Women's Legislative Representation in Authoritarian Regimes

Abstract

Recent research finds that legislatures in authoritarian regimes co-opt potential adversaries (e.g., Gandhi 2008; Gandhi and Przeworski 2007; Malesky and Schuler 2010) or provide regime loyalists with access to better monitor regime elites (e.g., Jensen, Malesky, and Weymouth 2014; Magaloni 2008; Svolik 2012). These two strains of thought suggest that membership in an authoritarian legislature tells us something about the nature of the authoritarian regime. For gender scholars, this is significant, since we there is substantial variation in the percentage of women in authoritarian legislatures. I argue that this variation in women’s legislative representation is the result, in part, of differences in women’s positions within civil society. As the role of women in civil society expands and the openness of civil society in general increases, women’s legislative representation increases. I test this argument with a dataset of 114 authoritarian regimes from 1972-2010. The empirical results support my argument.