Why Do Some Autocrats Enhance Female Political Representation?

• In Event: Gender in Authoritarian and Hybrid Regimes

Abstract

Mode of Entry, Coups, and Women Empowerment: Why do Some Autocrats Enhance Female Political Representation?

An emerging research agenda focuses on how institutional factors lead to the development of women's political representation in authoritarian regimes. Yet, little attention had been paid to how non-institutional factors affect female representation. In this article, we argue that the enhance the women's political representation of authoritarian regimes depends on the mode of entry of their leadership. Different modes of entry lead to different risks of coups that further shape the degree of female representation. Specifically, legal leaders enjoy the legitimacy of succession and resources of security than extralegal leaders. Therefore, legal leaders may resort to women's political support when there is a high risk of coups. In contrast, extralegal leaders prefer tightening their power by limiting female representation to maintain political dominance when the risk of coups is high. To test this argument, we use the data of 90 authoritarian regimes during 1946 and 2010 to assess how the mode of entry and the risk of coups affect the number of women legislators. Our results show that in addition to institutional factors, such as regime type and women quota, the mode of entry also affects female representation under the shadow of coups in authoritarian regimes. We find that extralegal leaders facing a higher risk of coups are less likely to improve women's political representation, whereas legal leaders prefer to increase women's political representation.

Authors

• Wen-Cheng Lin, National Chengchi University

• Wen-Chin Wu, Academia Sinica