Gender and Political Recruitment

Theorizing Institutional change

Meryl Kenny

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137271945
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book explores the gendered dynamics of institutional innovation, continuity and change in candidate selection and recruitment. Drawing on the insights of feminist institutionalism, it extends the 'supply and demand model' of political recruitment via a micro-level case study of the candidate selection process in post-devolution Scotland.

1

Introduction

There are few political phenomena as universal as the political under-representation of women. While women are more than half of the world’s population, only 20.2 per cent of parliamentarians worldwide are female (Inter-Parliamentary Union, 2012). In recent years, parties and parliaments have responded to growing national and international pressure to increase women’s political presence by introducing reform measures, such as gender quotas, aimed at increasing the selection and election of female candidates. These measures have been adopted by more than one hundred countries around the world, most within the last two decades.

The emergence of women’s representation as an important political issue is matched by a large and wide-ranging body of work in feminist political science that has sought to understand why women are under-represented in political office and how numerical increases in women’s political presence might be achieved. Central to these analyses is the question of which factors shape access to political office. Much of the early work in this area focused on the political, socioeconomic and cultural variables that explain cross-national variations in women’s numerical, or descriptive, representation. For example, comparative research in this field initially focused on the important role of electoral systems in shaping patterns of women’s descriptive representation in national parliaments. In general, these studies confirm that the percentage of women tends to be higher in countries with proportional representation (PR) systems than those with single-member district plurality systems (see for example Norris, 1985; Rule, 1987; Paxton, 1997; McAllister and Studlar, 2002). Yet, by focusing on static national-level variables, these works have also missed important trends over time (Kittilson, 2006; Hughes and Paxton, 2008). While the electoral systems of most countries have remained constant, the percentage of women in national office has risen overall (Kittilson, 2006). In some instances of electoral reform, levels of women’s descriptive representation have remained relatively stable, while in other cases they have dramatically increased without any electoral reform (Krook, 2010a). Moreover, while most countries with high levels of women’s descriptive representation have PR systems, not all countries with PR have high levels of women in political office (McAllister and Studlar, 2002). Thus, although there has been a strong and consistent association between PR electoral systems and higher levels of women’s descriptive representation, evidence suggests that a more proportional electoral system is not a sufficient condition in itself to ensure or explain increases in women’s political presence.

Cross-national studies of women’s descriptive representation also sometimes miss significant variations between political parties, overlooking the fact that individual parties differ in the number of female candidates they nominate and the proportion of women they send to parliament (Caul, 1999). In most countries, parties are the key gatekeepers to political office (Norris and Lovenduski, 1995). They control which candidates are recruited and selected for political office and are, therefore, the main vehicles for delivering women’s numerical presence in parliaments and governments. They are also the central actors involved in adopting candidate selection reforms, such as gender quotas, and provide the main route through which these measures are implemented (Kittilson, 2006; Threlfall, 2007; Murray, 2010; Kenny and Verge, 2013). Thus, in order to explain women’s descriptive under-representation, we need to understand how parties encourage or inhibit women’s access to political office. Research in feminist political science has increasingly focused on the important role of political parties in shaping representative outcomes, highlighting candidate recruitment and selection as a crucial intermediary stage for prospective female candidates that is in need of further investigation by gender politics scholars (see for example Lovenduski and Norris, 1993; Norris and Lovenduski, 1995; Kittilson, 2006; Murray, 2010; Bjarnegård, 2013).

This book sets out to contribute to this under-researched area, bringing together the wider literatures on gender and political institutions and new institutional theory to explore and understand the gendered dynamics of institutional innovation, change and continuity in the political recruitment process. In doing so, it builds upon and develops the dominant framework used in studies of gender and political recruitment, the supply and demand model (Norris and Lovenduski, 1995; see also Norris, 1993a; Norris and Lovenduski, 1993). Drawing on recent work in the field, it outlines a theoretical critique of the supply and demand model and contends that a feminist institutionalist approach – that is, an approach that synthesizes elements of new institutional theory and institutionally focused feminist political science – offers a way to take the model forward, drawing on theoretical interconnections already present but not always explicit in the literature.

This book evaluates the theoretical utility of this argument through an empirical case study of candidate selection in post-devolution Scotland. Devolution in Scotland brought with it new and unprecedented opportunities for gendered institutional innovation in the candidate selection process. The intervention of women activists in wider processes of institutional and constitutional restructuring resulted in considerable achievements, with high numbers of women elected to the first Scottish Parliament in 1999. Post-1999, however, there has been a general trend of either stasis or decline in the recruitment and election of female candidates in the main Scottish political parties. Overall, indications are that progress on women’s descriptive representation remains fragile and contingent, and that gains have been achieved largely by accident rather than by design (see Mackay, 2003; Mackay and Kenny, 2007; Kenny and Mackay, 2011). This makes Scotland a ripe case for exploring the gendered dynamics of institutional innovation and change – as well as continuity and resistance – in the political recruitment process. The following sections explore the rationale and argument of the book in greater detail and conclude with an overview of the structure of the book.

Why political recruitment?

While the importance of the political recruitment process is widely recognized in the gender and politics literature, there have been surprisingly few studies that directly examine the role of political parties in shaping women’s descriptive representation (Baer, 1993; see also Murray, 2010; Bjarnegård, 2013). Meanwhile, although the study of political parties is a central focus in political science more broadly, the majority of these mainstream studies are notably silent on issues of women and gender, an omission that is particularly surprising given wider global developments including the feminization of party politics and the rise of gender quotas.

As Rainbow Murray notes, the majority of work in the field of women and politics continues to focus on ‘whether women should be present in politics, the extent to which they are present, institutional and sociological variables that influence the likelihood of their being present, and what they do once they succeed in getting elected’ (2010, p. 5; original emphasis). Many of these studies focus on whether women politicians ‘make a difference’ once they are actually in office, asking whether increases in women’s political presence (descriptive representation) result in increases in attention to women’s policy concerns (substantive representation) (see for example Dahlerup, 1988; Childs, 2004; Lovenduski, 2005; Celis and Childs, 2008; Franceschet and Piscopo, 2008). This work is supplemented by a rapidly growing body of research on the origins and impact of gender quotas, as the most visible and direct mechanisms used to increase women’s political presence (see for example Dahlerup, 2006; Krook, 2009; Franceschet et al., 2012). However, as several scholars have noted, the relationship between political parties and gender quotas has not been extensively theorized and the intra-party mechanisms that explain how quotas are effectively adopted and implemented in practice remain largely unexplored in the field (Davidson-Schmich, 2006; Threlfall, 2007; Murray, 2010; Kenny and Verge, 2013). This is not to imply that research in these areas has not raised important questions or yielded significant insights, both theoretical and empirical, but rather to argue that ‘the mechanisms of the political party still too rarely fall within the scope of gendered political science’ (Bjarnegård, 2013, p. 6).

In focusing on the political recruitment process, this book contributes to a small but growing body of work on gender, political parties and candidate selection (see for example Lovenduski and Norris, 1993; Norris and Lovenduski, 1995; Kittilson, 2006; Opello, 2006; Murray, 2010; Bjarnegård, 2013). These studies demonstrate that political parties play a key role in the selection and election of female politicians and also provide considerable evidence that aspiring women candidates face significant obstacles in the recruitment process. In this body of work, the dominant framework for understanding the dynamics of the recruitment process has been the supply and demand model developed by Pippa Norris and Joni Lovenduski in their groundbreaking (1995) study Political Recruitment: Gender, Race and Class in the British Parliament (see also Norris, 1993a; Norris and Lovenduski, 1993). In this model, the outcome of particular parties’ selection processes can be understood in terms of the interaction between the supply of candidates wishing to stand for political office and the demands of party gatekeepers who select the candidates. In attempting to systematically theorize the political recruitment process, Norris and Lovenduski emphasize that political parties do not operate within a vacuum; rather, supply and demand plays out within a wider framework of party recruitment processes, which are shaped and structured by the broader political system (see also Norris, 1997).

This book revisits this pioneering work in light of the recent institutional ‘turn’ in feminist and mainstream political science, and makes the case for building on Norris and Lovenduski’s gender-sensitive and institutionally focused approach to the study of political recruitment. However, in critically evaluating this work, it also points to two key limitations in the original framework as well as subsequent applications of the model. It argues, first, that the supply and demand model underestimates the extent to which gender norms shape and distort the dynamics of supply and demand and, second, that applications of the framework frequently oversimplify the institutional complexities of the model. The book contends that the combined insights of feminist and new institutional theory offer a promising way to take this work forward, explicitly building on gendered and institutional trends already present implicitly in the literature. Drawing on Mona Lena Krook’s (2009, 2010b, 2010c) subsequent reformulation of the model, it argues that a feminist institutionalist approach would, first, ensure that gender is integrated more fully into the institutions of political recruitment, both formal and informal; second, highlight the importance of institutional interconnections as well as the ways in which these shift over time; and, third, establish the significance of incremental processes and endogenous pressures for change within the political recruitment process.

In developing and applying a feminist and institutionalist framework, this book also contributes to research on gender and political institutions more broadly and informs the wider literature on both new institutional theory and institutionally focused feminist political science. In particular, this book takes forward the emerging body of work on ‘feminist institutionalism’, a new variant of institutional analysis that seeks to address real-world puzzles about the dynamics of stability and change and gendered inequalities in public and political life (see Mackay et al., 2010; Krook and Mackay, 2011). While much feminist institutionalist scholarship has focused on evaluating the potential for dialogue between feminist political science and new institutional theory (see for example Mackay and Meier, 2003; Kenny, 2007; Mackay and Waylen, 2009), this book represents one of the first systematic applications of a feminist institutionalist approach. The theoretical and empirical insights of this book will, therefore, enhance analyses of the ‘big questions’ in gender and politics scholarship – as well as political science more broadly – including how institutions produce and reproduce unequal power distributions and how and why institutional change occurs, as well as understanding the relationship between different actors and their institutional context.

Why Scotland?

While much feminist institutionalist scholarship has focused largely on the international or national level (see for example Chappell, 2002, 2011; Krook, 2009; Waylen, 2007, 2011), this book adds the important regional dimension, offering insights into the ways in which multi-level contexts and ‘new’ institutions provide both opportunities and constraints for gendered institutional innovation. Devolution in Scotland opened up unprecedented opportunities for innovation and change in the political recruitment process. The intersection of multiple paths of reform in the 1980s and 1990s opened up new institutional, political and discursive spaces for women activists to play a significant role in gendering mainstream debates and shaping broader processes of institutional and constitutional restructuring. In particular, women were able to introduce a gendered perspective to wider aspirations for a ‘new’ Scottish politics, a more inclusive politics that would be distinct from that of Westminster. In the run-up to the first elections to the Scottish Parliament, a broad coalition of women activists put internal and external pressure on Scottish political parties to ensure gender balance in representation, pushing for far-reaching reforms in established selection procedures. Of the 129 Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) elected to the parliament for the first time in 1999, 48 were women (37.2 per cent) – a ‘gender coup’ that was all the more dramatic given the historically poor record of both Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom on women’s descriptive representation. The subsequent 2003 elections resulted in a modest increase of the proportion of women MSPs, rising to 51 out of 129 MSPs (39.5 per cent).

Yet, evidence from post-devolution Scotland also illustrates the general and gendered difficulties of embedding institutional innovation. Both academic and media commentators increasingly view the ‘new’ Scottish politics as a spent force, highlighting the extent to which post-devolution political practices resemble those of Westminster and critiquing the unrealistic hopes and expectations of devolution campaigners (see for example Mitchell, 2000; Parry and Jones, 2000; Bradbury and Mitchell, 2001; Cairney, 2011). While empirical studies of women and the Scottish Parliament suggest that there has been some success in ‘feminizing’ Scottish politics post-devolution – for example, highlighting the substantive impact of women’s increased political presence and voice on the political agenda – they also find that many key elements of the Westminster model have survived or been reinstated (see for example Mackay et al., 2003; Mackay, 2006, 2009). Meanwhile, the third elections to the Scottish Parliament in 2007 resulted in a significant decrease in the number of women MSPs elected, the first drop since the establishment of the parliament in 1999. While the recent 2011 Scottish Parliament elections represent a small improvement on the 2007 results, these outcomes are set within an overall pattern of decline in the recruitment and election of female candidates over time, which raises questions as to the success and sustainability of gender equality reforms in the candidate selection process post-devolution (Mackay and Kenny, 2007, 2010; Kenny and Mackay, 2011).

This book sets out to explore these contradictory dynamics in more depth, combining a macro-level analysis of gendered patterns of political recruitment in Scottish political parties over time with an innovative micro-level case study of the candidate selection process in the Scottish Labour Party. It focuses on Scottish Labour because it has been a ‘class apart’ on women’s representation in Scotland (Mackay and Kenny, 2007, 2010). Scottish Labour has been the only party to implement gender quota measures across all Scottish Parliament elections and, until 2011, has consistently maintained a strong gender balance in its parliamentary group. Yet, while the female face of Scottish Labour continues to serve as a powerful symbol of the ‘new politics’ in Scotland, one of the striking features of the party is the resilience of core institutional elements even in the face of far-reaching reforms. While Scottish Labour continues to lead on women’s descriptive representation in Scottish Parliament elections, it is incumbency – resulting from quota measures used in the first elections – rather than the institutionalization of gender balance that accounts for this strong performance (Mackay, 2003; Mackay and Kenny, 2007, 2010; Kenny and Mackay, 2011). Meanwhile, the underlying trend in the party is one of gendered turnover and decline in the number of female candidates. This book explores these gendered puzzles and patterns in more detail by providing a fine-grained analysis of candidate selection and recruitment within the Scottish Labour Party at the micro-level. It tells the ‘story’ of a selection, reconstructing the sequence of events in a Scottish Labour constituency seat selection contest in the run-up to the 2007 Scottish Parliament elections.

In adopting a micro-level approach, the book puts a central focus on the ‘inner life’ and day-to-day enactment of the political recruitment process, building on recent developments in both the feminist and new institutionalist literature and enabling political recruitment scholars to ‘see’ the ways in which the rules of the recruitment process (both formal and informal) play out on the ground. The book also situates the micro-level case study within a longer time frame of party reform processes, assessing and evaluating multiple paths of institutional reform at Scottish and British party levels over time. In doing so, the book remains sensitive to issues of temporality and history, drawing attention to the changing relationship between gender and institutions over time as well as the ways in which contemporary outcomes in the political recruitment process are shaped by legacies of the past. It argues that the success of institutional innovation in the candidate selection process post-devolution remains a complex and contingent question, pointing to reforms in the political recruitment process, while also drawing attention to underlying continuities as well as general patterns of erosion and decline. As such, the Scottish case points to the need to rethink conventional models of political recruitment, highlighting the complex and gendered dynamics of innovation, change and stability within political institutions, and illustrating the difficulties of reforming and redesigning recruitment in the face of powerful gendered legacies.

Overview of the book

This book is structured into three main parts: the first two chapters focus on theory-building, outlining the book’s feminist institutionalist approach; the subsequent three provide the empirical data of the case study – political recruitment in post-devolution Scotland; and the final chapters focus on analysis and conclusions, drawing out the implications of the Scottish case for the study of gender and political recruitment, and for the wider feminist institutionalist theoretical project.

Chapter 2 introduces the literature on gender and political recruitment and provides an elaboration of the rationale for the book. It begins with a theoretical critique of Pippa Norris and Joni Lovenduski’s (1995) supply and demand model of candidate selection and recruitment, which proposes that selection outcomes are the combined result of the supply of available candidates and the demands of party selectors. While it argues that the supply and demand model represents an important turning point in the literature, it also points to two key ways in which it is problemati...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations and Acronyms
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Gender, Institutions and Political Recruitment
• 3. A Feminist Institutionalist Approach
• 4. Political Recruitment in Post-Devolution Scotland
• 5. Breaking with the Past? The Case of the Labour Party
• 6. The Story of a Selection
• 7. Applying a Feminist Institutionalist Lens
• 8. Rethinking Political Recruitment
• Notes
• References
• Index