http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3029-691X
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ABSTRACT
Why do so many developing countries have gender quota policies? This article argues that foreign aid programmes influence developing countries to adopt policies aimed at fulfilling international norms regarding gender equality. This relationship is driven by two causal mechanisms. On the one hand, countries may use gender quotas as a signal to improve their standing in the international hierarchy, possibly as an end unto itself, but more likely as a means towards ensuring future aid flows. On the other, countries may adopt gender quotas as a result of successful foreign aid interventions specifically designed to promote women’s empowerment. I test these two causal mechanisms using data on foreign aid commitments to 173 non-OECD countries from 1974 to 2012. The results suggest that while programmes targeting women’s empowerment may have some influence on quota adoption, developing countries dependent on United States foreign aid are also likely to use gender quotas as signalling devices rather than as a result of ongoing liberalization efforts.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to express her gratitude to Ms. Jenny Leonard who provided research assistance on this project under the Department of Political Science Junior Fellows Program at the University of Florida; Sarah Sunn Bush (Temple University) who generously shared her dataset; mentors at the University of Florida who gave valuable feedback on earlier drafts, including Michael Bernhard, Sebastian Elischer, Amie Kreppel, and Benjamin Smith; and two anonymous reviewers.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
ORCID
Amanda B. Edgell http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3029-691X
Notes
1 Celis et al., “The Rise of Gender Quota Laws,” 58.
2 Quota Project, Global Database of Quotas for Women; World Bank, World Development Indicators 2016. Low- and lower-middle income status based on World Bank, “World Bank Country and Lending Groups.”
3 Huntington, The Third Wave.
4 Dahl, Polyarchy.
5 Towns, Women and States, 173–182.
6 Tierney, et al., “More Dollars than Sense.”.
7 Fukuyama, “The End of History?”; Levitksy and Way, Competitive Authoritarianism, 17.
8 Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Consolidation, 74.
9 Ibid, 76.
10 Whitehead, International Dimensions, 21.
11 Levitsky and Way, Competitive Authoritarianism, 17.
12 Ibid.
13 Whitehead, International Dimensions, 9.
14 Diamond, “Elections without Democracy.”
15 Ghandi, Political Institutions; Hyde, The Pseudo-Democrat's Dilemma; McNamara, “Rational Fictions”; Schedler, Electoral Authoritarianism.
16 Knack, “Does Foreign Aid Promote Democracy?”; Finkel et al., “The Effects of U.S. Foreign Assistance.”
17 Krook, “Candidate Gender Quotas,” for a review.
18 Hughes et al., “Transnational Women's Activism.”
19 Towns, Women and States, 158.
20 Ibid, 161.
21 Bush, “International Politics”; Pospieszna “Democracy Assistance”; USAID/Mali, “Malian govt adopts gender quota.”
22 This does not mean that the adoption of pro-West policies always results in foreign aid dividends, only that elites may do so to improve the odds. For example, see Nielsen and Simmons, “Rewards for Ratification.”
23 World Bank, Integrating Gender.
24 Towns, Women and States, 181.
25 E.g. Hughes et al., Women in Power Project.
26 Sater, “Changing Politics”.
27 Chowdhury, “The Implementation of Quotas”; Goetz, “The Problem of Patronage”; during recent debates regarding the implementation of the two-thirds gender quota in Kenya, lawmakers argued for nomination of female MPs after elections to safeguard against nomination of girlfriends and mistresses who might be easily co-opted by males to shore up party dominance; e.g. National Assembly of Kenya, “National Assembly Official Report,” 22–23.
28 Schedler, Electoral Authoritarianism, 12.
29 Ghandi, Political Institutions; Hyde, The Pseudo-Democrat's Dilemma; Schedler, Electoral Authoritarianism.
30 A few cases were also coded based on IPU, Parline.
31 Eritrea and South Sudan adopted gender quotas within their first two years of existence. Therefore, no data are available on prior liberalization. Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, and Guinea each experience two events (see ).
32 For additional models including these two cases, see .
33 Arato, Constitution Making; Their, “The Making of a Constitution.” Also see .
34 Most countries are left censored, entering the dataset at t>0, because female standing existed prior to 1974.
35 Carter and Signorino, “Back to the Future.”
36 Tierney, et al., “More Dollars than Sense.”
37 GDP data come from the United Nations National Accounts Main Aggregates and the World Bank World Development Indicators 2016. Before calculating the percentage, I convert the AidData commitment amount values from constant 2011 US dollars to current US dollars using AidData's currency deflator.
38 See Knack, “Does Foreign Aid Promote Democracy?”; Bräutigam and Knack, “Foreign Aid, Institutions, and Governance.” Alternatively (and perhaps ideally), I could operationalize this as share of government expenditures, but these data are missing for over half of the country-years.
39 I take the total of all aid commitments earmarked for “Government and Civil Society” using the coalesced purpose codes 15000 to 15150, excluding aid for women's empowerment (coalesced purpose code 15164). For women's empowerment and development assistance, I sum commitments with coalesced purpose codes 15164 and 42010. See the online codebook for a list of the specific types of programmes included.
40 Anderson and Swiss, “Peace Accords.” Population data from United Nations, National Accounts Main Aggregates and World Bank, World Development Indicators 2016. See for models using the natural log, rather than per capita estimates. The results are qualitatively the same.
41 When using a continuous by continuous interaction – such as foreign aid dependence X level of democracy, the coefficient for the base term (i.e. ßforeign aid and ßdemocracy) is the predicted effect of when the interacted variable is zero.
42 This requires at least two observation years. In the sample, several countries formed through disintegration (e.g. Yugoslavia), separation (e.g. Ethiopia and Eritrea), or merger (e.g. South and North Yemen). To deal with these cases, I treat them as entirely new countries, thus the first two years of their existence are missing from the data.
43 Freedom House, Freedom in the World.
44 Freedom House, “Our History.”
45 Founded in 2004, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) is an independent, bilateral US foreign aid agency. To be eligible for funding, countries must pass a hard “democratic rights” hurdle, scoring high enough on Freedom House civil liberties and/or political rights. MCC, “Selection Reports.”
46 Bush, “International Politics.”
47 See the online codebook, Supplement S1 for more details.
48 Hyde and Marinov, NELDA 4.0. Sources for missing values include: Bush, “International Politics”; Coppedge, et al. “V-Dem”; Hyde, “Catch Us”; Kelley, Data on International Election Monitoring. For additional sources see online codebook, supplement S2.
49 Bauer, “‘A Lot of Head Wraps’”; Krook, “Candidate Gender Quotas.”
50 Dahlerup and Norris, “On the Fast Track.”
51 Regions include: sub-Saharan Africa; Middle East and North Africa; Latin America and the Caribbean; Asia; Post-Communist Eurasia; Oceania; and Western countries.
52 Franceschet et al., The Impact of Gender Quotas; Hughes et al., “Transnational Women's Activism.”
53 Tripp, et al., African Women's Movements; Tripp, Women & Politics in Uganda.
54 Data from Bush, “International Politics.”
55 Countries that previously achieved the 30% threshold without legal quotas are coded as one (1) and all others are coded as zero (0).
56 Dahlerup, “From a Small to a Large Minority”; Childs and Krook, ““Critical Mass Theory.” In 1995, the UNDP Human Development Report and the UN Beijing Platform both set a goal of reaching 30% representation for women worldwide. UNDP, Human Development Report; UN, “Beijing Declaration.”
57 Specifically, voluntary quotas, CEDAW reservations, and leftist regime orientation. Data on women's representation from Coppedge et al., “V-Dem”; IPU, Parline; Paxton et al., Women in Parliament.
58 Data from Quota Project, Global Database of Quotas for Women; Thames and Williams, Contagious Representation.
59 Anderson and Swiss, “Peace Accords”; Tajali, “Gender Quota Adoption”; Tripp and Kang, “The Global Impact of Quotas.”
60 Marshall, Major Episodes of Political Violence (MEPV). I also test for three election cycles (not reported); AIC and BIC scores suggest that five years fits slightly better. In and , I test for interactive effects between post-conflict and foreign aid. There is some support that US foreign aid has an increased effect on quota adoption in post-conflict cases, but the overall results do not change.
61 Bush, “International Politics”.
62 Anderson and Swiss, “Peace Accords”; Bush, “International Politics”; Hughes et al., “Transnational Women's Activism.”
63 UN, “Databases: 8. Convention.”
64 Krook et al., “Gender Quotas and Models of Citizenship”.
65 I use proportional and mixed systems as controls, replicating Hughes et al., “Transnational Women's Activism”. See .
66 Data from Paxton et al., Women in Parliament; Socialist International, “Member Parties of Socialist International”; Progressive Alliance, “Participants”; Party of European Socialists, “Members”; Beck et al., “New Tools in Comparative Political Economy”; and party manifestos. A party is coded as “leftist” if it meets the criteria for left-leaning. Centre-left parties are included only if they are members of Socialist International, the Progressive Alliance, and/ or the Party of European Socialists.
67 Charrad, States and Women's Rights; Fish, “Islam and Authoritarianism”; Paxton, “Women in National Legislatures”; Ross, “Oil, Islam, and Women”; and Tripp and Kang, “The Global Impact of Quotas.”
68 Maoz and Henderson, World Religion Dataset.
69 See . Anderson and Swiss, “Peace Accords.”
70 Bush, “International Politics.”
71 It also supports findings made elsewhere that U.S. endorsements of women in politics have little effect on popular support for women's representation. Bush and Jamal, “Anti-Americanism.”
72 Bush, The Taming of Democracy Assistance, 73–73.
73 See Paxton and Hughes, “The Increasing Effectiveness” for work in this area. presents initial models toward this goal. Foreign aid appears to have little influence on the size of quotas adopted, but other direct international interventions, like election monitors and democratizing peacekeeping missions, may encourage larger thresholds.
74 For examples see Fallon, Swiss, and Viterna. “Resolving the Democracy Paradox”; Paxton and Hughes, “The Increasing Effectiveness”; Tripp and Kang, “The Global Impact of Quotas.”
75 See Clayton, Josefsson, and Wang, “Present without Presence?”; Miguel, “Policy Priorities”; and Murray, “Parity and Legislative Competence.”
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Amanda B. Edgell
Amanda B. Edgell is a PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of Florida. She studies political institutions and regime transitions, with an emphasis on foreign aid, development, and gender politics.