Purpose of the project

This research project has analyzed the role of political parties for women's political representation. More specifically, it has analyzed the gender aspects of an often mentioned but seldom researched aspect of candidate selection: the degree of institutionalization in the candidate selection process. The first task of the project was to conceptually disentangle and concretize the rather obscure dimensions of institutionalization in candidate selection to allow for a proper operationalization of the concept. The second task was to assess the effects of institutionalization on the number of women candidates and representatives with statistical methods. And third, the project aimed at contextually nuancing the discussion and examining whether the role of institutionalization in candidate selection is contingent on the different preferences parties are likely to have in different political climates.

To perform the empirical analyses, we have mainly used two different datasets, both collected by International IDEA: First, we have had unique access to data covering 176 political parties in 64 countries in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Central and Eastern Europe. Second, we have used the Geppal [Gender and Political Parties in Latin America] dataset covering almost 100 political parties in 18 Latin American countries. The first dataset has been complemented with our own data collection on women's political representation in national legislatures, by political party. The second dataset has been complemented with our collection of the party statutes of each of the political parties.

The three main findings

A first important finding of the project relates to the first task of the project: We distinguish between three concepts that previous research usually has used synonymously: institutionalization, bureaucratization, and formalization of the candidate selection process. We argue that bureaucratization is the most adequate term to use in research on candidate selection, whenever scholars refer to selection procedures that are carried out according to written rules that are "detailed, explicit, standardized, implemented by party officials, and authorized in party documents" (Norris 1996, 202). In a forthcoming article in the respected journal Comparative Politics (vol. 48, no.3, April 2016), we conceptualize bureaucratized candidate selection procedures by arguing that bureaucratization is a three-dimensional concept encompassing formalization, specification, and implementation. This three-dimensionality has never been explicitly acknowledged, either theoretically or empirically.

The project's two other main findings are related to the empirical analyses. In the same article, we analyze if and how bureaucratization shape political parties' implementation of electoral gender quotas. We find, on the one hand, that political parties with bureaucratized candidate selection procedures are more likely than other parties to comply with the letter of the quota law by putting more women than others on their candidate lists. On the other hand, parties with bureaucratized candidate selection procedures are not more likely than other parties to comply with the spirit of the quota law: they do not get more women elected to national parliaments. This second main finding of the project suggests that the expectations that part of the literature on gender and candidate selection has had on bureaucratization may have been too high.
Our third main finding of the project refers more broadly to the role of formal and informal rules in shaping gendered parliamentary representation. In two different unpublished papers (both are ready for submission to international peer-reviewed journals), we examine how political party rules (both formal and informal) not only shape how candidates are selected but also who may be a candidate for the party in the first place. We analyze the potential gendered consequences of party rules circumscribing the pool of potential candidates and find, first, that parties that require that candidates have certain seniority within the party organization or specific links to constituency groups (an ethnic group, etc.) tend to have relatively low levels of women's representation. Second, in an analysis of Asian countries, we find that informal selection criteria, under certain circumstances, can benefit women. Having name recognition and familial ties to someone in the party improves the possibilities of women being elected - but only in Asia.

New research questions generated by the project

The project has generated various new research questions. For instance, by analyzing also other under-represented groups (not only women), future research could examine which rules (if any) that are specifically gendered and distinguish those from rules that tend to benefit insiders. In this project, we have not been able to make a distinction between those two sets of rules. In addition, a very relevant question relates to the roots of bureaucratization: why are some political parties more bureaucratized than others?

Internationalization of the project

The project has had a very international character. We have presented papers at international conferences (e.g. the Midwest Political Science Association's 2012 conference in Chicago, the American Political Science Association's 2015 meeting in San Francisco, to mention but a few conferences); our work has been published in international journals; we have collaborated with international colleagues; and we have both spent part of our time at an international university (we were both visiting fellows at the University of Sydney in 2014.

Dissemination of our research

We have collaborated with International IDEA in several ways in order to share our expertise with practitioners working on gender and political parties. For instance, we are writing a discussion paper to them, which uses data from the larger of the two International IDEA datasets used in the project. In addition, we have done consultancy work for the organization, in relation to its development of a framework on a gender policy for political parties in developing countries. Moreover, Elin Bjarnegård has used our research results in workhshops with political parties, as well as in courses given to political activists and civil servants from non-western countries. She has conducted workshops with political parties in the Maldives (organized by International Foundation for Electoral Systems, IFES), and she has been responsible for lectures and workshops in international courses in Sweden (organized by International Center for Local Democracy, ICLD, and Indevelop). She has also started a cooperative project with the Kvinna till Kvinna Foundation, taking the starting point in this project, in order to identify and discuss opportunities and hindrances for increased cooperation between academics and practitioners in the field of democracy development. We wrote an article in the local newspaper Uppsala Nya Tidning in connection with a large international conference on gender and politics that was hosted by Uppsala University, and the results of our project were highlighted in "Innovation and Research" in the daily newspaper "Dagens Nyheter".

The two most important publications of the project

1. "Political Parties and Gender Quota Implementation: The Role of Bureaucratized Candidate Selection Procedures" (forthcoming in Comparative Politics, vol. 48, no.3, April 2016). This article addresses two of the project's research questions. First, it conceptualizes bureaucratized candidate selection procedures by arguing that bureaucratization is a three-dimensional concept encompassing formalization, specification, and implementation. Second, it analyzes if and how bureaucratization shape political parties' implementation of electoral gender quotas. The main findings are briefly summarized above. Taken together, we believe that the article has the potential to have a large impact on gender and political party literature in general, and on gender and candidate selection in particular.

2. "Political Parties, Candidacy Requirements, and Gendered Parliamentary Representation" (article manuscript prepared for submission to Party Politics). Although we have published other articles as well as book chapters within the project, and this paper is not yet accepted for publication, we prefer to highlight this piece of work. It has the potential to make a significant contribution to research on gender and political parties, by examining how formal party rules not only shape how candidates are selected but also who may be a candidate for the party in the first place. It analyzes the potential gendered consequences of party rules circumscribing the pool of potential candidates. The main findings are briefly summarized above.


Publication strategy

Initially we had planned to write a book on bureaucratization. However, the data that we planned to use for the book (i.e. the larger of the two datasets that we used in the project) turned out to have various limitations. As a consequence, we decided to use other data as well. When we expanded on our data, we made the strategic decision to publish mainly in international journals, because different kinds of data meant that we could do different kinds of contributions. Our ambition has been and is to publish in good quality general political science journals. Our published articles are in journals that allow parallel publishing on places like Research Gate and Academia. We have made use of this as our Open Access strategy, and have made our published manuscripts available on these sites.

Publications

1.    Bjarnegård Elin and Pär Zetterberg. 2016. “Political Parties and Gender Quota Implementation: The Role of Bureaucratized Candidate Selection Procedures”, forthcoming in Comparative Politics (vol. 48, no.3, April 2016).

2.    Bjarnegård, Elin and Pär Zetterberg. “Political parties, candidacy requirements, and gendered parliamentary representation”. Prepared for submission to journal.

3.    Bjarnegård, Elin. “Female Politicians and Family Ties- Gender and Informal Networks in Asia”. Prepared for submission to journal.

4.    Bjarnegård Elin and Pär Zetterberg. 2011. ”Removing Quotas, Maintaining Representation: Overcoming Gender Inequalities in Political Party Recruitment”, in Representation 47:2, 187-199.

5.    Krook, Mona Lena and Pär Zetterberg. 2014. “Electoral Quotas and Political Representation”, in International Political Science Review 35:1, 3-11.

6.    Krook, Mona Lena and Pär Zetterberg. 2014. “Introduction: Gender Quotas and Women’s Representation – New Directions in Research”, in Representation 50:3, 287-294.

7.    Krook, Mona Lena and Pär Zetterberg. 2015. Gender Quotas and Women’s Representation – New Directions in Research. Abingdon & New York: Routledge.

8.    Zetterberg, Pär. 2013. “The Dynamic Relationship between Gender Quotas and Political Institutions”, in Politics & Gender 9:3, 316-321.

9.    Bjarnegård, Elin and Rainbow Murray. “The Causes and Consequences of Male Over-representation. A Research Agenda”. Manuscript under review.

10.    Bjarnegård, Elin and Meryl Kenny. ”Who, where, and how? Filling the gaps in theory-building on gendered dynamics in political recruitment”. Chapter manuscript prepared for an edited volume on informal institutions, with the publisher Rowman & Littlefield.

11.    Hilde Coffé, Pär Zetterberg and Elin Bjarnegård. ”Exploring the Extent and Causes of Gendered Campaign Strategies”. Submitted manuscript.