Daniel M. Butler

Recruitment and Perceptions of Gender Bias in Party Leader Support

Gender differences in who gets recruited by political party elites contribute to women’s underrepresentation on the ballot, but recent evidence suggests that even when women are recruited to the same extent as men, they are still less likely to be interested in seeking office. Why do men and women respond differently to invitations to seek office? We hypothesize that women view party recruitment as a weaker signal of informal support than men do. We use a survey experiment on a sample of 3,640 elected municipal officeholders—themselves prospective recruits for higher office—to test this. We find that female respondents generally believe party leaders will provide female recruits less strategic and financial support than male recruits. In other words, even when elites recruit women, women are skeptical that party leaders will use their political and social capital on their behalf. This difference may account for many women’s lukewarm responses to recruitment.

Gender Inequalities in Campaign Finance

Previous research suggests that female candidates do not face fundraising barriers; however, female politicians consistently report that fundraising is more difficult for them than their male colleagues. Using a regression discontinuity design to hold district characteristics constant, we study whether there is a gender gap in campaign fundraising for state legislators from 1990 to 2010. We find that male candidates raise substantially more money than female candidates. Further, male donors give more money to male candidates, while female donors, political parties, and PACs give approximately equally to men and women. At the same time, men face challengers who raise more money; consequently, male and female incumbents do not differ in the proportion of the overall district money that they raise in their next reelection bid. These results suggest that there are gender inequalities in campaign finance, but they may not have immediate consequence for womens representation.

Party Representatives’ Adaptation to Election Results Dyadic Responsiveness Revisited

Politicians’ dual responsibilities to respect their party and also be responsive to their constituents is surprisingly lacking in studies of representation. How do politicians—especially those who function in strong-party systems—individually respond to their constituents’ preferences? We make use of an original, large-scale survey of politicians and the recent success of the Sweden Democrats in the elections in Sweden to show that important adaptation takes place within the party structure. Individual politicians are responsive to signals about voters’ preferences, and they act on these signals by internally lobbying their party leaders to change the party’s positions in the direction of their constituents’ preferences. These results provide a rationale for why niche parties invest in elections even if they are unlikely to enter government: Their electoral successes can cause change in other parties. The results also add a new angle to the discussion of how anti-immigration parties affect mainstream parties, a hotly debated issue in many advanced democracies.