Quasi-experimental Evidence on the Effect of Gender on Bargaining over Government Formation

Zeit: 
28.10.2019 - 12:00 bis 13:30
Ort: 
A 5,6 Raum A 231
Art der Veranstaltung: 
AB B-Kolloquium
Vortragende/r: 
Prof. Albert Falcó-Gimeno
Zugehörigkeit des Vortragenden: 
Universität Barcelona
Beschreibung: 

Women are strongly under-represented in top political positions. Although there is an increase in the number of women in politics, they are far from reaching equality in the first line of power. In this paper, we examine whether the government formation process can help explain the gender gap in top positions through the analysis of the effect party leaders’ gender on their ability to capitalize on political power in negotiations to form a new government following elections. We leverage the asif random assignment of a bargaining advantage in close local elections in Spain and apply a regression discontinuity design to compare the capacity to secure the mayor’s position of parties led by female/male politicians that win by a narrow margin. We find that women are about 25 percentage points less likely to be appointed mayor when they come first in elections, although their parties manage to get in the governing coalition anyway. The implications of several potential mechanisms are tested and no clear evidence is found to claim that this is a result of discrimination toward female politicians, or differences in policy-seeking motivations or leadership style. This paper contributes to the understanding of the role of personal characteristics in the political process as well as of how bargaining in politics works, and have far-reaching implications for gender equality and the quality of representation.