Donley T. Studlar

The Contagion of Women Candidates in Single-Member District and Proportional Representation Electoral Systems: Canada and Norway

There is a distinct gap in womens representation in national legislatures between countries with single-member district electoral systems and those with proportional representation electoral systems. While this gap has been well documented, there have been only limited attempts at explaining its existence. After reviewing the literature on the representation gap, we turn to the party change literature and propose a modified contagion theory as one possible explanation for the gap. Contagion theory suggests that traditional parties will feel pressured to nominate more women if one of their political rivals, usually a smaller party farther to the left, starts to promote representation of women. We distinguish between macrocontagion and microcontagion and argue that especially microcontagion is more likely to occur in party list proportional representation systems than in single-member district systems. This should be true because contagion pressures are more likely to develop, and the costs of adapting to these pressures are less, in party list proportional representation systems. We formally test for microcontagion at the electoral district level in Canada and Norway, both leaders among their type of electoral systems in female representation. The data confirm our hypothesis by showing no indication of microcontagion in Canada, but evidence of such an effect in Norway.

Bandwagon, Underdog, or Projection? Opinion Polls and Electoral Choice in Britain, 1979-1987

Since the widespread use of opinion polls in British general elections began in the 1950s, there has been continuing controversy concerning their impact on the vote. The bandwagon effect sees voters favoring a party that is doing well in the polls, while the underdog effect predicts that support will go to a party trailing in the polls. There is also the possibility of a projection effect, with voters expectations conforming to their partisanship. The results presented here, applying logistic regression to exit poll survey data collected during the 1979, 1983, and 1987 British general election campaigns, find some evidence of a bandwagon effect in all three elections, but no evidence of an underdog effect and only minor evidence of a projection effect. However, there is a consistent interaction between poll influence and those who decided which way to vote during the election campaign, suggesting that opinion polls can facilitate tactical voting, especially in three-party competition.

Multi-Member Districts and the Representation of Women: Evidence from Britain and the United States

Recent research has suggested a link between multi-member district plurality elections and greater representation of women. Those proposing such a link argue that women may prefer to be candidates in multi-member systems, that their election is facilitated by greater turnover in multi-member systems, and that multi-member systems give voters and party leaders an opportunity to exercise a sort of electoral affirmative action. These possibilities are tested using data on more than 13,000 candidates for office in British and U.S. subnational elections. In general, the link between multi-member plurality systems and womens representation is small and occurs only in some systems. The paper concludes with suggestions for future avenues of exploration of the link between political structure and womens electability.

The Opportunity Structure for Women's Candidacies and Electability in Britain and the United States

The influence of the social and political environment on candidacies and electability is an important element of political recruitment structures. We investigate several contextual factors that may affect the likelihood of women becoming candidates to, and members of, the British House of Commons and the U.S. House of Representatives. Using data from the 1992 British General Election and the 1992 U.S. congressional elections, we find both similarities and differences in the contexts promoting womens candidacies in the two countries. Overall, there is not an especially distinctive pattern in either country to womens candidacies or electability. Women have moved beyond sacrificial lamb status, but incumbency remains the most formi dable electoral barrier in both countries.

Gender and the Electoral Opportunity Structure in the Canadian Provinces

We use multivariate analyses to test hypotheses concerning the elec toral opportunity structure for women across a twenty-year period of Canadian provincial elections. We find that party, political context, and social variables affect the likelihood that a woman is elected to a provin cial parliament. While similarities between U.S. state legislative elections and Canadian provincial elections are found, there are distinct differences across the two polities, especially concerning where women first made inroads in winning representation. While women first gained a beach- head in small amateur legislatures in rural states in the United States, in Canada they first won significant numbers of seats in metropolitan areas. We find there continues to be great differences across riding types with women doing much worse in rural ridings than either urban or metro politan ridings. The implications of these differences for redistricting are considered. Canadian courts have generally been sympathetic to plans that insure representation of geographic communities of interest, even when this has meant overrepresentation of rural areas and under- representation of urban areas. We argue that a consequence of this policy is that Canadian provinces risk underrepresenting women, a nonterritorial community of interest.

Gender and Representation among Legislative Candidates in Australia

Some feminist theory suggests that women have different value priorities compared to men, which should lead to different political perspectives and political behavior among candidates for elected office. By contrast, the theory of responsible party government predicts that there should be few gender-based differences in perspectives and behavior among candidates, due to party discipline. Studies conducted in the United States and elsewhere, however, have consistently shown that legislators are district-oriented, irrespective of party affiliation. In this article, the authors apply multivariate analysis to matched mass-elite survey data collected during the 1987 Australian federal election to analyze the policy views of male and female candidates and to compare them to attitudes among their constituents. For candidates, party dominates political attitudes, with much less influence for constituency opinion and little at all for gender except on the question of advancement for women. These findings are somewhat at variance from similar studies in the United States and Britain.

The disappearing voters? Exploring declining turnout in Western European elections

Changing social characteristics of Western European electorates lead to the expectation of increasing turnout in elections. Yet, in the 1980s, turnout has held steady or declined in most countries for national and European elections. A series of factors believed to affect turnout are identified from recent studies of political participation. Their utility for explaining the recent European turnout patterns is assessed through reference to judgements offered by analysts of recent elections, and a selective analysis of Eurobarometer data. None of the propositions purporting to explain the paradox is sufficient.

The Dynamics of Women's Representation in the Canadian Provinces: 1975–1994 *

This article presents evidence concerning womens representation in Canadas provincial legislative assemblies over a 20-year period (1975-1994). Data from 3,755 elections and over 11,000 candidates are analyzed to inspect trends in representation. The authors find there has been a gradual increase in both female candidates and legislators. The New Democratic party has clearly been the leader in putting women on the ballot and into legislatures at the provincial level. In addition, hypotheses are tested to see if there are differences across provinces in parties willingness to nominate and elect women, and whether women are more likely to be nominated primarily in districts where a party does not expect to win. The study finds that the Atlantic provinces lagged behind the rest of Canada as representation increased markedly everywhere else in the late 1980s and the 1990s. There is also evidence that the major parties nominated female challengers in ridings that were inferior to the ridings where the partys male challengers ran in the midto late-1970s. By the mid-1980s, however, evidence that women were treated as sacrificial lambs had disappeared. Resume. Cette 6tude fait le bilan de la repr6sentation des femmes dans les assembl6es 16gislatives provinciales au Canada lors de 20 ann6es (1975-1994). Les donn6es visant 3755 61ections et plus de 11000 candidats ont 6t6 analys6es afin de cerner les principales tendances quant a la repr6sentation des femmes durant cette p6riode. Les r6sultats d6montrent une augmentation progressive du nombre de candidates et de 16gislatrices. 11 est clair qua l6chelle provinciale le Nouveau parti d6mocratique est celui qui a pr6sent6 le plus de femmes aux 61ections et promu le plus de candidatures f6minines aux fonctions 16gislatives. On 6value 6galement des hypotheses relatives au comportement respectif des provinces quant vient le temps de pr6senter et d61ire des femmes. Les r6sultats de cette 6tude d6montrent que les provinces maritimes trainent la patte par rapport aux autres assembl6es provinciales oih la repr6sentation des femmes a augment6 sensiblement la fin des ann6es quatre-vingt et dans les ann6es quatre-vingt-dix. Il est 6galement clair que durant la deuxieme moiti6 des ann6es soixante-dix tous les principaux partis ont plac6 leurs candidates dans des circonscriptions plus difficiles que celles de leurs collegues masculins. Cependant, des la mi des ann6es quatre-vingt, les femmes cessaient dt and Gary F. Moncrief, Professionalism and Careerism in Canadian Provincial Assemblies: Comparison to US State Legislatures, Legislative Studies Quarterly 19 (1994), 33-48. 5 The territorial governments of Yukon and the Northwest Territories are not considered here because their governing powers are less and their number of legislators are fewer (24 in Northwest Territories, 16 in Yukon). 6 Legislators in Ontario are called members of the provincial parliament (MPPs) and those in Quebec are referred to as members of the national assembly (MNAs). This content downloaded from 157.55.39.185 on Thu, 26 May 2016 06:41:02 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 272 DONLEY T. STUDLAR and RICHARD E. MATLAND ning for separate seats in the same constituency), most notably on a continuing basis in Prince Edward Island (PEI) and up to 1991 in British Columbia. Several provinces have more than a two-party system, with the New Democrats a significant factor in many provinces, and the Parti Qu6b6cois (PQ) and Social Credit having held power in Quebec and British Columbia, respectively. Parties maintain separate organizations on the federal and provincial levels. Voters, too, often have split partisan identifications.7 Theoretical Problem and Approach One of the results of second wave feminism in Western democracies in the 1960s has been an increase in the number of women serving in legislatures. Sometimes this increase has been slow and incremental, but it has been persistent, in Canada and elsewhere.8 One of the unusual features of the increased representation of women among members of parliament (MPs) in the Canadian House of Commons, at least compared with other single-member district systems, has been the substantial increase in female representation, from 5 per cent in 1980 to 10 per cent in 1984, 13 per cent in 1988 and 18 per cent in 1993. This is generally attributed to the high turnover in the legislature, relatively low barriers to nominations and volatility of the Canadian electorate, as well as more women presenting themselves as candidates.9 Another unusual feature of womens representation in Canada has been that the number of female legislators in the provinces lagged for a time behind that in the House of Commons. In most democracies, women consistently have greater legislative representation at lower levels of government. For instance, in the United States after 1992, the Year of the Woman, women constituted 11 per cent of the House of Representatives but almost twice that, 20 per cent, in state legislatures. As Table 1 shows, however, in Canada only rarely has womens repre7 Michael D. Martinez, Partisan Reinforcement in Context and Cognition: Canadian Federal Partisanship, 1974-1979, American Journal of Political Science 34 (1990), 822-45; and Harold D. Clarke, Jane Jenson, Lawrence LeDuc and Jon H. Pammett, Absent Mandate: Interpreting Change in Canadian Elections (Toronto: Gage, 1991). 8 Vicky Randall, Women and Politics: An International Perspective (2nd ed.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), chap. 3; Pippa Norris, Conclusions: Comparing Legislative Recruitment, in Lovenduski and Norris, eds., Gender and Party Politics, 309-30; and R. Darcy, Susan Welch and Janet Clark, Women, Elections and Representation (2nd ed.; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), 74-78. 9 Young, Legislative Turnover and the Election of Women; Erickson, Making Her Way In; and Studlar and Matland, The Growth of Womens Representation. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.185 on Thu, 26 May 2016 06:41:02 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Womens Representation in the Canadian Provinces: 1975-1994 273 sentation in provincial legislatures been greater than in the House of Commons, and even then by only small margins.0 In other countries, factors such as the lower prestige and power usually associated with subnational legislatures, along with nearness to home, less professional (full-time) legislatures and less competition for office, have been suggested as reasons why women usually have greater numbers at lower levels. What accounts for the unusual pattern in Canada?

The Growth of Women's Representation in the Canadian House of Commons and the Election of 1984: A Reappraisal

In the 1980s, Canada went from having one of the lowest levels of female representation in its national legislature to having one of the highest among countries with single-member district electoral systems. The authors examine the common assertion that this increase was largely due to the surprising Progressive Conservative landslide in the 1984 federal election. By simulating plausible alternative election results they find there would have been a substantial increase in the number of women in the parliament, regardless of how the vote split in 1984. The simulations are followed by probit analyses for 1980, 1984 and 1988 which examine what factors affected the probability a major-party candidate would be a woman and what factors affected the probability that a successful candidate would be a woman.

Politics and Sexual Equality: The Comparative Position of Women in Western Democracies@@@The Women's Movements of the United States and Western Europe: Consciousness, Political Opportunity, and Public Policy@@@Women's Rights in France

This text assesses the results of the womens movement over the last 20 years, comparing a range of Western societies to see where sexual stratification has altered most radically and to what extent political parties have had a significant impact on the situation of women.