Gender, Ethnicity, and Double-Minorities in Asian Cabinets

• In Event: New Frontiers in Identity Politics

Abstract

What explains patterns of representation – of women and ethnic minorities – in government cabinets? We argue governments diversify their cabinets when one of two constraints manifest. First, a minority group – and it need not be ethnic in nature – is sizable and can mobilize (political competition). The second constraint is that the general population believes in, and expects the inclusion of, minorities (popular norms). We test our argument using original cabinet data from Asia (N=55) 1960-2015. We identify the gender and ethnicity of 60,000 country-year-minister observations using multiple coders, double checked against country expert surveys, and tripled verified using local crowdsourcing –with consideration of the rank of their ministerial portfolio. We find evidence that in countries where there is political competition and/or popular norms, cabinets not only have fewer double-hegemons –i.e., men from the ethnic hegemon group – but that (1) the substantive prestige of minority portfolios are also on average higher and (2) their inclusion is not simply diluted by a simultaneous expansion of the cabinet. This project offers a way to study intersectionality in democratic representation and political institutions.

Authors

• Keith Padraic Chew, Arizona State University

• Amy H. Liu, University of Texas at Austin