Many studies have investigated why countries adopt gender quotas for their elections. In this article, we answer a different question: why do political parties comply with gender quotas when the costs of noncompliance are absent or minimal? To answer this question, we analyze data from 1,600 party lists and 106 parties competing across 121 cities in the 2015 municipal elections in Ukraine. Our subnational approach tests whether contextual factors flagged by the broader gender literature explain variation in compliance across localities. The results of our models support our contention that Ukrainian political parties behaved strategically in terms of nominations and quota compliance. We find that urbanization and female incumbency fueled quota compliance. Parties, however, were less likely to comply with quotas in cities with more Ukrainian speakers. We suggest that the politics of memory explain this outcome, as Ukrainian speakers are more likely to remember of the costs of Soviet rule.

Comparative legislative scholars have created a significant literature seekingto explain why legislators switch parties (e.g., Desposato 2006; Klein 2018;Mershon and Shvetsova 2008; Volpi 2019). One important strain of this literatureseeks to understand the point in time during legislative sessions when legislatorsswitch (Klein 2016, 2018; Mershon and Shvetsova 2008, 2013b). Those legislatorsthat switch during periods of intensive policy making are switching, it is argued,in order to maximize policy payoffs. Other studies use roll-call vote measuresof preferences, finding that legislators who are more distant from their partyare more likely to switch (e.g., Heller and Mershon 2008; Martin 2021; McElroy2003; Pinto 2015). Both measures of time and distance are used to explainpolicy motivations of switching. Are these measures comparable? Using dataon party switching in the Ukrainian Rada, I show that time and distance bothmatter. Yet, I find that the effect of distance is relatively consistent across time

We extend the research on contamination effects in mixed-member electoral systems by considering the impact of "dual candidacies" in systems that combine SMD and open-list PR rules. We make three claims. First, we argue that dual-listed candidates have incentives to run campaigns that enable them to maximize their share of personal votes in both tiers. Second, the effect of a dual listing is conditioned by incumbency and party-list position. Finally, we argue that parties themselves benefit from strong dual candidates in the PR list election itself. To test our argument, we analyze the 2016 Lithuanian parliamentary election. Using elite interviews and statistical models of electoral data, our analysis supports our claims. We provide important contribution to contamination literature by demonstrating that parties received a direct, list-tier benefit from nominating SMD candidates, who successfully build personal vote coalitions.

Do parties respond to ethnopolitical context when nominating and placing ethnic minority candidates in open-list proportional representation (PR) systems? Open-list PR is by nature candidate centered. Candidates need to attract preference votes to succeed. Political leaders, we argue, anticipate candidates' ability to generate support and the extent of anti-minority sentiment in districts when nominating and placing candidates. To test our arguments, we analyze data on 8945 candidates competing across 124 localities in Latvia's 2017 local elections. Few studies have explored open-list systems in countries like Latvia where preference voting routinely alters list order. Other studies stress the role that context plays in ethnic minority representation, but often lack data on crucial indicators. Our results show that parties nominated more minority candidates in localities with more ethnic minority voters and fewer in those with larger noncitizen populations. We did not, however, find that ethnopolitical context affected list placement.

Many studies have investigated why countries across the globe have adopted gender quotas for their elections. In this article, we answer a different question: why do political parties comply with gender quotas when the costs of compliance are absent or minimal. To answer the question, we analyze data from the 2015 city elections in Ukraine, including 1,630 party lists from 106 parties competing in 121 cities. Our subnational approach allows us to test whether contextual factors flagged by the broader gender literature explain variation in compliance across Ukrainian localities. The results of our models support our contention that Ukrainian political parties behaved strategically in terms of nominations and quota compliance. We find that urbanization and female incumbency fueled quota compliance. Parties, however, were less likely to comply with quotas in cities with more religious and nationalist populations. Taken together, parties acted strategical, complying with the quota based on local context.

This introductory chapter notes the variation in women's paths to participation in public institutions, where that path is open, where it is not, and what accounts for the differences in women's access. It analyzes the representation of women in political institutions in the years 1945–2006, considering the factors that might affect representation within a single institution while also accounting for the contagion effect, or how the representation in one institution may influence another. The political institutions considered include legislatures, cabinets, courts, and quota laws. By looking cross-nationally, cross-institutionally, and across time, this study aims to gain a more complete perspective on women's representation. Moreover, it offers a lot of opportunities for generalization, especially as countries consider alternate constitutional arrangements.

In this study of the early US Congress (First through Nineteenth: 1789–1827), we assess the impact of slavery on the electoral competitiveness of House elections. Slavery and other forms of labor repressive agriculture have long been known to undermine democracy. Using district-level measures of electoral competitiveness and slavery, we find that a higher percentage of slaves in a district negatively impacts competition, even when we limit our models to Southern elections. Our findings indicate that from the nation's founding up to the age of Andrew Jackson, slavery strongly accounts for a pronounced disparity in the competitiveness of House elections.

In comparison with the global average of democratic countries, Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, remains well below average in terms of women’s legislative representation. This article attempts to explain why Ukraine’s record is so poor by examining the impact of different electoral systems. Since the first post-Communist election in 1994, Ukraine has used three different electoral systems – majoritarian SMD, MMM, and closed-list PR. By examining the impact of these different systems on women’s representation, we can test for the effect of different institutions on representation while holding political culture constant. The empirical results find that PR systems consistently nominated more women and elected more women than did other, majoritarian systems did. In addition, there is little evidence of gender bias against female candidates in either PR or SMD elections.

Comparative research on mixed-member systems suggests that parties have an incentive to nominate nominal-tier candidates in as many districts as possible, as placing candidates in even marginal districts can increase parties’ list-tier vote. Yet studies have documented many instances where parties fail to field candidates. We examine stand-down agreements—where parties coordinate the withdrawal of candidates—to understand why parties forgo a party vote bonus. Our interviews document that Ukrainian politicians—while acting strategically—were not concerned over the loss of a party vote bonus when they negotiated the withdrawal of candidates from districts. Our theoretical discussion explains that the incentive for parties to field candidates to obtain a party vote bonus is often insufficient. Using district data from the 2012 Ukrainian elections, we measure the party vote bonus. We show that the bonus gained by parties was small, dependent upon the quality of the candidate, and varied by party.

Recent research finds that legislatures in authoritarian regimes co-opt potential adversaries (e.g., Gandhi 2008; Gandhi and Przeworski 2007; Malesky and Schuler 2010) or provide regime loyalists with access to better monitor regime elites (e.g., Jensen, Malesky, and Weymouth 2014; Magaloni 2008; Svolik 2012). These two strains of thought suggest that membership in an authoritarian legislature tells us something about the nature of the authoritarian regime. For gender scholars, this is significant, since we there is substantial variation in the percentage of women in authoritarian legislatures. I argue that this variation in women’s legislative representation is the result, in part, of differences in women’s positions within civil society. As the role of women in civil society expands and the openness of civil society in general increases, women’s legislative representation increases. I test this argument with a dataset of 114 authoritarian regimes from 1972-2010. The empirical results support my argument.

The study of electoral systems is a key area of research within political science. In part, the attention paid to electoral systems reflects their importance to democratic political systems. Electoral systems define “what constitutes” a vote, establish “a rule for how votes are totaled,” and create a mechanism for “translating vote share into seat allocations” for representative institutions (Bawn 1993, 966). These roles mean that electoral systems impact not only how interests are represented, but also how accountability is structured.