How Do Gender Quotas Impact Electoral Accountability?

• In Event: Elections, Accountability, and Representation

Abstract

How do gender quotas affect electoral accountability? While the consequences of gender quotas for descriptive representation have been widely studied, their impact on accountability remains relatively unexplored. We develop a dynamic empirical model of political accountability with moral hazard and adverse selection in which gender quotas impose probabilistic term limits on male candidates. We estimate the model using a novel dataset that captures constituent evaluations of politician performance in Mumbai, India, where gender quotas are randomly assigned. Through counterfactual exercises, we quantify the differential effect gender quotas have on disciplining candidates and evaluate whether gender quotas result in selection of better women at the expense of “mediocre" men. We also examine the extent to which voters and parties discriminate against women, whether discrimination is expressive or based on perceived differences in politician quality, and how this interacts with gender quotas. Our results highlight the welfare implications of gender quotas, separate from any normative descriptive considerations, with the aim of illuminating tradeoffs for institutional design.

Authors

• Zuheir Desai, The Ohio State University

• Varun Karekurve-Ramachandra, University of Southern California Univeristy

• Sergio Montero, University of Houston