Quota Reforms Research Articles

The Ideological Work of Philanthropic Myths: A Study of Post-pandemic Disbursement Quota Reforms in Canada

The Ideological Work of Philanthropic Myths: A Study of Post-pandemic Disbursement Quota Reforms in Canada

Conceptualizing student movements in Bangladesh post-2013: a qualitative and comparative case study of the Quota Reform Movement and the Road Safety Movement

ABSTRACT Despite the presence of mass grievances and moral indignation against the political elite and the monied class, the social movements in Bangladesh in the last decade, albeit very few, have failed to transform the increasingly authoritarian and claustrophobic political milieu. In fact, the nation has not seen that many movements, notwithstanding serious mass grievances on social, political, and economic issues. This situation poses a paradox. I study two significant social movements’ cases, the 2018 Quota Reform Movement and the 2018 Road Safety Protests, and briefly compare the genealogy of the movements, as well as their success and failure. The study draws primarily on secondary data derived from existing research on the issue and a systematic review of major newspapers in Bangladesh over the relevant period of time for its analysis and supplements it with participant observations and informal interviews. I conceptualize these movements by using a theoretical framework derived from Political Process Theory (PPT). I argue that, although both movements were partially successful, the Quota Reform movement was relatively more successful than the Road Safety Movement. In this paper, I try to address the reasons behind the relative success of one movement over another. By comparing the two movements in tandem, I argue that significant differences in ‘mobilizing structure’ make the difference in the degree of success, given that the ‘framing’ and the ‘political opportunity structures’ were more or less similar for both movements.

Alcohol-related morbidity and mortality by fathers' parental leave: A quasi-experimental study in Sweden.

Fathers' parental leave has been associated with decreased risks of alcohol-related hospitalizations and mortality. Whether this is attributable to the health protections of parental leave itself (through stress reduction or behavioral changes) or to selection into leave uptake remains unclear, given that fathers are more likely to use leave if they are in better health. Using the quasi-experimental variation of a reform incentivizing fathers' leave uptake (the 1995 Father's quota reform), this study aimed to assess whether fathers' parental leave influences alcohol-related morbidity and mortality. Quasi-experimental interrupted time series and instrumental variable analyses. Sweden. Fathers of singleton children born from January 1992 to December 1997 (n = 220412). Exposure was indicated by the child's birthdate before or after the reform and used to instrument fathers' 2- and 8-year parental leave uptake. Outcomes included fathers' hospitalization rates for acute alcohol-related (intoxication; mental and behavioral disorders) and chronic alcohol-related diagnoses (cardiovascular, stomach and other diseases; liver diseases), as well as alcohol-related mortality, up to 2, 8 and 18 years after the first child's birthdate. In interrupted time series analyses, fathers of children born after the reform exhibited immediate decreases in alcohol-related hospitalization rates up to 2 (incidence rate ratio [IRR] = 0.66, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.51-0.87), 8 (IRR = 0.74, 95% CI = 0.57-0.96) and 18 years after birth (IRR = 0.72, 95% CI = 0.54-0.96), particularly in acute alcohol-related hospitalization rates, compared with those with children born before. No changes were found for alcohol-related mortality. Instrumental variable results suggest that alcohol-related hospitalization decreases were driven by fathers' parental leave uptake (e.g. 2-year hospitalizations: IRR = 0.16, 95% CI = 0.03-0.84). In Sweden, a father's parental leave eligibility and uptake may protect against alcohol-related morbidity.

From 30 percent to gender parity in everything: the steady route to raising women’s political representation in Mexico

ABSTRACT This article assesses 30 years of gender quota adoption and reform in Latin America through the lens of earlier theorizing about the incremental and fast tracks. Focusing on women political actors’ ongoing efforts to transform weak quota laws into comprehensive parity requirements, we argue that most fast-track countries follow a steady route. This route builds on Drude Dahlerup and Lenita Freidenvall’s landmark conceptualization of the fast track, introducing countries’ reliance on iterative quota reforms and demonstrating how innovation in quota design continuously raises the bar for what constitutes a “good” quota or parity law. We demonstrate this route using a case study from Mexico, focusing on the 2014 adoption of gender parity for the federal and state legislatures and the 2019 adoption of “parity in everything,” meaning parity for the executive, legislative, and judicial branches.

The Effectiveness of Gender Diversity Reforms and the Impact of a Familial Culture: A Spillover Effect on Board Independence

AbstractThis study examines the impact of board gender diversity reforms (i.e. voluntary and regulatory) on both their effectiveness in increasing independent female directors on boards and board independence in a sample of 41 countries (10,313 unique firms and 82,613 firm‐year observations). In an initial analysis, we find that voluntary self‐regulation via a comply‐or‐explain reform decreases the number of independent female directors on boards and board independence. However, after incorporating the moderating effect of national culture, we find that such comply‐or‐explain reforms are ineffective only in countries where the inclusion/role of women in labour markets is limited (i.e. familial culture). By contrast, quota reforms boost the appointment of independent female directors and board independence despite the cultural setting, signifying positive actions towards good corporate governance practices.

Gender diversity, Labour in the Boardroom, and Gender Quotas

This study investigates the novel question of whether employee representation on boards of directors has a positive effect on gender diversity on boards, and possible interaction effects with gender quotas. We exploit rich, newly assembled board–director matched panel data for Norway and Germany, which contain unique information on whether a director represents shareholders or employees during the period around 2008, when a Norwegian board gender quota came into effect. We present two novel results. First, we find a positive impact of employee representation before the gender quota reform on gender diversity in both Norway and Germany (2002–2009). Second, although overall the Norwegian gender quota has increased the probability of a director being female, the effect through employee representation has decreased since the announcement and implementation of the gender quota reform. We discuss potential mechanisms and implications for the design of gender quotas.

India's engagement with the International Monetary Fund: growing into an ownership role

ABSTRACT How do rising powers engage with international institutions? While this question has remained important, we have very few theoretically grounded, empirical studies that look at this engagement. This paper seeks to address that gap by focusing on India's engagement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It argues that rising powers engage with the institution's distinctive design, seeking to change features such as the rules for controlling the institution. The issues the institution covers matter: the nature of the issue area can facilitate engagement. For example, in the case of India's engagement with the IMF, the technical nature of the issue arena provided autonomy to the executive and facilitated the process of formulating and implementing its strategy. The Indian executive has engaged mostly with formal rules during the period under review. Contrary to expectations that status-quoist institutions will normally discourage states from seeking change, the paper finds that India expended its resources to influence quota reform.

Of Judge Quota and Judicial Autonomy: An Enduring Professionalization Project in China

AbstractThis article presents the findings of original research on “judge quota” reform. The reform's agenda was essentially aimed at professionalization: by edging out a given percentage of judges, only the better qualified judges would be re-appointed to create a more professionalized judiciary. A key component of the reform was to reduce the level and the intensity of both political and bureaucratic control over judges in adjudication and to decentralize judicial power to the rank-and-file judges, restoring individualized judging while enhancing judicial accountability. This article critically examines the potential and limits of the judge quota reform in the context of incremental legal reform in a party-state.

Effects of extended paternity leave on family dynamics

AbstractObjectiveTest if an extended paternity quota impacts couples' division of leave and paid work, and if these changes influence union stability, marriage propensity, and further childbearing.BackgroundInfluential empirical and theoretical works have linked unequal division of household and paid work to increasing divorce rates and falling fertility. This suggests that paternity quota reforms may affect family dynamics if they facilitate more time alone for a father and his young child.MethodsWe analyze an extension of the Norwegian parental leave father's quota from 6 to 10 weeks with a regression discontinuity design. Full population data of parents of children born in a 4‐month window around the reform are drawn from Norwegian administrative registers (N = 9757).ResultsThe reform significantly increased the amount of leave taken by fathers and reduced the amount of leave taken by mothers, while his and her subsequent earnings were unmoved. Neither union stability, fertility nor cohabiters' propensity to marry were affected by the change in leave uptake.ConclusionThe reform succeeded in changing the division of paid parental leave between parents. However, these changes did not translate into changes in earnings, family stability, or parity progression. This suggests that policies that induce fathers to spend more time with their young child do not move the “stalled” gender revolution along.

Women at work: Gender quotas, municipal elections and local spending

Gender quotas should foster women's presence in politics, which in turn may affect local policymaking. This paper investigates this mechanism, considering indicators of municipality spending in Italy as relevant policy outcomes. For identification, we rely on the time and geographic variation in the introduction of a gender quota reform by Law 215/2012. The reform affected gender composition of candidates in Italian municipal council elections, resulting in an increase of the share of female councilors of about 13.9 percentage points. Using the reform as an instrument, we estimate that a one percentage point increase in female participation in councils rises expenditure for local security by about 1% and reduces administration costs by a comparable amount, whereas evidence on the impact on other local expenditure items is mixed and not significant. Estimated effects are associated with compositional changes in terms of employment status of female councilors and are robust to endogeneity issues, to relevant sample selections and to the implications of confounding policies.

Female board directorship and earnings management

Purpose This paper aims to examine the impact of female board directorship on the extent of earnings management. Design/methodology/approach The research hypotheses have been tested using both univariate and multivariate analyzes based on a sample of 198 firm-year observations from closely-held family firms listed on the SBF 120 over the period 2010–2018. Findings The empirical results first indicate that female board participation reduces the level of earnings management. When looking at women positions in the companies’ boardrooms, the authors reveal that the negative linkage between female board directorship and earnings management remains constant for independent female directors while the opposite holds for their family-affiliated counterparts. Further, the gender quota reform is shown to mitigate the adverse relationship between gender-diverse corporate boards and the extent of earnings management. These results seem sound, as they hold unchanged for the several measures of, both, boardroom gender diversity and earnings management used in the empirical study. In a supplementary analysis, the authors provide evidence that the association between the presence of women directors on the companies’ boards and earnings management depends, in a different way, on the size of the audit firm in a joint auditing context. Originality/value The country and the period considered in this paper are noteworthy characteristics that enhance the value of this research. The present study is relevant because it examines the relationship between female boardroom participation and earnings management using a homogeneous sample of family-owned and -managed companies within which shareholders and board members share identical motives for manipulating earnings in one of the leading countries in the world with regard to family ownership dominance (i.e. France). Moreover, this paper is considered to be very timely, as it explores, contrarily to previous related studies, the years following the implementation of a mandatory gender quota reform in one of the less available countries, to date, that have amended a gender quota law. To the knowledge, besides France, there are a few markets (Norway, Belgium, Finland and Iceland) that have implemented such legislation.

Safety First: Expanding the Global Financial Safety Net in Response to COVID‐19

AbstractWe call for strengthening the Global Financial Safety Net (GFSN) to manage the economic effects of COVID‐19, in particular the massive capital outflows from emerging market and developing economies EMDEs and the global shortage of dollar liquidity. Both the United Nations (UN) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimate that EMDEs need an immediate $2.5 trillion, yet the financing available to them is just $700 to $971 billion. To meet these immediate needs we propose to: (1) broaden the coverage of the Federal Reserve currency swaps; (2) issue at least $500 billion of special drawing rights through the IMF; (3) improve the IMF’s precautionary and emergency facilities; (4) establish a multilateral swap facility at the IMF; (5) increase the resources and geographic coverage of regional financial arrangements; (6) coordinate capital flow management measures; (7) initiate debt restructuring and relief initiatives; and (8) request that credit‐rating agencies stop making downgrades during the emergency. It argues that leaders should swiftly move to address these structural gaps in the GFSN: (1) agree on a quota reform at the IMF; (2) create an appropriate sovereign debt restructuring regime; (3) expand surveillance activity; and (4) adopt IMF governance reform and strengthen its relations with all agents of the GFSN. All of these reforms must be calibrated toward a just transition to a more stable, inclusive, and sustainable global economy.

Role of Facebook in Quota Reform Movement

Technology and society have become intertwined in this age of the 4th industrial revolution. Bangladesh is flourishing at a tremendous speed with keeping pace with the present technology-driven world system. As mass consumption of technology taking place, every aspect of life is continually also being shaped through it. The way of public protest has also been changed after the net sphere has become so much dynamic. This study, based on the methodology of the survey and an in-depth interview, has tried to dig out the interrelation between the formation and development of the Quota Reform Movement and the usage of Facebook. This study has found that Facebook has worked as a catalyst in both organizing and accelerating the Quota Reform Movement of Bangladesh.

Perceived value of social media in students’ participation in social movement

Purpose The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate the use of social media (SM) and its influence for increasing students’ participation in the quota reform movement at the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Design/methodology/approach The revised technology acceptance model (TAM) was used to formulate this research’s hypotheses. A survey was administered to obtain data about students’ intention to use SM. The survey consisted of a set of questions based upon the revised TAM model. A total of 498 surveys were distributed and 304 students responded to it; hence, response rate was of 61.04%. A regression and single way ANOVA were conducted to test the hypotheses. Findings The results indicate that most of the students use SM for academic purposes and to get connected with friends. Among the social networking tools, Facebook is the most widely used by the respondents. Findings supported that perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness of SM affect student’s intention to increase participation in the quota reform movement. There were no significant relationships between gender and politics with the use of SM. Research limitations/implications A sample of students from Dhaka University was taken and the sample size was small. As a result, the findings of this study cannot be generalized in other settings. SM has a positive effect in the societies where change happens through collective actions. Originality/value Why and how students use SM has been widely discussed over the available literature, but students’ intention to use for it for social movements has not been studied. This study has made an effort to empirically examine the use of SM in the context of the quota reform movement in Bangladesh.

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

Women have historically been underrepresented in democratic assemblies, particularly in top positions with executive powers. Most gender quota reforms address this by mandating a more equal gender representation on election lists. In contrast, a 1992 legislative reform in Norway required parties' candidate lists for the local executive board to comprise at least 40% politicians of each gender. This legal change was not only exogenously imposed by a higher-level government, but also generated distinct quota-induced constraints across Norwegian municipalities. We exploit the resulting variation in ‘quota shocks’ using a difference-in-differences design to identify the quota's effect on women's political representation as well as local public policies. We find that more women enter the executive board after the reform, though spill-overs on women's representation in the local council and on the probability of a female mayor or top administrator are weak. We also find no consistent evidence for shifts in public policies due to increased representation of women in positions with executive powers.

Political Opportunities and China’s Proposing Behavior in the G20

In global economic governance, political consensus reached by the G20 members plays an important role of defining governance ideas and governance directions as well as steering and boosting collective actions. Political opportunities are essential for the G20 members’ successful efforts to place their preferences into the political consensus of G20. This paper analyzes how the G20 members place their preferences into the political consensus of G20 through the lens of political opportunity, and provides a relatively detailed demonstration on China’s practice of proposing policy initiatives and placing its preferences into the political consensus of G20 by examining the cases of International Monetary Fund (IMF) quota reform and international financial regulation reform.

Why Are Gender Quota Laws Adopted by Men? The Role of Inter- and Intraparty Competition

In nearly every case of quota law adoption, the support of party elites is critical. But this raises a puzzle: What can motivate predominantly male elites to put these policies in place? This article uses a comparison of two sets of matched pair countries—similar on background characteristics except for quota adoption—to explore the motivations and role of male party elites in quota reform. The cases of Belgium and Austria, and Portugal and Italy highlight two key explanations. First, quota laws are likely to be supported and passed by parties threatened by a new, more progressive competitor on the left, as a way of claiming women voters back from the encroaching party (interparty competition). Second, quotas can be employed as a mechanism for party elites to gain power over candidate selection within their own parties in the face of entrenched local party monopolies (intraparty competition).

Developing Economies and Global Governance: Will IMF Rethink Its Orthodox View?

It has been constantly viewed that the developed economies unevenly ruled the governance structures in the international organizations such as International Monetary Fund (MF). The continuous development in Emerging and Developing Economies (EDEs) over the last 20 years witnessed their growing importance in the world economy, but at the same time little increase in their voice in the IMF. There are reasons for the discontent of the EDEs in the present structure such as the increase of regional monetary arrangements, uneven distribution of quota shares, IMF quota reforms, and IMF voting structure. The world economy is witnessing a tremendous growth of these EDEs and is now at the verge where Asian economies are capable of leading, rather than the North Atlantic economies. This issue should be acknowledged properly and must be responded adequately. This paper makes an attempt to understand the prime issues that should be fixed in the current quotas system and voting structure in the IMF.

Expanding Global Liquidity Insurance: Myths and Realities of the IMF's Precautionary Credit Lines

Despite increasing volatility in the global economy, the uptake of the IMF’s two precautionary credit lines, the Flexible Credit Line (FCL) and the Precautionary and Liquidity Line (PLL), has remained limited — currently to just four countries. The two new lending instruments were created in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008 to enable IMF member states to respond quickly and effectively to temporary balance of payment needs resulting from external shocks. Both credit lines offer immediate access to considerable sums — over 10 times a country’s IMF quota in some cases with no (FCL) or very limited (PLL) conditionality. This paper addresses four misconceptions (or ‘myths’) that have likely played a role in the limited utilization of the two precautionary credit lines: 1) too stringent qualification criteria that limit country eligibility; 2) insufficient IMF resources; 3) high costs of precautionary borrowing; and 4) the economic stigma associated with IMF assistance. We show, in fact, that the pool of eligible member states is likely to be seven to eight times larger than the number of current users; that with the 2016 quota reform IMF resources are more than adequate to support a larger precautionary portfolio; that the two IMF credit lines are among the least costly and most advantageous instruments for liquidity support countries have; and that there is no evidence of negative market developments for countries now participating in the precautionary lines.

Gender Equality Reforms on an Uneven Playing Field: Candidate Selection and Quota Implementation in Electoral Authoritarian Tanzania

This article investigates the dynamics that gender quota reforms create within and between government and opposition parties in electoral authoritarian dominant-party states. A dominant-party state regularly holds relatively competitive elections, but the political playing field is skewed in favour of the government party. We investigate the circumstances under which gender quotas’ goal of furthering political gender equality within political parties can be reconciled with parties’ electoral concerns. We address these issues by analysing the implementation of reserved seats by the three largest parties in the dominant-party state of Tanzania. The empirical analysis suggests that the uneven playing field leaves an imprint on the specific priorities parties make when implementing candidate selection reforms. Because of large resource gaps between parties, the ruling party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi – (CCM), is able to reconcile gender equality concerns with power-maximizing partisan strategies to a greater extent than the opposition parties.