Where Do We Go from Here? Enhancing Women’s Political Representation in the Local Councils of Albania

Women’s participation in democratic governance has become increasingly prominent in African politics for several decades. Since the 1995 United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, the issue of female political participation has garnered momentum, as many states have taken steps to institute mechanisms to address their under-representation, especially in democratic governance. The implementation of these instruments has led to more significant strides in terms of increasing women’s descriptive and substantive political representation in some countries (Bauer, 2012:370), while in others, the gap between women and men in politics has widened. This has highlighted the argument on whether the creation and adoption of these mechanisms are solely for procedural benefits or with an intent to translate to substantive results. However, since liberal democracy stresses equal participation of men and women in the political process to achieve substantive results, safeguarding women’s empowerment and gender equality is paramount.

Western European countries, Canada, and the United States are host to numerous minorities. These groups may identify themselves by their religion, ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation, disabilities, and their immigrant status. Most are socio-economically and politically disadvantaged. As such, minority groups pressure their governments to accommodate their particular needs. Yet the responses of Western democracies to minority demands vary significantly. Some countries, like Britain, take a pluralistic approach and strive to accommodate minority needs. Others, such as France, pursue an assimilationist strategy and do not grant group rights. What is more puzzling is that government responsiveness to minority interests varies significantly even within countries. This presents an intriguing research problem; what explains the variation in government responsiveness to minority demands? In this chapter, we explore this puzzle by analyzing the factors that influence local government responsiveness to Muslim demands in London. Although Muslims in the West is a flourishing research area, there arefew rigorous studies on the political representation of Muslims in Western Europe. Moreover, most studies focus on ethnicity rather than the sociopolitical Muslim identity. Hence, this chapter investigates the dynamics of effective Muslim political representation in a liberal democracy. We define effective political representation as high levels of congruence between policy preferences of voters and elected officials. These research questions are significant for a number of reasons. First, there are an estimated 15-20 million Muslims living in the EU, and close to 3 million of whom reside in Britain (Open Society Institute 2010). Recurring riots, violent backlashes and increasing religious extremism demonstrate that the accommodation of Muslim minorities is a pressing issue for European governments. Dovi (2007: 5) argues that the primary goal of a democracy is resolving conflicts fairly, which ensures its legitimacy and stability in the eyes of its citizens; ‘For if a disgruntled minority or majority holds that democratic institutions are unfair, then such groups are likely to employ undemocratic practices – for example, violence – to settletheir political conflicts’. Hence, the sociopolitical integration of Muslims is of considerable importance for the future of British civic life. Currently, there are ten Muslims in the House of Commons, eight in theHouse of Lords, and three in the European Parliament representing Britain. More strikingly, since 1980, the number of ethnic minority city councillors in Britain increased by more than 700 per cent.1 As of January 2010, we estimated that there are approximately 146 Muslim councillors (thirty-six of whom are women) in London. Yet the number of Muslim councillors and government responsiveness to minority needs vary drastically across local councils. The aim of this chapter is to explore which factors facilitate or hinder effective Muslim political representation in Britain, and how representation styles of Muslim elected officials shape these factors. To this end, we study the political incorporation, party fragmentation, experiences and perceptions of Muslim councillors in London as well as their impact on government responsiveness to minority needs. In particular, we investigate whether the increasing number of Muslim councillors in Britain leads to substantive representation of Muslim interests. We argue that descriptive representation of minorities leads to improved government responsiveness to minority interests contingent on the percentage of minority representatives, the level of their party fragmentation and political incorporation, and the electoral competitiveness of the district. We evaluate the specific process of their interaction through comparativeanalyses of the London Boroughs of Tower Hamlets, Newham, and Hackney, while also investigating the role of representational styles of Muslim councillors on their political effectiveness. The findings suggest that:a Muslim identity has become strong and politicised in Britain and shapes political behaviour.

Sweden is often seen as a role model country in terms of women’s descriptive political representation. Nevertheless, both women and men with a foreign-born background are still underrepresented in the Swedish parliament (Riksdag) and in municipality councils, indicating a democratic deficit. In this literature review, we examine studies which have been published 2000–2025 and focus on foreign-born men and women’s political representation in Sweden. Emphasis is put on both descriptives and underlying causes and correlates. The review, which is based on 20 studies, highlights a variety of themes and factors which are associated with Sweden’s high degree of political representation of female members of parliaments (MPs) in general, inclusive of some studies with an intersectional approach. For instance, discrimination and labor market integration are linked to both malign obstacles and benign possibilities for a more politically equal society. A complementary quantitative analysis suggests that high-income municipalities have a higher percentage of elected foreign-born women than foreign-born men.

ABSTRACTDespite the growing interest on the influence of gender in local government, the relationship between women’s political representation on municipalities, as council member or as female mayors, and transparency is an under-researched topic. This article analyses the political representation of women in Spanish local councils and their influence on the level of transparency. Results show that women’s political representation in municipalities has a positive influence on the level of transparency, increasing information transparency and reducing information asymmetry.

Recent evolutions in Western societies have sparked renewed debate on the state of political representation. This article contributes to the debate by applying a multifaceted typology developed by Andeweg and Thomassen (2005) to study political representation in Belgian local governance. The article empirically outlines the notions of 856 local councillors on political representation at the attitudinal and behavioural level. Furthermore, it searches to explain variation in the latter according to councillors’ political and personal profile, their contact pattern, and the local government context. The article paints a balanced picture. The largest group of councillors prefer an all-round style, paying equal importance to authorization, accountability, delegation and responsiveness as basic styles or modes of political representation. Still we perceive a clear shift from councillors’ attitudes, in which delegation takes the upper hand, to their acclaimed behaviour, which becomes more entrepreneurial as it is often hypothesized. Meanwhile, councillors’ personal profile and contact pattern seem the most important determinants of political representation.

Electoral Systems and Female Representation in Politics: Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity

Gender quotas are a means to improve women’s political representation. This article examines the impact of Jordan’s municipal quota enacted in 2007. The quota drew into the political arena women who would otherwise not have run for office. Women councillors have firmly established their rightful presence on the local councils, a public realm previously deemed only for men. They successfully navigated the give-and-take of local Jordanian politics. In the process they gained a hard-won, invaluable political education and emerged as Jordan’s first sizable body of experienced women politicians on the local level. This article draws on extensive personal interviews with twenty-six female councillors from the first cohort of women elected under the quota. The results show that even a quota enacted in a clientelist system such as Jordan’s can bring positive change for women’s representation in politics.

The global spread of gender quotas has led to a burgeoning literature examining gender differences in the responsiveness of national representatives. In this study, I shifted the attention from national to local representatives, and investigated service responsiveness in the local councils of Albania following the implementation of gender quotas in 2015, a policy change that has led to a substantial number of women newcomers in local councils. Using data from the transcripts of 75 council meetings held during August–December 2016 and 2018 in 11 councils, I show that over time women have shifted their attention from education to social welfare, a change occurring amid the implementation of a new government programme seeking to address the failure of social welfare reform in the country. The study advances our understanding of women's political representation and service responsiveness in an understudied region, demonstrating that women prioritise services that benefit the poor and disadvantaged groups.

Many governments are devolving power to elected local councils, hoping to improve service delivery and citizen representation by bringing officials closer to the people. While these decentralisation reforms hold the promise of improved governance, they also present national and sub-national leaders with a complex array of options about how to structure newly empowered local political institutions. This article draws on cross-national experience and the latest research to identify the trade-offs inherent in structuring local political institutions. The study's specific interest is in the impact of strong, locally elected councils on governance and representation. Proceeding from an empirical basis that competitive elections are vital for the legitimacy and efficiency of local political institutions, the analysis first questions the impact of four institutional features – central versus local control, local executive versus local council authority, local council structure, and the role of parties – on service provision and fiscal solvency. The article's second section analyses the impact of decentralisation on political representation, with a particular focus on the role of institutional design in combating the threat of extremist parties. A final section summarises empirical findings and advances some policy-relevant conclusions.

A growing body of scholarly work underscores that the relationship between women’s political representation and quality of government is stronger in democracies than in authoritarian regimes. The relationship, however, is less clear in regimes that are neither fully-fledged democratic nor authoritarian. I investigate the gender gap in representatives’ efforts to push for improvements in the quality of government in the local councils of Albania following the implementation of gender quotas in 2015. Using the transcripts of council meetings, I identify the kind of practices that councilors challenge when holding local government officials to account, and I compare women with men. The study shows that councilors contest practices that concern law enforcement, impartiality, and transparency. Women, compared to men, are more likely to contest practices that concern transparency. The greatest gender gap is observed in councils where the implementation of gender quotas has disrupted male dominance, numerically speaking, the most.

Political openness and armed conflict: Evidence from local councils in Colombia

The article analyzes the chrono-spatial distribution of some electoral variables – the turnout, the political preferences of the voters and the political representation in the local councils (county and / or communal) – in pre-war Romania (1864-1914). Regarding the voters turnout, there is a downward trend, favored by some legislative measures (declaring the winner of the list submitted by a party, if it is the only one registered). The political preferences of the electorate were directed, predominantly, towards the big pre-war parties – Liberal or Conservative – with a modest presence of other formations, while only representatives of the two mentioned formations entered the local councils. The results of the local elections are very similar to the legislative ones (for the Assembly of Deputies and / or the Senate).

The city of Oslo has established a council of immigrant organisations (CIO). The city has designed CIO to have a double mandate: one from the city of Oslo and one from the immigrant organisations. The question raised in this article is how the city of Oslo’s design of CIO has an impact on its form of representation, its activities and its political position within local government. The article finds that CIO can legitimately claim to be a local council as the local authorities decide its main tasks and appoint the leader. CIO can also claim to be democratically representative as it is elected by the immigrant organisations. This gives CIO a choice of action, which it has used to develop its own activities independently of the city of Oslo and the organisations it represents. CIO’s activities are mainly to change the underlying majority way of thinking in the established state and municipal institutions, with the aim of adapting them to the minorities’ lives and cultures. Moreover, the article finds that the local authorities cannot implement a redesign without approval from CIO members. The authorities may decide to close CIO down by arguing that it does not produce the expected results, but this is problematic as long as CIO also is a descriptive representative council. The article concludes that CIO’s design gives it an ambiguous form of representation and choice of action, and that the political attempts to steer CIO confirms its ambiguous position within the local government.

Mainly investigating the share of women in national parliaments, the vast cross-national literature on women’s descriptive (numerical) representation frequently overlooks women’s local representation. Yet, local councils are important political arenas. To what extent are women underrepresented there? What are the determinants of the variation of women’s local representation within and across countries? We investigate these questions through a subnational-level study, covering 272 regions in 29 European countries. Using multilevel modeling, we find that regions with high female labor force participation support for leftist rather than radical right parties and high degrees of urbanization tend to elect more women. Our results also indicate that high women’s representation levels at the national level trickle down to the local level.

The impact of women above the political glass ceiling: Evidence from a Norwegian executive gender quota reform