Bringing Diversity to Parliament? How gender and party-level quotas impact the content of parliamentary speech
Speakers: (opens in a new window)Zachary Greene (University of Strathclyde)
(opens in a new window)Maarja Lühiste (Newcastle University)
(opens in a new window)Christine Sylvester (University of Strathclyde)
Wednesday, March 27, 14:00–14:45 (Irish time)
Please register (opens in a new window)here to receive the link and password to the online meeting and information on the room at UCD.
Abstract: Diversity increases the breadth of topics and positions debated in parliaments. Yet, institutionalist perspectives contend that parliamentary rules allow leaders to reign in diverging MPs. Candidate selection procedures enable leaders to limit the pool of candidates to hand-selected MPs. Consequently, we argue that party-level quotas for historically under-represented groups reduce the impact of MP diversity leading to less distinctive expressed priorities. We hypothesize that women are more likely to speak on compassion-based issues and hold distinctive positions from the party leader, but that the existence of gender quotas moderates this force. Quotas – a potential mechanism for increasing leaders’ candidate selection influence – moderate MPs’ expressed issue priorities and positions relative to the leader, reducing variation. We assess these expectations using MP-level data on the content of parliamentary speeches from 28 European parliaments (ParlEE). We expect women to speak more about issues such as health care, human rights, and the environment and to express more distinctive positions relative to the leader, but the presence of quotas mitigates differences. The theory and analysis provide compelling evidence for the impact of candidate selection rules on leaders’ influence and contribute more broadly to understanding the link between individuals’ backgrounds, institutional constraints, and the representation process.
About the speakers: (opens in a new window)Zachary Greene is a Reader (Associate Professor) at the Department of Government and Public Policy at the University of Strathclyde. Previously, he was a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the SFB 884 Collaborative Research Center on the "Political Economy of Reforms" at the University of Mannheim (Mannheim, Germany). His research and teaching interests include comparative politics, intra-party politics, parties and elections, legislative behavior, public policy, computational text analysis, and European Politics.
(opens in a new window)Maarja Lühiste is a Reader in Comparative Politics & Gender at Newcastle University, current Co-Head of Politics, and Editor of Representation - Journal of Representative Democracy - Journal of Representative Democracy. Her main research fields include gender and political communication, comparative politics and elections, and survey research. Particularly, she studies how different institutions - such as political parties, media (both traditional and new media), and electoral rules - either facilitate or hinder women’s representation across contexts and how citizens respond to that.
(opens in a new window)Christine Sylvester is a Chancellor's Fellow (Assistant Professor) in the Department of Government and Public Policy at the University of Strathclyde. She is one of the creators behind the ParlEE data set of parliamentary speeches. Previously, she was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Strathclyde with a multi-university team on the NORFACE Governance funded EU-in-Action project. Her research interests include comparative politics, intra-party agenda setting, policy formation, and party leader survival.