The Impact of Candidate Selection on "Quota Women's" Legislative Behavior: Towards a Theoretical Framework.

AbstractPolitical actors in certain parts of the world have justified gender quotas by the distinct experiences and interests that women bring into politics, and the substantive change they thereby are likely to bring about. At the same time, some scholars have suggested that women who enter elected bodies via quotas (i.e. "quota women") tend to face particular legislative constraints and lack the liberty needed to exercise independent power and responsibility. In this paper, I suggest that a key factor for understanding the constraints that shape quota women's room for manoeuvre - and their likely subsequent behavior - in the legislature is the candidate selection system. I develop a theoretical framework for the analysis of which selection procedures are more as well as less likely to pose constraints on women elected on quotas. The analysis suggests that mainly two aspects of the candidate selection process shape the constraints: the size of the "selectorate" (the larger the body that selects candidates, the less constraints are likely to be posed on women elected on quotas, and the greater is their room for manoeuvre) and the bureaucratization of the recruitment process (the more rule-bound and transparent the process, the less constraints are likely to be posed on quota women, and the greater is their room for manoeuvre). I conclude by discussing the implications of the findings for research on women's political representation; more specifically, I highlight the tension that might exist between women's descriptive and substantive representation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]