Suchergebnisse

ABSTRACTQuota policies securing the presence of marginalised groups in decision-making bodies have been adopted across sub-Saharan Africa. These policies are frequently understood through the lens of a pluralist perspective. This stance is not appropriate in African regimes characterised by executive dominance. Through a qualitative study of official documents, newspaper articles and interviews conducted during two field studies in Uganda in 2005 and 2010, this article shows how the understanding of quota policies in Africa may gain from the corporatist debate on interest representation. The analysis reveals that the incumbent National Resistance Movement has employed the reserved seat policy strategically to maintain its dominant position, and that strategies for using the quota system have evolved gradually over time in response to key political events, and the interests of group activists at the local and national levels with vested interests in its survival.

Contesting elections is extremely expensive. The need for money excludes many prospective candidates, resulting in the over-representation of wealth within politics. The cost of contesting elections has been underestimated as a cause of women's under-representation. Covering seven case studies in six papers, this special issue makes theoretical and empirical contributions to understanding how political financing is gendered. We look at the impact on candidates, arguing that the personal costs of running for office can be prohibitive, and that fundraising is harder for female challengers. We also explore the role of political parties, looking at when and how parties might introduce mitigating measures to support female candidates with the costs of running. We demonstrate how political institutions shape the cost of running for office, illustrate how this is gendered and consider the potential consequences of institutional reform. We also note how societal gender norms can have financial repercussions for women candidates.

Despite the popularity of electoral gender quotas, the substantive impact of quotas on the plenary behavior of members of parliament (MPs) has yet to be thoroughly empirically explored, and in particular, there is a dearth of evidence from non-Western cases. Here we create a unique content analysis dataset from 14 years (1998–2011) of plenary debates, including the contents of more than 150,000 unique MP speeches recorded in some 40,000 pages of the Ugandan parliamentary Hansard to test how MP characteristics affect patterns of gender-related legislative speech. We find that female MPs speak about issues related to women's interests significantly more than male MPs. Further, we find no evidence of significant differencesbetweenfemale MPs elected with and without quotas, suggesting that, in the Ugandan case, gender is a more salient predictor of the tendency to "speak for women" than electoral pathway. To our knowledge, this is the first study that examines the effectiveness of quotas in promoting women's substantive representation in parliamentary debates across all policy domains over a significant time period. We discuss the implications of these findings in the Ugandan context, as well as how our evidence speaks to substantive representation through reserved seat quotas in semi-authoritarian regimes more broadly.

Gender-targeted public funding / Magnus Öhman -- Introducing the concept of gendered electoral financing / Ragnhild L. Muriaas, Vibeke Wang, Rainbow Murray -- France : parity sanctions and campaign financing in France : increased numbers, little concrete gender transformation / Catherine Achin, Sandrine Lévêque, Anja Durovic, Eléonore Lépinard, Amy Mazur -- Ireland : gendering candidate selection : incentivising parties through state funding / Fiona Buckley, Rachel Gregory -- Cabo Verde : legislated candidate quotas with reward for compliance in Cabo Verde : victory for no one? / Aleida C. Borges, Ragnhild L. Muriaas, Vibeke Wang -- United States : for us by us : women's training organizations in the American political process / Matthew K. Gichohi -- Malawi : relieving women's costs of standing for election : Malawi's 50/50 campaigns / Vibeke Wang, Happy Kayuni, Asiyati Chiweza, Samantha Soyiyo -- Ghana : "some money has to be going...": discounted filing fees to bring more women into Parliament in Ghana / Gretchen Bauer, Akosua K. Darkwah -- Conclusion : does money talk : an initial qualitative comparative analysis / Amy Mazur, Ragnhild L. Muriaas.