Rewarding Women’s Rights in Dictatorships

• In Event: Global Governance and Development

Abstract

How can dictatorships signal democratic progress to international audiences? Cross-national research has documented a correlation between democracy and foreign aid but we have as yet little understanding of how different types of domestic reforms are received by the international professionals tasked with making decisions about development programs. We theorize women's rights as a policy area in which autocrats can signal democracy without risking their political survival, in contrast to other more costly reforms to the electoral sphere. To test our hypotheses, we implement a conjoint survey experiment on an international ``elite" sample of 108 professionals in the development field. Our design allows us to assess how policies related to (a) electoral competition, (b) women's economic rights, and (c) women's political representation influence perceptions of democracy and willingness to provide foreign aid. We find that reforms related to opposition parties have a large impact on perceptions of democracy and on foreign aid provision, but, strikingly, that increasing women's economic rights is also a highly effective signal. Legislative gender quotas exhibit a significant (though smaller) effect on perceived democracy, but do not increase the likelihood of receiving a foreign aid package. Taken together, our findings support the idea that autocrats enjoy leeway in how they may choose to signal democratic progress to international audiences, but that the signaling power of gender quotas may be weakening in light of their prevalence in both democracies and dictatorships around the world.

Authors

• Sarah S. Bush, Yale University

• Daniela Donno, University of Cyprus

• Par Zetterberg, Uppsala University