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Literature / resource Imported

Gender and Dynastic Political Selection

Sweden · Uppsala · National · See the Sweden profile

Throughout history and across countries, women appear more likely than men to enter politics on the heels of a close family relative or spouse. To explain this dynastic bias in women's representation, we introduce a theory that integrates political selection decisions with inform

12 countries
Democracies covered in the legislator-level analysis

Details

Promoter
Folke Olle, Rickne Johanna, Smith, Daniel M. — website
Power domain
Political Power
Methods / tools
Monitoring, Networking, Benchmarking
Keywords
dynasties, gender representation, gender quota, Ireland, Sweden

Context

This study by Folke, Rickne and Smith develops a theory of dynastic bias in women's political representation, arguing that candidates with family ties to previous officeholders benefit from their predecessors' established reputations, and that this signal matters more for political newcomers such as women.

Results

Using legislator-level data from twelve democracies and candidate-level data from Ireland and Sweden, the study finds that dynastic ties help women more than men, that predecessor quality matters more for evaluating female successors, that the dynastic bias has declined over time as more women entered politics, and that a gender quota had a differential effect across Swedish municipalities.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k)
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years)

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Data sources

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