The paper’s key contribution is to identify the gaps and provide new theoretical and empirical insights on the gendered dynamics of inclusion and exclusion underpinning sectarian polities, which requires putting the post-conflict and power-sharing, candidate selection, and feminist institutionalism literatures into dialogue. It focuses on the micro-foundations of a sectarian-based system as a gendered political institution to identify mechanisms at work within parties, posing the following question: How do gendered (formal and informal) rules of candidate selection at the party level interplay with the (formal and informal rules) of sectarian-based systems?
By deploying a feminist institutional analysis to sectarian power-sharing systems such as the Lebanese system, this paper investigates central questions of candidate selection and party politics scholarship in sectarian polities. Delving into how parties and institutional arrangements perpetuate male dominance in sectarian, divided polities, the paper expands feminist institutionalist studies on women’s political representation in countries where institutions are built around the role of the male leader as the protector of the sect.