Suchergebnisse

Scholarship investigating autocrats' motivations to adopt gender equality reforms has proliferated. Yet, many questions remain unanswered: Who supports these gender reforms? Do citizens support gender quota policies? What is the role of political elites? Under what conditions do women's increased presence in politics lead to positive outcomes for women? Answering these questions is crucial for both practical and empirical reasons. On the one hand, the number of 'partly free' and 'not free' countries is increasing, making up the majority of world countries (79%). On the other hand, women's access to political power has exponentially grown over the past two decades. Women in autocracies are participating in politics more than ever before. This special issue presents cutting-edge research on gender and authoritarian politics relying on diverse methodological approaches and geographical foci. The introduction of this SI identifies the remaining knowledge gaps and provides future directions for more scholarship on the intersection of gender and authoritarian politics.

What are the drivers of citizens' support for electoral gender quotas in transitioning and authoritarian states? Despite extensive research examining public support for women in politics in democracies, we know little about how the public perceives them in less democratic settings. To address this shortcoming, we use original survey data from authoritarian Morocco and transitioning Tunisia – two Arab countries hailed for their progressive gender policies. We argue that in these countries where citizens lack political information, they instead rely on their assessment of the government's performance to form attitudes toward gender quotas. Furthermore, electoral legitimacy plays an important role in shaping citizens' support for quotas, which are closely linked to how elections and legislatures operate. The findings offer strong support for our theoretical expectations and uncover important gender differences.

AbstractWhen are executives in authoritarian regimes more likely to comply with formal legislative powers? Building from theories of authoritarian power‐sharing, we argue that executives will be more likely to respect legislative prerogatives when protests or elite organization increase the ability of legislators to undermine the executive's political position. We evaluate this argument by analyzing novel protest and legislative data in Jordan between 2010 and 2015. In line with our expectations, we find that parliamentary queries were more likely to receive the required response from the cabinet during months of higher protest activity and when they were submitted by MPs from Jordan's only well‐organized opposition bloc in the parliament. This study extends the burgeoning scholarship on authoritarian legislatures by contributing to understanding of executive‐legislative interactions under autocracy and providing new insights into the conditions under which these legislatures are more likely to influence decision‐making processes.

The past decade has witnessed a significant increase in women's presence in local politics. According to the newly published United Nations (UN) Women in Local Government data set, women constitute 36% of local deliberative bodies worldwide compared to merely 25% in national parliaments.1 Much of this increase is the result of gender quotas: the Gender Quotas Database (International IDEA 2022) shows that as of 2021, 75 countries had some form of gender quota on the local level, 24 of which were authoritarian regimes. Yet, extant work on gender politics in authoritarian regimes tends to focus on the national level, given the highly centralized decision-making processes in such contexts. We contend that the study of women's engagement and representation in local politics can help scholars better understand not only gender and politics, but also authoritarian politics more generally.

AbstractTo what extent, if any, do the issue priorities of elites overlap with that of the public under competitive authoritarianism? While previous studies examined the overlap of the priorities of elites and ordinary citizens in democracies, our knowledge is still limited when we move beyond these contexts. This article aims to contribute to the democratisation and legislative politics literature by testing congruence of issue priorities under competitive authoritarianism. Analysing more than 10,000 legislative texts from the 2012 Moroccan parliament, we found high levels of congruence between the issue priorities of legislators and citizens, especially in non-legislative activities (i.e. parliamentary questions). Moreover, contrary to earlier studies on clientelism and citizen-elite linkage in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, our results demonstrate a higher correlation between the priorities of the two largest political parties and the mass public, when compared with those parties' core supporters.

Previous work on political tolerance has overwhelmingly focused on established democracies. Consequently, our knowledge continues to be limited with regard to the drivers of tolerance in less democratic transitional and nondemocratic settings. In this paper, we examine what could best promote tolerance of least-favored political groups in such contexts. We use a survey experiment in Egypt to test competing theories through exposing respondents to different primes, emphasizing the importance of tolerance on the basis of religious, economic, or government endorsements. Respondents were then asked questions to gauge their tolerance levels toward their least-favored group. We control for the level of trust in government, religiosity, interpersonal trust, contact, and political knowledge. Our data show soaring levels of intolerance among Egyptians. However, we found evidence that priming respondents with the economic benefits of having a tolerant society is the most effective way to promote tolerant attitudes, especially among those with lower levels of education and younger age groups. Additionally, our analysis demonstrated that respondents' level of trust in government has a strong effect on tolerance attitudes.

Extant studies have predominantly focused on women's numerical presence in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)'s legislatures, yet, research examining the role played by female politicians continues to be limited. To bridge this gap, we study one of the most important, albeit overlooked,
bodies within these assemblies: legislative committees. Using an original dataset on committee memberships (n=4580), our data show that females are significantly marginalized from influential committees and tend to be sidelined to social issues and women's committees. To explain this, we develop
a theory of provisional gender stereotyping. We argue that the duration of quota implementation shapes women's access to influential committees. We focus on two mechanisms to support our argument: a redistribution of power dynamics within legislative bodies and women's political expertise.

Abstract
Do citizens evaluate quota and non-quota politicians similarly? Do voters perceive quota-elected politicians as less competent and autonomous? Despite the proliferation of gender quotas, it remains unclear how citizens view female quota politicians compared to their non-quota male and female counterparts. This is particularly important in electoral systems where competitive and reserved seats both exist. We conducted a vignette experiment in Morocco where we randomized information about how politicians were elected and their legislative behavior. We find no evidence that voters evaluate quota women as less competent than non-quota male and female politicians. Our data demonstrate partial support for the argument that quota women are perceived as pawns of their parties, although information about legislative behavior can mitigate this perception.

Teaching gender politics has been an increasingly contentious topic in established democracies, with instructors encountering a myriad of pedagogical, institutional, and ideological challenges (Butler 2021; Evans 2019).1 Challenges to teaching gender politics are exacerbated in nondemocratic contexts, where academic institutions operate under close regime scrutiny and surveillance, and where patterns of autocratic power structures are prevalent in society and often reproduced in the classroom. While extant studies have shed important light on some of the trends and issues associated with teaching gender politics in established democracies (Bayes 2012; Han and Heldman 2019; Lyle-Gonga 2013), our knowledge remains limited when it comes to teaching gender and politics of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in Western institutions as well as within the MENA region. Understanding these challenges is particularly relevant given that the MENA region is diverse and has long been "othered," "racialized," and "orientalized" in Western discourse (Ahmed 1992; Said 1978), with direct implications for teaching gender and politics of the Middle East in local academic institutions as well as in the West.

ABSTRACTThis article explores the differential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the productivity of male and female academics and whether the ongoing health crisis will exacerbate further the existing gender gap in academia in both the short and long terms. We present early evidence of the pandemic's disproportionate effect on women's research productivity using online survey data supplemented by interview data with regional and international female political scientists. The interviews and survey findings reveal gender disparities in perceived research productivity and service workloads during the pandemic. The results also shed initial light on the pandemic's impact on the research productivity of academics who are parents, especially among women.

How does the gender composition of deliberative committees affect citizens' evaluations of decision-making processes? Do citizens perceive decisions made by gender-balanced, legislative bodies as more legitimate than those made by all-male bodies? Extant work on the link between women's descriptive representation and perceptions of democratic legitimacy in advanced democracies finds the equal presence of women legitimizes decision-making processes. However, this relationship has not been tested in more patriarchal, less democratic settings. We employ survey experiments in Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia to investigate how citizens respond to gender representation in committees. We find that women's presence promotes
citizens' perceptions of the legitimacy of committee processes and outcomes, and moreover, that pro-women decisions are associated with higher levels of perceived legitimacy. Thus, this study demonstrates remarkable robustness of findings from theWest regarding gender representation and contributes to the burgeoning literature on women's descriptive representation, and women and politics in gender conservative settings

How does the gender composition of deliberative committees affect citizens' evaluations of their decision-making processes? Do citizens perceive decisions made by gender-balanced, legislative bodies as more legitimate than those made by all-male bodies? Extant work on the link between women's descriptive representation and perceptions of democratic legitimacy in advanced democracies finds the equal presence of women legitimizes decision-making. However, this relationship has not been tested in more patriarchal, less democratic settings. We employ survey experiments in Jordan, Morocco, and Tunisia to investigate how citizens respond to gender representation in committees. We find that women's presence promotes citizens' perceptions of the legitimacy of committee processes and outcomes and, moreover, that pro-women decisions are associated with higher levels of perceived legitimacy. Thus, this study demonstrates the robustness of findings from the West regarding gender representation and contributes to the burgeoning literature on women and politics.