It’s in the Blood: The Effect of Dynastic Rule on the Substance of Gender Quotas

• In Event: Gender and Institutional Change in the Middle East and North Africa

Abstract

The MENA region has witnessed steady diffusion of gender quotas over the past decade. Despite the overall increase in female representation in national parliaments across the region, less is known about the impact of the growing number of female legislators on policy outcomes for women in the region. While Schwindt-Bayer (2009) and other’s work has shown quotas to generate positive outcomes, Westfall and Chantiles (2016) reveal that gender quotas worldwide may not be responsible for substantive improvements in women’s status all around. Our research explores whether the presence and influence of political dynasties neutralize the effects of gender quotas. The research of Smith (2018) shows that women in political office are much more likely to come from dynastic backgrounds than men in OECD states. The likelihood of this being the case is increased in countries of the Global South, many of which tend toward dynastic or proto-dynastic rule. In this paper, we argue that the more women from political dynasties running for office—even with gender quotas facilitating their entry into political office—the less likely there is to be an overall shift in policy favoring women. In this way, dynastic background mitigates the potential revolutionary effect of gender quotas as well as affecting the types of women likely to run using them. We evaluate this hypothesis by first coding Smith’s (2018) dynastic variable across 22 Arab league member states; we subsequently incorporate it into a SIM model investigating the impact of dynasties on gender quota adoption, and, ultimately, use it to predict the impact of gender quotas on substantive gender-related policy outcomes.

Authors

• Gail Buttorff, University of Houston

• Bozena Christina Welborne, Smith College