Legislative Recruitment Research Articles

Women’s Representation in Russia: The Public Sector Bias

ABSTRACT Russia’s authorities allow for gradual increase in women’s legislative representation, but retreat from legislating policies that address women’s concerns. This article relates the discrepancy between two kinds of women’s representation in Russia – substantive and descriptive – to the prevalence of the public sector in legislative recruitment. Using a comprehensive set of data on women’s representation in the regional legislatures of Russia, the study demonstrates that public sector affiliation is the strongest predictor of women’s legislative recruitment by the country’s pro-government party, and that female legislators, in comparison to male legislators, are less likely to pursue long-term political careers.

Reluctant cooptation: The legislative recruitment of the private sector into Russia’s dominant party, 2015–2020

Cooptation is one of the most efficient strategies employed by authoritarian regimes and their leaders in order to survive in power. In most of these regimes, dominant pro-government parties serve as important tools of cooptation in general and of legislative recruitment, as one of its forms, in particular. The main thesis of this study is that cooptation is selective. When contrasted to the social sectors that are directly linked to the state, the private sector will be at a relative disadvantage, resulting in a smaller scope of cooptation. To test this thesis empirically, we build several hypotheses based on our expectations regarding the effects of electoral rules on candidate selection, and then test these hypotheses against the data from 82 regional legislative elections held in Russia in 2015–2020. The analysis confirms our main thesis and clarifies several findings previously reported in the literature on business and politics in Russia.

Gender Is Not a Proxy: Race and Intersectionality in Legislative Recruitment

AbstractElection to office is shaped by a series of decisions made by prospective candidates, parties, and voters. These choices determine who emerges and is ultimately selected to run, and each decision point either expands or limits the possibilities for more diverse representation. Studies of women candidates have established an important theoretical and empirical basis for understanding legislative recruitment. This study asks how these patterns differ when race and intersectionality are integrated into the analyses. Focusing on more than 800 political aspirants in Canada, I show that although white and racialized women aspire to political office at roughly the same rates, their experiences diverge at the point of party selection. White men remain the preferred candidates, and parties’ efforts to diversify politics have mostly benefited white women. I argue that a greater emphasis on the electoral trajectories of racialized women and men is needed.

The Consistency of Political Party in Legislative Recruitment Candidates on Election 2019

The legislative recruitment candidates as the election 2019 are still having problems including the candidates of legislative and former of the legislative convicted felon. This tendency occurs in legislative recruitment candidates by political parties both at central and regional levels, nationwide there are 199 legislative candidates and 49 corrupt legislative candidates. Thus, it is necessary to evaluate and to measure the consistency of Political Parties in the process of recruitment the legislative candidates. This research used the concepts of Election and Democracy theory and Political Recruitment. The type of this research is a single case with a qualitative approach by observation, in-depth interview and documentation. Informant selection using purposive sampling technique as of obtained the informants who are suitable for the research criteria, namely commissioner of KPUD Riau, Bawaslu Riau and Elite Political Parties. Furthermore, data analysis through ethical and emic interpretation afterwards elaborate in a study of electoral and democratic governance as according to the discussion under this study. The result of this research showed that consistency of political parties in legislative recruitment candidates as the election 2019 is not selected yet and half-hearted in spirit establishment for anti-corruption. The bad intuitional of political parties in develop structure and political culture, thus showing that the caderization process is not professional-oriented parties in functional political recruitment.

Islamist Women as Candidates in Elections: A Comparison of the Party of Justice and Development in Morocco and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt

This paper examines the legislative recruitment of women from conservative Islamist parties. It questions the common assumption that generally all Islamist parties are equally hostile to political participation and representation of women. For this purpose, two of the electorally most successful Islamist groups in the MENA region are compared, namely the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and its Moroccan offshoot, the Party of Justice and Development (PJD). The article seeks an explanation for diverging trends in female candidacy between these conservative religious movements, using the traditional supply and demand model of candidate selection. It argues that the less centralized and the more institutionalized parties (as is the case with the PJD) seem to be better equipped to facilitate women’s candidacy than the more oligarchic ones (the MB). In order to fully grasp the reasons behind the diverging trends in the nomination of female candidates from both Islamist parties, cultural factors are scrutinized as well. The article highlights the limits of the supply and demand model of candidate selection, which cannot explain instances of unexpected change in recruitment strategies based on external interference. Furthermore, it does not provide us the means to assess the impact of individual candidates’ ‘feminist credentials’ on overall female representation.

Determinants of legislative turnover in Western Europe, 1945–2015

AbstractThis article explains legislative turnover in eight West European legislatures over 152 general elections in the period 1945–2015. Turnover is measured as the rate of individual membership change in unicameral or lower chambers. It is the outcome of a legislative recruitment process with a supply and a demand side. Decisions made by contenders affect supply, while decisions made by parties and voters influence demand. Such decisions are shaped by four political and institutional factors: the institutional context of political careers, or structure of political career opportunities; political party characteristics; electoral swings; and electoral systems. Ten specific hypotheses are tested within this theoretical framework. The structure of political career opportunities is the most decisive factor explaining variability in turnover rates, followed by electoral swings and political parties. Electoral systems show less substantive effects. Electoral volatility is the predictor with the most substantive effects, followed by duration of legislative term, strength of bicameralism, regional authority, gender quotas, level of legislative income and district magnitude.

The Value of Legislative Versus Electoral Experience and Gender in Explaining Candidate List Placement in Closed-List PR

Candidates’ political qualities and personal characteristics reflect what priorities political parties have when they nominate for viable seats. The limited research on the link between candidate characteristics and ranking on closed lists is an important hiatus in understanding legislative recruitment since in closed list PR nomination to top positions on viable lists virtually guarantees election. We address the issue by analyzing longitudinally the determinants of candidate list placement in Romania, an intriguing case given its low proportion of reelected incumbents and women MPs. Our findings indicate that while male candidates are placed higher up on the lists than women, the positive effect of incumbency is larger for female than male incumbents.

Stuck in the Basement: A Pathway Case Analysis of Female Recruitment in Hungary's 2010 National Assembly Elections

Women's legislative underrepresentation has emerged as perhaps the most stable feature of the postcommunist Hungarian political system, resisting Europeanization, changes in the electoral and party systems, and a new constitution. Early research on the decline in women's access to power in postcommunist transitional democracies focused on common legacies of communist rule, but those legacies cannot account for widening disparities in women's representation across the region over time or the persistent underrepresentation of women in Hungary. Using a pathway case analysis of Hungary's 2010 parliamentary elections, this research examines how cultural, structural, and institutional factors interacted to keep Hungary stuck in the basement with respect to women's legislative recruitment.

Introduction

Twenty years ago, Pippa Norris and Joni Lovenduski published the classic work Political Recruitment: Gender, Race and Class in the British Parliament (1995), one of the most comprehensive accounts of legislative recruitment thus far. Seeking to explain the social bias evident in legislatures worldwide, Norris and Lovenduski focused on the central role of political parties, arguing that the outcome of parties’ selection processes could be understood in terms of the interaction between the supply of candidates wishing to stand for office and the demands of party gatekeepers who select the candidates. Indeed, in most countries, political parties control not only which candidates are recruited and selected, but also are the central actors involved in adopting and implementing candidate selection reforms such as gender quotas. Yet, two decades later, systematic studies of the “secret garden” of candidate selection and recruitment have been few and far between in the gender and politics literature. It therefore seems a particularly appropriate time to revisit the core preoccupations, puzzles, and challenges that remain in the field of gender and political recruitment.

Enlarging the Playing Field: Political Circulation of Brazilian Senators in the First Republic

The article analyzes the career patterns of Brazilian senators during the First Republic. It explores whether there is any relationship between the establishment of a structure of political opportunities and the recruitment patterns of this segment of the parliamentary elite. The aim is to assess the circulation among the political positions attained before reaching the position of Senator. The research consists of the systematic observation of the biographies of the 851 holders of senatorial mandates from the 21st legislature (1890/1891) to the 37th senatorial term (1934/1937). Results suggest that the political careers of senators extended in time and have become more diverse in terms of the political instances they encompassed. The new institutional framework, with more positions facing electoral competition and the strengthening of state-level policy, has intensified political circulation among government levels (municipal, state and federal) and the decision-making arenas (executive and legislative). These results show that the legislative recruitment patterns identified in the literature devoted to the second half of the 20th century were already outlined by the senatorial political elite of the First Republic.

Does it Matter that Most Representatives are Higher Educated?

Does it Matter that Most Representatives are Higher Educated?

Class and Representation in Latin America

Mexico’s 2012 presidential election was fought between two affluent career politicians and a millionaire businesswoman. The 2013 race in Chile pitted an economist against a physician. And the top candidates in last year’s presidential election in Brazil were both millionaire economists. The pattern is clear: Latin American democracies – like democracies all over the world – are disproportionately run by the rich. Although working-class jobs (informal workers, manual labor, and service industry jobs) make up the vast majority of the labor force in every Latin American country, only a tiny percentage of Latin American lawmakers come from those kinds of jobs. Like most places, Latin America is run by white-collar governments. Many journalists, pundits, and political observers take this aspect of the governing environment for granted in Latin America and elsewhere. (In 2013, commentators in Chile buzzed about having two female frontrunners in the presidential race. But they failed to note that both came from affluent backgrounds.) Perhaps they are so accustomed to welloff politicians that they simply see them as a natural feature of the political landscape. Or perhaps they believe that it does not matter whether politicians are drawn from one class or another. In the 1970s, scholars of comparative politics reached exactly that conclusion. After a handful of studies (which, in hindsight, probably had serious methodological problems) found that policymakers from different classes behave about the same in office, the eminent political scientist Robert Putnam concluded that “the assumption of a correlation between attitude and social origin lies behind most studies of the social backgrounds of elites, . . . most of the available evidence tends to disconfirm this assumption” (R. Putnam, unpublished manuscript: 93). A decade later, a sweeping review of the evidence available in the mid-1980s concluded that the existing data were “scattered and inconclusive” and “certainly [did] not add up to a finding that the social . . . [or] economic . . . biases of legislative recruitment result in a . . . policy bias of legislative institutions” (Matthews 1985: 25). In the mid-1990s, another review of the research reached the same conclusion: scholars had “not clearly established that the social background of politicians has a significant influence on their attitudes, values and behavior” (Norris and Lovenduski 1995: 12). Ever since, the idea that a legislator’s class does not matter has been the de facto conventional wisdom in the scholarly community. This conventional wisdom has helped fuel indifference about the overwhelmingly unequal social class makeup of the world’s political institutions. But new evidence suggests that the scholarly consensus may be wrong (Carnes 2013, and his contribution to this Swiss Political Science Review 21(2): 229–236 doi:10.1111/spsr.12162

Parents in Parliament: ‘Where's Mum?’

AbstractThere has been extensive consideration of women's under‐representation in the UK parliament. Here we are interested not only in the question of sex and political representation, but in parenthood too: in short, whether national politics is closed to women, and possibly men, with young children. We start with a review of the academic literature on legislative recruitment to see what it has to say about mothers—almost nothing has been written about fathers. Based on a 2013 survey of UK MPs—men and women—we then identify key features of parents' presence at Westminster. For the first time, we can be sure that mothers are in fact significantly under‐represented in the House of Commons. We then consider whether arguments made to support the descriptive representation of women have purchase for mothers. Finally we consider how political institutions might be reconfigured not to be merely woman or even mother‐friendly, but to be care‐friendly.

Os senadores-empresários: recrutamento, carreira e partidos políticos dos empresários no Senado brasileiro (1986-2010)

O trabalho analisa o recrutamento legislativo dos senadores que foram empresários antes do ingresso para a política durante democracia brasileira atual. O objetivo é examinar se, assim como estabelecido para a Câmara dos Deputados, esse tipo de político profissional se acomoda majoritariamente nos partidos à direita do espectro ideológico e se a soma da sua condição social com os partidos em que militam terminam por produzir rotas mais curtas de carreira política até o Senado. Para tanto, utiliza-se análise descritiva dos dados de ocupação, escolaridade e carreira política dos 240 senadores titulares eleitos entre 1986 e 2010. Os dados mostram que, ainda que posicionados nos partidos de direita e centro, os senadores que foram empresários não desfrutam de carreiras mais curtas, mostrando que o padrão de carreira política para esse cargo é diferente daquele observado para a Câmara baixa.

Gender Equality, Legislative Recruitment Process and Selection of Other Political Executives in Modern’ Politics: Some Lessons from Cameroon

With the return to multi-party politics in the early 1990’s, the issue of the representation of women and their participation in the political process has become increasingly relevant in Cameroon. It has attracted increasing interest from social scientists due to the fact that a key test of modernization is supposed to be the position of women in relation to the rhetoric that constructing an image of strong protective masculinity for political leaders, or holder of important decisions making positions. The pleading for affirmative action mechanisms that can increase representation of women, such as the quotas system, is becoming an integral part of the debate regarding the modernization of the political system built on the principle of gender equality. This paper assesses how closely do political elites mirror the characteristics of the population they represent in connection to the extent political structures are gendered when it comes to the legislative recruitment process or candidates’ selection. The paper argues that the ultimate goal of gender equality is to ensure that democracy and its institutions are truly inclusive, and able to solve today’s problem of women’s political rights through dialogue, consensus, compromise and equal participation. The paper finds that the selection of both women and men as candidate or public office holder is a sine qua non condition for a peaceful and successful democracy. It finally finds that, a shift from the current voluntary quotas system to a compulsory one will reduce obstacles inherent in some customs, traditions and party politics that impede women representation.

Gendered Candidate Selection and the Representation of Women in Northern Ireland

In an attempt to account for the exceptionally low levels of female representation in Northern Ireland, this paper provides an analysis of the contemporary candidate selection procedures of the regions five main political parties. Drawing on evidence gathered from 29 elite interviews, plus official internal party documents, the study finds that the localised nature of the parties selection procedures may disadvantage women aspirants. Also important are 'supply-side' factors influencing legislative recruitment and female participation rates, namely the strongly embedded social norm of female domestic responsibility, a masculinised political culture and the lack of confidence of potential female candidates.

Out of the Hands of the Parties: Women's Legislative Recruitment at Westminster

At the next general election the percentage of women elected to the smaller House of Commons risks being lower than in the current parliament, where they constitute 22 percent of all MPs. The 2008–10 Speaker's Conference identified many of the barriers faced by women and other under‐represented groups and made a series of recommendations, only some of which have been introduced. The Government favours a voluntary approach to Recommendation 24, which calls for diversity data monitoring, whilst Recommendation 25 which calls for serious consideration of legislative quotas in the absence of a significant increase in the numbers of women in 2010, appears forgotten. A second Speaker's Conference should therefore be established; the issue of women's under‐representation should be taken up above the party level—with legislative quotas introduced to address the system level failure of democratic representation at Westminster.

Legislative Recruitment and Models of Party Organisation: Evidence from Australia

This paper considers the relationship between the growing dominance of career politicians in the Australian federal legislature and models of party organisation. Using data on MPs in the Australian federal parliament, this study maps changes in models of party organisation to the occupational profiles of MPs between 1949 and 2007. The findings show a correspondence between the phenomenon of cartelisation and the appearance of legislators whose previous occupation was in the political sphere. The authors suggest that there is a relationship between different modes of party organisation and both the supply of candidates and the demand-side factors influencing party selectors. The paper concludes that theories of recruitment should include a greater emphasis on models of party organisation to explain better the uniformity of recruitment outcomes across advanced democracies.

Legislative recruitment

Many legislative recruitment scholars seek to explain why women, visible minorities and other social groups are underrepresented in the world’s legislatures. Researchers in this area often use a supply and demand metaphor to frame their work, but cannot agree whether underrepresentation is mainly a supply- or demand-side problem. With an eye to moving this debate forward, this article offers a new approach to operationalizing supply and demand and shows how reverse-flow diagnostic testing, supply-first analysis and an improved testing regime can pinpoint when and why underrepresentation begins to occur in any political system. The new diagnostic approach is applied to data from a provincial election in British Columbia, Canada. The article uses the new diagnostic and BC case to demonstrate how underrepresentation in any political system is attributable to demand-side discrimination by gatekeepers and not an undersupply of political aspirants from any particular social group.

Clientelism and Political Recruitment in Democratic Transition: Evidence from Romania

Legislative recruitment patterns can serve as an important source of information on clientelistic practices of political parties. These practices are often a product of parties' deliberate strategies to foster clientelistic type of linkages between politicians and society. The difficulties of conceptualizing and measuring these practices, which frequently have a highly informal character, impede comparative work on the subject. Current studies offer a number of research strategies to overcome these difficulties, but pay little attention to the potential contribution of political recruitment research in addressing these challenges.1 Clientehsm involves contingent direct exchanges between political actors and both vote-rich and resource-rich constituencies. Refining and modifying conceptual tools developed by political recruitment studies can provide important insights into the dynamics of exchange between political parties and resource-rich constituencies that are especially valuable for understanding party development and the dynamics of politi cal representation in transitional societies. This article uses an original dataset on Romanian parliamentary representatives in order to test a number of propositions about the parties' use of parliamentary recruitment for structuring clientelistic exchanges. Scholars of political recruitment have long argued that social background charac teristics are important factors in explaining who gets elected to public office and how elected representatives subsequently behave. Werner Patzelt provides a major overview of this literature and its findings in relation to Western Europe.2 Parliamentary recruit ment has also been one aspect of a more general research agenda on political elites in post-communist Europe.3 The amount of attention paid to social background characteristics either as depen dent or independent variables in cross-country comparative research, however, has not been very significant. This can be explained partly by the prevalence of similar demo graphic, educational, and professional background characteristics of representatives in Western European democracies, the study of which tends to dominate political recruit ment literature.4 Recent work on political recruitment in Latin America also under explores the variation in social background characteristics.5 Convergence in terms of political representatives' social background across different national contexts and its