Affective Polarization and Women’s Descriptive Representation

• In Event: Socio-Economic Conflicts and Political Behavior

Abstract

Concerns over hostility and dislike across party lines, i.e., affective polarization, have intensified in recent years across Western democracies. While scholars study the drivers of partisan resentment, no work analyzes whether descriptive representation in parties’ parliamentary delegations influences affective polarization. This is a surprising oversight especially with regard to women’s descriptive representation, given that citizens hold gender stereotypes toward women politicians. To address this issue, we ask: how do partisans react to the gender composition of parliamentary delegations? We theorize that partisans evaluate out-parties with higher proportions of women MPs more warmly, all else equal. To test this claim, we analyze an original dataset on women’s presence in 2,024 party parliamentary delegations in 20 Western democracies between 1996-2017, combined with Comparative Study of Electoral Systems survey data on partisans’ affective ratings of political opponents. We show that women’s presence in parties’ parliamentary delegations defuses dislike among their partisan opponents. We also show that parties led by men benefit most from women’s descriptive representation in parliament, and that both men and women partisans reward out-parties with more women MPs. Our findings contribute to the nascent comparative polarization literature by showing that affective polarization responds to organizational and institutional features of the party system, such as norms and regulations that relate to gender representation in partisan delegations. For gender and politics scholars, we identify a new consequence of women’s descriptive representation: as well as shaping citizens’ feelings of efficacy and trust, women’s presence in politics can also affect men’s and women’s warmth (or hostility) towards political parties.

Authors

• James Adams, University of California, Davis

• David Bracken, UC Davis

• Noam Gidron, Hebrew University

• Will Horne, Princeton University

• Diana Z. O'Brien, Rice University

• Kaitlin Senk, Rice University