Search

While women are gaining ground in national parliaments worldwide, the number of female representatives varies greatly between political parties. Since parties themselves can reflect gender biases, they play a key role in shaping women’s representation. Building on the existing literature, this research note examines the interplay between electoral systems, national institutions, and party characteristics to understand these disparities. By analysing data from over 200 parties across 42 legislatures in 24 countries, our results shed light on factors influencing female representation in parliamentary parties and offer valuable insights for promoting gender parity in parliaments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender quotas are generally regarded as the foremost measure for the promotion of gender equality in politics. While quotas and their impact vary across countries, a strong quota system is defined as including blocked electoral lists, large district magnitude, strong non-compliance sanctions, and rank-order rules like gender alternation in the candidate lists. Yet, also in the presence of strong quota rules, parties might attempt strategies aimed at mitigating their gender-balancing effect. By taking Italy as a case study, in this article we investigate whether and how parties competing in the 2018 elections were able to adapt their gender gatekeeping strategy to the new quota law. Our finding suggests that Italian parties relied on another characteristic of the electoral system—namely, the possibility of multiple candidacies—to successfully hinder women candidates' chances of election. Accordingly, we highlight that a wider set of electoral system characteristics should be taken into account in the design of a (strong) quota law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to the study of the European Commission's (EC) politicization by examining this phenomenon from the angle of communication. We elaborate a novel approach based on two linguistic indicators – charisma and technicality – which we then apply through a content analysis of 8,947 speeches delivered by Commission members between 1999 and 2019. Contrary to the narrative of an ever more political Commission, we find that the linguistic politicization of the EC decreased over the period under exam, reaching its nadir during Jean‐Claude Juncker's presidential term (2014–19). Our findings raise the question of whether language is yet another ordinary dimension of politicization, or rather it is used strategically by the Commission to underplay its underlying politicization as measured in more traditional institutional, policy, and individual terms. Either way, our study highlights the multi‐faceted nature of the politicization concept, and the need for deeper and more nuanced analyses of it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is little doubt that the European Central Bank (ECB), and in particular its presidency, has taken the lead in tackling the euro crisis. But can this leadership be also characterised as charismatic? This article answers the question by focusing on language – a key component as well as a reliable indicator of charisma. By means of a software‐assisted content analysis of the entire corpus of ECB presidential speeches, it is found that the crisis has indeed led to the emergence of the Bank's presidency as a charismatic euro leader. This in turn confirms the recent politicisation of the ECB, but at the same time might be seen as mitigating the problems related to the Bank's democratic deficit, to the extent that charisma can be seen, from a Weberian standpoint, as an alternative source of political legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we investigate whether and how political parties function as gatekeepers in determining gender differentiations in committee appointments by using the Italian parliamentary committee system from 1994 to 2013 as a case study. Committee membership provides individual MPs with direct influence in a specific policy area as well as with visibility and expertise, thus affecting MPs' political careers. Accordingly, to study women's appointments to committees' positions is eventually to say something about women's chances to have an actual effect in the political process. After presenting the theoretical framework, three hypotheses are proposed. Our findings show that women tend to be appointed to committees dealing with stereotypically 'feminine' and 'less prestigious' issues, and that leftwing parties reproduce this pattern less than right-wing parties, but not when it comes to the appointment to more prestigious and influential positions. Moreover, we found that no significant longitudinal trends towards more unbiased distributions can be detected. A discussion closes the article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]