Do Majority-Minority Districts and Reserved Seats for Minorities Undermine the Election of Women?

24 Pages Posted: 3 Sep 2009

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: February, 24 2009

Abstract

Scholarship on the effect of electoral rules on the representation of ethnic minorities and women has tended to emphasize the advantages of certain rules on their targeted group. Scholars have noted the pros and cons of majority-minority districts, reserved seats, and gender quotas on the descriptive and substantive representation of the groups they are intended to benefit. In this paper, we take a different approach by examining the potential negative externalities of electoral engineering. We argue that women and minorities face very different obstacles to election and thus remedies that are intended to improve the electoral prospects of one group may actually undermine the election of the other (Okin 1999; Bird 2003; Moser and Holmsten 2008). We test this hypothesis by examining the effect that majority-minority districts and reserved seats – two of the primary instruments used by electoral engineers to promote the representation of ethnic minorities – have on the election of women. Using a unique cross-national dataset that identifies the gender and ethnic background of legislators from a wide variety of cases using single-member-district elections (United States, Canada, Great Britain, India, New Zealand, Ukraine) we test whether women tend to gain election at lower rates in districts or seats designed to elect minorities. We expect that this may very well be the case for several reasons. First, as Okin (1999) has argued certain ethnic minorities may be more patriarchal than the majority culture and thus rules designed to elect members of such groups would tend to favor male candidates. Second, the politics of ethnic mobilization may override other cleavages within targeted groups. Finally, rules designed to promote the election of ethnic minorities may empower ethnic political parties that tend to marginalize women (Moser and Holmsten 2008). Our findings will have important implications for the general study of how institutional rules are expected to affect political inclusion and will have implications for electoral rules, such as gender quotas, that target other historically marginalized groups as well.

Keywords: women and politics, race and gender, institutions

Suggested Citation

Holmsten, Stephanie Seidel and Moser, Robert G., Do Majority-Minority Districts and Reserved Seats for Minorities Undermine the Election of Women? (February, 24 2009). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1348664 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1348664

Stephanie Seidel Holmsten (Contact Author)

affiliation not provided to SSRN

Robert G. Moser

University of Texas ( email )

2317 Speedway
Austin, TX Texas 78712
United States

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