Unintended Institutional Interactions: Presidential Coattails and Gender Parity Quotas

Abstract

Democratic institutions provide incentives for voters and candidates. When reformers tinker with multiple institutions, the likely effect of each individual change may be well understood, but their potential interaction may go unanticipated. Prior to elections in 2002, the French legislature adopted a gender parity candidate quota for parties participating in parliamentary elections. In addition, voters ratified a constitutional referendum making the president’s term match that of parliament, and presidential elections were set to be held immediately prior to parliamentary ones. We show that the unanticipated consequence of these separate institutional reforms was to make the fate of female candidates for parliament very much a function of presidential coattails. When the party of the president failed to fulfill the candidate quota, the number of women in parliament showed little change. Conversely, in years when the party of the president took the candidate quota seriously, the number of women in parliament increased.