Women and Party-Building: Evidence from Municipal Governments in Brazil

• In Event: Party Activists, Recruitment and Party-Building

Abstract

Do female incumbents build (inclusive) party organizations? In this article, we use a regression discontinuity design to study whether incumbency enables female politicians to engage in grassroots party-building and build inclusive and effective party organizations. On one hand, women’s networks can enable them to recruit female or more loyal party members and build inclusive and stable party organizations. On the other hand, women's lower access to party patronage can overwhelm recruitment efforts and make it challenging to recruit party activists. These constraints are likely to be higher in political parties that are non-programmatic and weakly institutionalized and for women who lack political experience and family resources. We use a unique dataset on party membership combined with data on female candidacy and backgrounds in the context of Brazil’s municipal government to examine these questions. We contribute with an understanding of the conditions under which incumbency enables female politicians to build effective and inclusive party organizations.

Authors

• Cameron Sells, Tulane University

• Tanushree Goyal, Harvard University