Party System Nationalization and Women's Legislative Representation

Abstract

Many scholars have sought to explain the wide variation in women's legislative representation found across the globe. In this article, we open a new line of inquiry that seeks to determine whether differences in the nationalization of the party system help explain the variation in women's representation. In more nationalized party systems, there is little variation in the patterns of party votes across the countries. In more regionalized systems, patterns of party vote vary widely among regions. The existing literature on party system nationalization argues that more nationalized systems focus policy debates and policy outcomes at the national level. We argue that the incentive to focus on national as opposed to regional outcomes can overcome obstacles to women's representation similar to the way in which electoral system incentives create more opportunities for women. Using a data set of 45 democratic countries, we test this argument. We find no direct impact of party system nationalization on women's legislative representation. Yet, we find an interactive effect of party system nationalization and the electoral system. Increases in party system nationalization improve women's representation in concert with electoral system incentives that spur women's representation.