Reservation Policy Design & Evaluation of Women Candidates: Evidence from Pakistan

• In Event: Gender Quotas, Women’s Political Participation, and Leadership

Abstract

A rich empirical literature explores the effects of mandated representation policies for women on the evaluation and future supply of women politicians (Beaman et al 2011, Bhavnani 2009, Clayton 2018). However, most studies focus on policy adoption rather than reform, although policy reform is common in many contexts (Hughes et al, 2019). In this paper, we consider how variation in reservation policy affects the evaluation of women candidates for local office in Pakistan.

Pakistan has experienced frequent reform in reservation policies for women in national and local government; a crucial design feature is whether reserved seats are filled by direct or indirect election. To explore how electoral rules influence which women are likely to enter politics, we report on findings from a survey of nearly 1000 local councillors and party workers in Lahore, Pakistan. A conjoint candidate evaluation experiment embedded in the survey allows us to assess how the evaluation of several of several salient candidate attributes, such as family ties to politics, political experience, partisan affiliation and record of service in various domains, varies under direct vs. indirect election rules (also randomly varied as part of the experiment). We expect attributes traditionally associated with “electability” to be more salient in the evaluation of women candidates under a direct election rule. We also report on the perceptions of women party workers, who comprise a pool of potential aspirants for local council reserved seats, about which type of rule is more or less permissive for their own entry into local government. Taken together, the findings allow us to assess whether the institutional design of reservations influences which type of women are likely to come to power.

Authors

• Ali Cheema, Lahore University of Management Sciences

• Shandana Khan Mohmand, Institute of Development Studies

• Sarah Khan, Yale University