Does Centralisation Matter to Women's Election Chances?

Legislated gender quotas are becoming increasingly common as states respond to the persistent over representation of men in legislatures. The majority of these electoral laws require parties to present a minimal gender balance in their nomination slates with no guarantees of electoral success, unless placement mandates are included. Quotas highlight the key role political parties play in the recruitment of women to parliament. There is significant variation in the success of even these compulsory quotas and research has shown that quotas with sanctions for non-compliance, high thresholds and placement mandates are the most effective. For within country variation scholars suggest that differences in how parties organise their candidate selection may explain the variation. Certainly, the more centralised a party’s selection process is, the more efficiently the party can implement a quota scheme, should they so choose. This study uses data from the Political Party Database (PPDB) project to assess if levels of centralisation in formal candidate selection processes can explain the variation in the success of legislated gender quotas. The analysis finds centralisation has a positive relationship with selection and legislated quotas, however there is no such impact on the election of women. Indeed, quotas themselves have different impact on selection and election being found to be positively associated with higher selection rates, and negatively associated with electoral success rates, of female candidates.