Suchergebnisse

One of the most salient political issues today is women's under-representation in state authority bodies. Many factors varying across the world affect how many women get elected. In this dissertation, I look at women's legislative representation (WLR) in East-European post-communist and post-Soviet countries, which so far been understudied, from different angles. The radical political and socio-economic changes experienced by post-communist countries make them interesting to analyse. In Chapter 2, I address 2 literature gaps by focusing on how democracy and corruption influence WLR in post-communist countries. On the regional level, I am interested in the effect of the rise of multilevel politics on WLR. Thus, in Chapter 3 we develop an argument that the impact of decentralisation reforms on WLR is dependent on regions' political power. Finally, to overcome the US-centred bias in the studies of personal characteristics of female and male MPs, Chapter 4 focuses on post-communist political elites. A shared legacy of "state feminism" but different trajectories of countries' post-communist political development create a perfect laboratory for analysing whether the combination of these factors contribute to the eradication of the differences between female and male MPs or to their consolidation. My dissertation contributes to the literature by closing several gaps in research on WLR. The conducted analyses improve our knowledge of post-communist countries and factors facilitating regional variation in WLR. This thesis tests new theoretical arguments and broadens existing ones. The results challenge some of the previous findings based on the studies of developed countries and show that we cannot generalise them to other world regions. A more practical contribution is the collection of 3 original databases which provides an opportunity for a further research of WLR in the post-communist region. Finally, the findings contribute to the debate on women's substantive representation.

AbstractResearch shows that electoral systems, gender quotas and a country's socio‐economic development affect women's legislative representation (WLR). Less attention is paid to the effects of the rise of regional political arenas and multilevel politics on WLR. Due to less costly and competitive electoral campaigns, women can have easier access to regional legislatures. We argue that this relationship is mitigated by the distribution of competences between the different levels of the political system and that decentralization's effect on WLR at the regional level is dependent on the regions' political power. To test this, we use an original dataset on WLR in 383 regional parliaments in 19 European countries from 1970 to 2018. Results of the three‐level models show that more political authority vested into regions leads to a lower level of WLR in the legislatures of the more politically powerful regions in comparison with not only the regions possessing less authority but also with the national parliament. Possible explanations for this effect, such as the attractiveness of these positions to the mostly male political elite and, consequently, increased costs and competitiveness of electoral campaigns, are suggested.

Research shows that electoral systems, gender quotas and a country's socio-economic development affect women's legislative representation (WLR). Less attention is paid to the effects of the rise of regional political arenas and multilevel politics on WLR. Due to less costly and competitive electoral campaigns, women can have easier access to regional legislatures. We argue that this relationship is mitigated by the distribution of competences between the different levels of the political system and that decentralization's effect on WLR at the regional level is dependent on the regions' political power. To test this, we use an original dataset on WLR in 383 regional parliaments in 19 European countries from 1970 to 2018. Results of the three-level models show that more political authority vested into regions leads to a lower level of WLR in the legislatures of the more politically powerful regions in comparison with not only the regions possessing less authority but also with the national parliament. Possible explanations for this effect, such as the attractiveness of these positions to the mostly male political elite and, consequently, increased costs and competitiveness of electoral campaigns, are suggested.