Gender Equality Reforms and Autocrats’ Consolidation of Power: A Research Agenda

• In Event: Gender and Authoritarian Politics: A Comparative Perspective

Abstract

Countries across the globe have adopted an increased number of gender equality reforms since the mid-1990s and forward (see e.g. Donno and Kreft 2019; Hughes et al. 2019; Olsson and Gizelis 2015; Towns 2010). Recent work has shown that a majority of the these reforms has been adopted by non-democracies (Donno, Fox, and Kaasik 2019; Zetterberg et al. forthcoming). While significant scholarly attention has been given to the meaning of gender equality reforms adopted in authoritarian states for women politicians and citizens, only a few studies have focused on what gender equality reforms may mean for the autocrats in power. It has been suggested that adopting gender equality policies help autocrats increase the prospects for regime survival (e.g. Valdini 2019; Tripp 2019; Bush and Zetterberg 2020; Bjarnegård and Zetterberg 2016). This paper contributes to this nascent body of literature by proposing a research agenda that serves the purpose of better understanding to what extent the introduction of gender equality reforms contribute to consolidating the power of autocrats.

To construct this agenda, we draw on an important insight from the literature on comparative democratization: consolidation of the power of autocrats depends on their capacity to achieve institutional stability by appeasing different types of threats (Schedler 2013). We suggest that a research agenda should focus on the extent to which – and how – gender equality reforms in authoritarian countries appease different sets of actors: the international community (appeasing external threats), political opposition(s) (appeasing horizontal threats), and citizens (appeasing vertical threats). While we argue that all autocrats can use gender equality policies to appease these threats, we suggest that the gendered toolbox is somewhat enlarged for electoral authoritarian regimes. Because electoral authoritarian regimes have opened up for (somewhat) competitive elections, they can adopt gender equality reforms pertaining to the electoral arena. Our research agenda proposes a way forward for studying if and how gender equality reforms contribute to increasing autocrats’ consolidation of power in different authoritarian regimes.

Authors

• Elin Bjarnegard, Uppsala University

• Par Zetterberg, Uppsala University