Should Women Push for Fewer Women Candidates? Political Studies Association annual conference

Previous cross-national research on electoral-system effects on women’s legislative representation suggests that candidate-centered systems–including list PR preference systems–are disadvantageous for women candidates precisely because they allow citizens to have some direct say in the election of individual members of parliament. We develop a dynamic theoretical model of agent-mediated electoral-system effects on women’s representation that suggests potentially positive effects of preference voting systems, except where women are particularly active in politics. In the latter contexts our model predicts neutral or even negative effects of preference voting on the standing of women candidates. We test the theory’s propositions with a new dataset covering over 80,000 candidates in Central Europe, where our theory predicts different effects than previous scholarship. We conclude with an assessment of the potential benefits of PR preference systems and how they can assist the work of quotas.