-actor model of intra-party competition.

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“…Research has shown that even the populist radical right party family, which is commonly characterized as staunchly anti-feminist and illiberal, is internally heterogeneous and nuanced in its positions on gender (Akkerman and Hagelund 2007;De Lange and Mügge 2015). If they are electorally struggling and suffering from a gender gap in voter support, radical right populist parties are more prone to engage in "strategic descriptive representation"-that is, to elect more women members of Parliament (MPs) to attract women voters (Weeks et al 2023). Kittilson's (2011) pioneering comparative study using party manifestos as empirical indicators of women's substantive representation was among the first to alert us that attention to women's interests transcends ideological blocs, as it is present in left-wing as well as right-wing party manifestos.…”

Section: Testing the Robustness Of The Rmp Novel Indicators: Three Hy...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Study Of Gender Politics Using Parties’ Manifestosmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ideology and Party Positions on Gender Issues in Spain: Evidence from a Novel Data Set

2023

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This article introduces new quantitative fine-tuned indicators to objectively measure political parties’ preferences on gender issues. We assess the validity and reliability of these new empirical indicators by analyzing the relationship between ideology and gender positions in decentralized Spain. Using data collected by the Regional Manifestos Project, which for the first time has incorporated a fully fledged gender domain into its coding scheme for content analysis of regional manifestos, we analyze parties’ gender positions on four fundamental dimensions: welfare and the labor market, violence, representation, and values and identity. The results suggest that there is a persistent left-right divide on the last three dimensions: Spanish left-wing parties score significantly higher than right-wing and regionalist parties. However, ideology does not drive parties’ gender positions on welfare and labor market policies; support for gender equality policies on this dimension is so widespread that it can be considered a “valence issue”—all parties, irrespective of their ideology, endorse the same (positive) position.

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When Do Männerparteien Elect Women? Radical Right Populist Parties and Strategic Descriptive Representation

Cited by 42 publications

References 94 publications

Can’t We All Just Get Along? How Women MPs Can Ameliorate Affective Polarization in Western Publics

Can’t We All Just Get Along? How Women MPs Can Ameliorate Affective Polarization in Western Publics

A multi-stage and multi-actor perspective on intra-party competition: Introduction to the symposium

Ideology and Party Positions on Gender Issues in Spain: Evidence from a Novel Data Set

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