Interpersonal Resources and Insider/Outsider Dynamics in Party Office

• Author: Javier Martínez-Cantó,Tània Verge
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00104140221089642
• Published date: 01 January 2023
• Date: 01 January 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Comparative Political Studies

2023, Vol. 56(1) 131–157

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/00104140221089642

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Interpersonal Resources

and Insider/Outsider

Dynamics in Party Off‌ice

Javier Mart´

ınez-Cantó

1

and T`

ania Verge

2

Abstract

While the multiple barriers women face to attain public off‌ice have been vastly

documented, the operation of insider/outsider dynamics within political

parties’top decision-making bodies remains largely under-researched. This

article provides new theoretical and empirical insights on how interpersonal

resources create ingroups and outgroups in parties’national executive

committees—the body that manages the day-to-day functioning of the extra-

parliamentary party organization. Our comparative analysis of Spanish po-

litical parties in the period 1975–2020 documents that interpersonal re-

sources are unevenly distributed across gender. Most crucially, we show that

these resources play out differently for women and men members, with

embeddedness in party networks only helping the latter attain positional

power and extend their tenure in party off‌ice. These heterogeneous effects

suggest that top decision-making party bodies do not just ref‌lect existing

gender inequalities but reinforce them in signif‌icant ways, rendering women

member outsiders on the inside.

Keywords

Party off‌ice, party networks, gender, insider/outsider dynamics, male

homosocial capital

1

University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany

2

Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain

Corresponding Author:

Javier Mart´

ınez-Cantó, Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Konstanz,

Universit¨

atsstrasse 10, Konstanz 78457, Germany.

Email: javier.martinez-canto@uni-konstanz.de

Introduction

Numerous works have certif‌ied that women face multiple barriers to attain

public off‌ice, either in the legislative or the executive branch. A common

f‌inding in candidate selection studies is that women “play by a different –and

often more demanding –set of rules”than men (O’Brien, 2015, 1036).

Women are regarded as outgroup members, whilst men embody the “ideal”

candidate (Bjarneg˚

ard & Kenny, 2016, p. 385; see also Niven, 1998;Tremblay

& Pelletier, 2001). Men are also more frequently connected with the party

leader and political mentors and have privileged access to party networks

(Annesley et al., 2019;Bjarneg˚

ard, 2013;Kenny, 2013). Fundamentally,

being “one of us”greatly overrides individuals’educational and professional

qualif‌ications (Norris & Lovenduski, 1995, p. 238), and even credentials such

as party service are attributed a different value by party selectors when

possessed by the ingroup or the outgroup (Verge & Claveria, 2018). Inter-

personal resources thus set in motion insider/outsider dynamics that trump

candidates’achievements within political parties. These resources create

bonding ties through interpersonal relationships and, as such, they lead to the

construction of homosocial capital among the ingroup—that is, men party

members.

Hitherto, despite having wider normative implications for intra-party

democracy and the representation of political minorities, the ways in

which interpersonal resources may also shape gender inequality within po-

litical parties’decision-making bodies have received little scholarly attention.

In order to address this gap, we investigate how interpersonal resources play

out differently for ingroup and outgroup members’advancement in party

off‌ice. In doing so, this article provides new theoretical and empirical insights.

On the one hand, we take stock and contribute to the literature on political

recruitment, candidate selection, and gender and politics by theorizing on the

heterogeneous effects that interpersonal resources yield for selection pro-

cesses conf‌iguring the party in central off‌ice. On the other hand, we develop an

original set of quantitative, observational, measurements to trace the accu-

mulation of interpersonal resources stemming from male homosocial capital

that can be applied to large-N studies.

In assessing the intra-party effects of male homosocial capital, we study the

largely under-researched, but critical, national executive committees (NECs).

1

A NEC is the body that manages the day-to-day functioning of the organi-

zation and dictates the political strategy between party conferences (Katz &

Mair, 1993, p. 607). It drafts and approves manifestoes, oversees candidate

selection processes, distributes high-status political off‌ices, and exercises ex

post control of elected representatives (Van Biezen, 2000). Accordingly,

NECs have been qualif‌ied as the “centre of power”of the extra-parliamentary

party (Kittilson, 2006, p. 41). Their composition is then highly consequential

132 Comparative Political Studies 56(1)