Electoral Rules, Women’s Representation and the Qualification of Politicians

• Author: Paola Profeta,Eleanor F. Woodhouse
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00104140211047414
• Published date: 01 August 2022
• Date: 01 August 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Comparative Political Studies

2022, Vol. 55(9) 1471–1500

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/00104140211047414

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Electoral Rules,

Women’s

Representation and the

Qualification of

Politicians

Paola Profeta

1

and Eleanor F. Woodhouse

2

Abstract

Proportional electoral rules are associated with more substantial women’s

representation than majoritarian ones. To provide causal evidence that

electoral rules affect women’s representation and the qualification of poli-

ticians, we collect panel data on the universe of Italian politicians from all levels

of government over the period 1987–2013 and analyse an Italian reform

which, in 2005, changed the electoral rule for national elections from (mostly)

majoritarian to proportional, but did not affect subnational level elections. We

find that this reform increased the number of women elected by 5%, while not

decreasing the overall qualification levels of politicians, measured by the level

of education and political experience. We provide evidence that the highest

qualification women are not elected and that the overall qualification of

elected politicians could have increased (rather than remain constant) if the

best women candidates had been elected.

Keywords

electoral reforms, women’s political representation, difference-in-differences

1

Bocconi University, Milano, Italy

2

University College London, UK

Corresponding Author:

Paola Profeta, Department of Social and Political Sciences, Bocconi University, Via Roentgen 1,

Milano 20136, Italy.

Email: paola.profeta@unibocconi.it

Introduction

Women are still under-represented on the political stage across the globe.

According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union database, only 11 countries out of

193 have more than 40% of women in their national parliaments and 121

countries have less than 25% women’s representation (Inter-Parliamentary

Union, 2017). Not a single OECD country has yet reached gender parity in its

national parliament: the highest is Mexico with 48.2% of women and the

OECD average remains at 30.1% (OECD, 2019). However, the presence of

women in politics matters, not only for descriptive representation but also for

substantive representation, especially in terms of effectively voicing

‘women’s interests’and influencing policy outcomes (see a recent review in

Hessami and Lopes da Fonseca (2020)). Existing research has linked the

under-representation of women to voter bias (Fr´

echette et al., 2008;Dolan,

2014,2018;Dolan & Lynch, 2016;Hayes & Lawless, 2016;Le Barbanchon

& Sauvagnat, forthcoming), party bias (Norris & Lovenduski, 1993;Fox &

Lawless, 2010;Lawless & Fox, 2010) and political competition (Folke &

Rickne, 2016).

Electoral rules have also been shown to matter, mainly because propor-

tional systems tend to favour the election of women with respect to major-

itarian ones (Rule, 1987). In parallel, electoral rules have been shown to

influence the qualification of elected politicians: in majoritarian systems,

tougher political races are associated with higher qualification levels of elected

politicians, measured by the level of education, as opposed to proportional

systems (Galasso and Nannicini, 2011). Proportional systems seem unable to

elect the best candidates.

However, as women’s representation is positively related to the qualifi-

cation of politicians (Baltrunaite et al., 2014), because women candidates have

been found, overwhelmingly, to be as or more qualified than their male

counterparts (Murray, 2010;2012;Franceschet and Piscopo, 2013;O’Brien

and Rickne, 2016;Barnes and Holman, 2019), their increased representation

in proportional systems may counterbalance the negative selection effect

associated with proportional rules. Thus, the overall qualification levels of

politicians may remain equal or even increase with respect to those char-

acterising a majoritarian system.

To provide evidence of these effects, we assemble data on the universe of

Italian politicians from all levels of government –national, regional, pro-

vincial, and municipal –over the period 1987–2013. We exploit the existence

of different electoral rules across levels of government to form our research

design: in 2005, a reform was introduced which changed the electoral rule for

national elections from a mixed-member system –whereby 75% of repre-

sentatives were elected via a majoritarian system and 25% via a proportional

system –to a closed list proportional rule with a majority bonus. Since the

1472 Comparative Political Studies 55(9)