Tag: political parties

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Why PR systems may be good for the representation of women

Here’s an old note from my book on political representation that explores why PR systems may be good for the representation of women.

Proportional representation (PR) systems are often touted as beneficial to the inclusion of women as political representatives [almost all of this work uses a binary approach to gender]. In the literature, the argument is typically that PR systems mean larger districts, which is good for the inclusion of “minorities”. What we should be focusing on is the probability that a vote goes to a woman. There are, however, a couple of assumptions that are rarely spelled out, notably that there are few female contenders.

Situation 1 illustrates the assumption (or empirical reality) that men more likely at the top of the ballots, thus more likely to be elected. In majoritarian systems and systems with very small district size, only the top candidates are picked. So there is no inherent advantage for PR systems, but an effect that is dependent on women being selected for top positions.

Situation 2 illustrates that in a larger district, we simply reach further down the list, thus (under the same assumption that women are less likely at the top of the ballot) we are more likely to pick a woman — like any other candidate who is more likely to be further down the list.

Situation 3 shows that having more parties — a feature of many PR systems — is equivalent to having smaller districts: Assuming that all parties tend to be more likely to put men at the top of the ballot, we are no longer reaching down the lists as much (each party gets fewer votes).

So, it’s not PR as such, but district size combined with candidate selection/candidate placement that matters for the political representation of women.

Ruedin, Didier. 2013. Why Aren’t They There? The Political Representation of Women, Ethnic Groups and Issue Positions in Legislatures. Colchester: ECPR Press.

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Party Positions on Immigration: Additional Data Released

I have updated the online supplement for our paper on party positions on immigration (with Laura Morales) to add more data, including data that I coded after the article was published. While the online supplement (PDF) of that article included party positions and packed lots of additional information on its 102 pages, there is now more on OSF.

You can find:

  • N=422 party manifestos coded using the checklist approach
  • N=9,147 individual sentences coded
  • N=461 sections on migration, manually selected
  • word counts of these sections on migration

Although I wish I could say that the data are complete, they are a mix from Austria, Belgium, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Some coverage is pretty systematic, other coverage is more selective — reflecting what I have worked on.

P.S. please don’t use the CMP/MARPOR codes 607 and 608 when you want to measure positions on immigration, they are too generic and do not correlate well. There are more specific sub-codes in data coded after 2014 that are conceptually fine.

Link to OSF

Hadj-Abdou, Leila, and Didier Ruedin. 2022. ‘The Austrian People’s Party: An Anti-Immigrant Right Party?’ Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. 48(2):385–404. doi:10.1080/1369183X.2020.1853904

Ruedin, Didier. 2019. ‘South African Parties Hardly Politicise Immigration in Their Electoral Manifestos’. Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies. 46(2):206-18. doi:10.1080/02589346.2019.1608713

Ruedin, Didier and Laura Morales. 2019. “Estimating Party Positions on Immigration: Assessing the Reliability and Validity of Different Methods”. Party Politics. 25(3):303–14. doi:10.1177/1354068817713122

Ruedin, Didier. 2013. “The role of language in the automatic coding of political texts.” Swiss Political Science Review 19(4): 539-45. doi:10.1111/spsr.12050

Ruedin, Didier. 2013. “Obtaining party positions on immigration in Switzerland: Comparing different methods.” Swiss Political Science Review 19(1): 84-105. doi:10.1111/spsr.12018

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The Austrian People’s Party: An Anti-Immigrant Right Party.

In a new paper with Leila Hadj Abdou, we examine the profile of the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) with regard to immigration. While we put a question mark in the title of the article, we conclude in the affirmative: Yes, we can consider the ÖVP an anti-immigrant party.

To reach this conclusion, we systematically examine the electoral manifestos of the party between 1994 and 2019 — following work I have done with Laura Morales. We can demonstrate that in the past the ÖVP held more ambiguous positions, but especially after 2017 the party has positioned itself more clearly against immigration, especially Muslim immigrants and their descendants as a ‘cultural other’ to the Austrian population. We argue that this change is due to the restructuring of the ÖVP into a leadership party.

Hadj-Abdou, Leila, and Didier Ruedin. 2021. ‘The Austrian People’s Party: An Anti-Immigrant Right Party?’ Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2020.1853904.

Ruedin, Didier, and Laura Morales. 2019. ‘Estimating Party Positions on Immigration: Assessing the Reliability and Validity of Different Methods’. Party Politics 25 (3): 303–14. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354068817713122.

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Publication: South African Parties Hardly Politicise Immigration in Their Electoral Manifestos

I’m happy to announce that my article on the positions South African parties take on immigration in their electoral manifestos is now properly published. It features political partices and the rainbow nation!

Ruedin, Didier. 2019. ‘South African Parties Hardly Politicise Immigration in Their Electoral Manifestos’. Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies 46 (2): 206–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/02589346.2019.1608713.

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New publication: How South African Parties Do Not Politicize Immigration in Their Manifestos

I am happy to announce a new publication on how South African parties do not politicize immigration in their electoral manifestos, despite many indications that we can expect them to do so. In a country where xenophobia appears widespread, we can expect political parties to politicize immigration and take positions against immigrants.

In this paper, I wanted to do two things. On a methodological side, I wanted to know whether the approaches to coding electoral manifestos we have developed in the context of European parties works elsewhere. I have applied them to the US context, but South Africa would provide a tougher test. The keyword tests worked fine, and the qualitative discussions with colleagues were encouraging to press on. On a substantive side, I wanted to know whether South African parties as parties drive politicization, or whether individual politicians do so. The systematic analysis of the electoral manifestos reveals that parties as organizations do not politicize much against immigrants and immigration. In this sense, we cannot find evidence for this supposedly perverse upshot of the post-apartheid nation-building project where parties would politicize against immigrants to bolster internal cohesion: not parties as formal organizations. From other research and the media we know, though, that individual politicians certainly play a role in politicizing immigration in South Africa.

Ruedin, Didier. 2019. ‘South African Parties Hardly Politicise Immigration in Their Electoral Manifestos’. Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies 46 (1). https://doi.org/10.1080/02589346.2019.1608713.

Ruedin, Didier. 2019. ‘Attitudes to Immigrants in South Africa: Personality and Vulnerability’. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 45 (7): 1108–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2018.1428086.

Ruedin, Didier, and Laura Morales. 2018. ‘Estimating Party Positions on Immigration: Assessing the Reliability and Validity of Different Methods’. Party Politics OnlineFirst. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354068817713122.