How Do Gender Quotas Impact Electoral Accountability?

• In Event: New Perspectives on Political Accountability

Abstract

How do gender quotas affect electoral accountability? While the consequences of gender quotas for descriptive representation are widely studied, their impact on accountability remains relatively unexplored. We develop and estimate a dynamic model of political accountability with moral hazard and adverse selection in which gender quotas impose probabilistic term limits on male candidates. We fit the model to a novel dataset that captures constituent evaluations of politician performance in Mumbai, India, where gender quotas are randomly assigned. Through counterfactual exercises, we quantify the differential effect gender quotas have on disciplining candidates and evaluate whether gender quotas result in selection of better female candidates at the expense of mediocre male candidates. Our results highlight the welfare implications of gender quotas independent of their descriptive consequences.

Authors

• Zuheir Desai, IE University

• Varun Karekurve-Ramachandra, University of Rochester

• Sergio Montero, University of Rochester