Tag: electoral competition

Improving Women’s Political Representation Beyond Gender Quotas

Posted on October 20, 2025 | Policy Brief

Women waving Turkish flags during a political rally, symbolizing support for Political Representation Gender Quotas in Turkey.

While gender gaps in politics have narrowed considerably in recent decades, large disparities remain in several countries, especially those where binding gender quota laws have not been adopted. What are alternative pathways for increasing women’s political representation in these countries? We investigate one such pathway in the context of Turkey. A conservative dominant party, Erdogan’s AKP, is often challenged in local elections by a Kurdish party that promotes gender equality in electoral lists and in society more generally. Exploiting variation in Kurdish party wins in municipal elections during 2009-2019, we find that the Kurdish party winning leads AKP to increase its share of female candidates by 25 to 30% in the next election. Our data suggests that AKP’s response is primarily motivated by strategic considerations aimed at appealing to voters who may value gender-balanced representation. The implications of these findings extend beyond Turkey, suggesting that one party empowering women can help reduce gender gaps in lists across the board.

Pathways to Gender Equality in Political Participation

Across the world, women have historically been underrepresented in political institutions, but considerable progress has been made in recent decades. Legislated gender quotas are credited for having contributed significantly to such progress, especially in developing countries (Berevoescu and Ballington, 2021). Across different contexts, well-designed quotas have been shown to successfully increase the share of women in electoral lists and, although to a lesser extent, in legislative and leadership positions (see Campa and Hauser, 2020 for a review of this literature).

Research also suggests that the electoral system could influence women’s political participation, with more women being elected under proportional rather than majoritarian systems (Profeta and Woodhouse, 2022) and, within proportional systems, through closed rather than open lists (Gonzalez-Eiras and Sanz, 2021). Moreover, recent findings suggest introducing term-limits as a tool to boost women’s electoral prospects (Kansikas and Bagues, 2025).

However, despite the positive trends worldwide, large gender disparities in political representation persist in many countries. Some of the most entrenched inequalities are found in states governed by authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes promoting conservative values, where legal reforms to enhance gender equality are unlikely. For instance, the map in Figure 1, which assigns lighter shades of blue to countries where gender gaps in political empowerment are larger, shows that across Europe and Central Asia, four of the five lowest scoring countries are authoritarian or semi-authoritarian, namely Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Hungary and Turkey, which Freedom House ranks as “partly free” or “not free”.

Figure 1. Gender gaps in political empowerment

Source: World Economic Forum. Gender Gap Report 2025. Note: The figure shows country scores on the World Economic Forum’s Political Empowerment Index. Lighter shades of blue indicate a larger gender gap in political empowerment.

What are alternative pathways that may increase women’s political participation in such contexts, where gender quotas and other representation-enhancing electoral reforms are unlikely to be introduced?

In recent work – Campa et al. (2025) – we study one such pathway in the case of Turkey, namely the emergence of a competitive, albeit not dominant, party that commits to gender equality in lists and beyond.

Women’s Political Participation in Turkey

Despite early enfranchisement — municipal voting rights in 1930 and full suffrage in 1934 — women’s political representation in Turkey remains low. Women are severely under-represented in Parliament at around 20% after the 2023 elections. Turkey is also one of the 24 countries worldwide where women’s representation in local governance is below 15% (World Economic Forum). The share of female mayors was less than 0.5 percent between 1930 and 2004 (Koyuncu and Sumbas, 2016), with a minor increase observed since 2005. During this period, the share of female candidates in electoral lists for the municipal council also increased by 6 p.p., and the share of female councillors increased by 5 p.p., but as of 2019, these shares were still severely low, at, respectively, 14 and 12%.

AKP Versus the Kurdish Party

The under-representation of women in local governance masks stark differences between parties, especially between the ruling party, Erdogan’ Justice and Development Party (AKP henceforth), and one of the main opposition parties in local elections, the Kurdish party, which ran in 37% of the elections held between 2009 and 2019 and won 19% of them.

AKP is ideologically conservative and with a religious base. During the 20 years in power, it passed no law to increase women’s representation in politics, despite the vast gender gaps at all levels of government.

The Kurdish party instead stands out in the Turkish political landscape for its commitment to gender equality in many areas of society, including politics. For instance, currently the party pledges to enact a gender-mixed co-leadership system at the party level as well as a “zipper quota” in its electoral lists, and more generally advocates for a gender equal society “starting with the local governments” (see the party’s official website). Both the mixed-leadership system and a version of the candidate quota have been in place for two decades.

As a result, the share of female candidates for the municipal council is much higher in electoral lists associated with the Kurdish party, at 21% on average over the period 2009-2019, as compared to AKP’s 11%. The Kurdish party’s share of female candidates is also remarkably high in comparison to the other major opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP henceforth), which averages 13% female representation in its local electoral lists. The higher feminisation of the Kurdish party’s lists is reflected in the share of women elected: on average, only 6% of the councillors elected with AKP are women; this number goes up to 12% for CHP and jumps to 28% for the Kurdish party (see Figures 2 and 3).

Figure 2. Female share in candidate lists in municipal elections in Turkey.

Source: Author’s calculation based on own digitisation of data released by Turkey’s Higher Election Council (YSK). Note: The figure shows the share of women in candidates’ lists for the election of municipal councillors by party, focusing on the major party that governs at the central level (AKP) and its two main competitors at the local level (CHP and the Kurdish party).

Figure 3. Share of women elected as municipal councillors in Turkey, by party.

Source: Author’s calculation based on own digitisation of data released by Turkey’s Higher Election Council (YSK). Note: The figure shows the share of women elected as municipal councillors by party, focusing on the major party that governs at the central level (AKP) and its two main competitors at the local level (CHP and the Kurdish party).

We also note that the Kurdish party tends to elect a much larger share of female mayors than its competitors. According to the High Election Council (YSK) Election Statistics, in the 2009, 2014, and 2019 elections, the share of female mayors elected by the Kurdish party was respectively 21, 30, and 45%, whereas AKP elected less than 1% of female mayors in 2009, and this percentage remained stable at 1% in the 2014 and 2019 elections.

The Effect of a Kurdish Party’s Win on AKP’s Behaviour

Against this background and given the recent improvement in the share of female candidates across all parties (see Figure 2), we ask whether a Kurdish party victory prompts AKP to improve the gender equality in its lists in subsequent elections. By studying this question, we hope to contribute to shedding light on the forces that might help close gender gaps in political representation in relatively traditional societies governed by authoritarian or semi-authoritarian governments, where the under-representation of women in political institutions is particularly severe and gender quotas are unlikely to be adopted.

Using a novel dataset covering municipal council elections in Turkey in 2009, 2014, and 2019 —including candidates’ gender —we exploit within-municipality variation in Kurdish party victories to identify their impact on AKP’s female candidates’ share. We find that a Kurdish party win leads to a 2.8 to 3.4 p.p. increase in AKP female share of candidates in the next election, representing a 25–30% increase from a baseline of 11 p.p.; the estimate is robust across different econometric specifications, and we document that AKP lists were not on a differential trend in terms of share of female candidates in places where the Kurdish party wins – in other words, the increase in female candidates is only subsequent to the Kurdish party victory, strongly suggesting that it is indeed the result of AKP’s response to the growing popularity of the Kurdish party, and not the product of a secular trend of growing women’s representation. We also find that a win from another major opposition party, CHP, prompts smaller and only marginally statistically significant increases in female representation, suggesting that it is not just electoral competition that would force AKP to improve the selection of its candidates, but the Kurdish party’s gender focus that matters.

Why does AKP respond to a Kurdish victory by increasing its share of female candidates? Its behaviour could be strategic — appealing to voters who appear to care about some form of gender balance in lists — or stem from learning through exposure to capable female councillors. To gauge the relative importance of these different explanations, we exploit a special feature of the Turkish electoral system, namely parties submitting, together with the “main” list of candidates to be selected by voters, a “special quota” list containing the candidates directly assigned to the municipal council by the party if it wins the plurality vote. Such a list is not very salient to voters, and often not visible to them. We find no increase in women on AKP’s special lists after the Kurdish party wins, indicating the motive is likely an electoral strategy rather than internal reform.

Conclusion

Across the world, women have historically been underrepresented in political institutions. While gender gaps in political participation have narrowed considerably in recent decades, particularly due to the adoption of gender quotas, large disparities remain in many countries. Some of the most entrenched inequalities are found in states governed by authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes, where legal reforms to promote gender equality in politics are unlikely. Understanding alternative pathways for increasing women’s political representation in these contexts is a pressing challenge. We investigate one such pathway in the case of Turkey.

Although the ruling party, AKP, has remained resistant to gender-based reforms, it has increasingly faced local-level competition from a Kurdish party that consistently champions gender equality. Leveraging a new dataset covering municipal council elections in 2009, 2014, and 2019, we find that when the Kurdish party wins a municipality, AKP increases the share of female candidates in its master list by approximately 25 to 30% in the subsequent election.

The implications of these findings extend beyond the Turkish case. In political systems where institutional reform is unlikely, competitive pressure from parties that prioritise gender equality can still drive changes in political behaviour. Even without quotas, such parties can shift norms and electoral expectations, thereby inducing rival parties to adopt more inclusive practices.

References

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.

The Polish Presidential Elections 2025: Can the Democratic Coalition Complete Their 2023 Victory?

Posted on May 26, 2025 | Policy Brief

Presidential Palace, Warsaw, Poland - representing the Polish Presidential Elections 2025.

It is safe to say that the outcome of the second round of the Polish presidential elections, scheduled for June 1, 2025, will determine the potential for significant structural reforms in the country in the coming years. The two candidates are: Karol Nawrocki, officially declared as a ‘civic candidate’ (though for all practical purposes associated with the previous government’s Law and Justice party, Prawo i Sprawiedliwość – PiS), and Rafał Trzaskowski representing the main coalition party in the current government, the Civic Platform (Platforma Obywatelska), which came to power after the parliamentary elections in October 2023. In the first round of the 2025 presidential election, which took place on May 18, 2025, Rafał Trzaskowski came first with 31.4 percent of the votes and Karol Nawrocki second with 29.5 percent. This policy brief explores the mechanisms through which the Polish President can influence current policy, using past economic initiatives as illustrative examples. It also examines the results of the first round of the election in greater depth and highlights key areas where reforms would likely face significant obstacles, were Karol Nawrocki to win the decisive second round.

What Can the Polish President Do?

Although elected in a popular vote, the Polish President’s power in terms of influence on policies is highly limited. The President acts as the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Poland and is officially responsible for representing Poland on the international arena. However, most of the executive power in Poland lies with the government, which in turn requires the support of the Parliament.

That said, the past ten years of Polish politics—the years under the outgoing President Andrzej Duda—have shown that a government with only a narrow parliamentary majority can be highly dependent on the President. Its effectiveness may be either enhanced by a cooperative President or significantly constrained through the use of the presidential veto on legislative initiatives.

Andrzej Duda, who was picked as a surprise candidate to represent the Law and Justice party—in a similar manner to Karol Nawrocki today— won the elections in 2015. He facilitated a series of destructive reforms in the areas of the judiciary, education, and the labor market in the years Law and Justice party headed the government; later he blocked many of the current government’s efforts to reverse those policies.

The outcome of the vote on June 1, 2025, will therefore be crucial for the prospects of a clear return to democratic standards in Poland, and for the deeper structural reforms needed to place the Polish economy on a long-term development path. The winning candidate will also either facilitate coordinated efforts in international policy and joint European initiatives, or act to obstruct the current government’s actions in this area—including key policies related to support for Ukraine.

The President’s Influence on Economic Policy: Electoral Promises vs. Implementation

The limited executive power of the Polish President does not stop the candidates from coming forward with rich electoral programmes. These cover many areas outside of the President’s direct sphere of influence, including economic policies.

Using Andrzej Duda’s presidency as an example, it seems that while some of these are eventually implemented (although typically not without political frictions involving the Parliament) others tend to be more of electoral slogans than areas of real concern:

In 2015, Andrzej Duda campaigned on two major economic initiatives: lowering the retirement age and substantially increasing the main income tax allowance. In the first case, he came forward with a legislative proposal to the Parliament almost immediately after being elected, aimed at restoring the lower retirement age of 60 for women and 65 for men. Although the government had campaigned on the same reform before taking office, the Parliament froze Duda’s initiative for a year in an effort to introduce less drastic changes to pension eligibility criteria. Eventually, political considerations and the weight of the 2015 electoral promises prevailed. As a result, Poland is the only EU country with as big as a five-year gap in the retirement age between men and women. The electoral tax reduction proposal was, however, quickly abandoned. As shown in a recent commentary (Myck et al. 2025a), Duda not only failed to deliver on this promise but, over his ten-year presidency, largely ignored tax policy altogether—both in terms of initiating legislation and engaging in public debate on fiscal matters.

Initiatives by earlier presidents also show that while Polish presidents are always dependent on the Parliament, they can exert some influence over economic policy. For example, Bronisław Komorowski (in office 2010-2015) put forward a legislative initiative to change tax regulations for families with children, which the government later took on board. While the government’s implemented regulations differed from Komorowski’s proposal, they were still in line with his objectives (Myck et al. 2013).

These examples clearly illustrate that the success of any initiative from the president’s office ultimately depends on the parliamentary majority the President is able to mobilize. Based on the electoral promises of this year’s top candidates, such a majority seems highly unlikely regarding one of the major electoral promises of Law and Justice’s candidate, Karol Nawrocki. Nawrocki has proposed a substantial income tax reduction for families with 2 or more children, designed in a way that would heavily benefit the richest families (Myck et al. 2025b). The reform is estimated to cost about 19bn PLN (0.5 percent of GDP) per year, with over 60 percent of the total amount benefiting families in the top income quintile. Such a measure is extremely unlikely to gain support not only from the current government, but also—given its distributional consequences—from within Nawrocki’s own political base. One way to interpret this is that much like the deep tax cuts proposed by Andrzej Duda in 2015, Nawrocki’s tax proposal bears the hallmarks of a simple and appealing campaign slogan that is likely to be forgotten, whether or not he wins the election.

The First Round Results and Final Vote Prospects

While Rafał Trzaskowski placed first in the initial round of voting on May 18, 2025, the difference between the top two candidates came down to only 1.8 percentage points. This suggests a very close race in the second round and intensive electoral campaigning in the days leading up to the election. How close the runoff will be depends on the split of votes among those who supported other candidates in the first round, as well as their participation levels in the second round.

In the first round the top seven candidates collected 96.1 percent of the votes in total. Two candidates representing the current coalition parties received 5.0 percent (Szymon Hołownia) and 4.2 percent (Magdalena Biejat) of the votes, respectively. Two other main right-wing candidates collected a combined 21.2 percent: Sławomir Mentzen (Konfederacja party) received 14.8 percent, and Grzegorz Braun (Wolność party) received 6.3 percent. Adrian Zandberg, representing the left-wing opposition (Razem party), received 4.9 percent.

If those who voted for the government coalition candidates fully shift their votes to Trzaskowski in the second round, he could count for about 40.6 percent of the vote – still far short of the necessary majority. To secure the win, he would need to collect some support from both the left and the right. However, it is unlikely that voters in either of these cases unilaterally shift support to one of the top candidates.

As shown in Figure 1 below the main candidates will have to make strong appeals to the youngest voters (aged 18-29), the majority of whom supported Mentzen (34.8 percent) and Zandberg (18.7 percent). Trzaskowski is more likely to attract support from women and better educated voters. Based on the results of the first round, Nawrocki, can count on voters with less than tertiary education and on slightly more votes from men. While Biejat and Hołownia have already publicly endorsed  Trzaskowski, the other candidates have so far refrained from making any declarations of support.

The public debate ahead of the second round is likely to focus on military and economic security, migration and support for Ukraine (including its refugee population in Poland). The final round of the 2025 presidential race in Poland is likely to be extremely close and highly polarising.

Figure 1. Poll results from the first round in the Polish Presidential Elections 2025, by demographics

Source: TVP info. Note: Late poll results by IPSOS, based on the results from 90 percent of the polling stations.

Completing the 2023 Parliamentary Victory

The democratic, pro-European coalition that won a parliamentary majority in October 2023 has so far only been partly successful in restoring the rule of law and a functioning system of checks and balances after their dismantling by the previous government. Other electoral promises from 2023—such as the liberalization of abortion rules, legislation on same-sex partnerships, and reform of the public media—remain to be implemented.  The government implemented some important changes in the public media and judiciary, but broader reforms were either vetoed by President Duda or postponed due to the likelihood of his opposition.

On a number of occasions Duda also used a procedure called ‘preventive control’. Under such procedure, legislation is sent to the Constitutional Tribunal before the President decides whether to sign it or not. Since the Constitutional Tribunal has been central to controversies over judicial reforms introduced by the previous government, such decisions are simply another form of delaying the implementation of new legislation. There is thus little doubt that Rafał Trzaskowski’s victory on June 1st, 2025, is essential for the current government. It would enable reforms crucial for the return of the rule of law, for bringing back the Polish legal system in line with decisions of the European Court of Justice, and for advancing other major reforms in public media, women’s and minority rights, and more. From this point of view Karol Nawrocki’s win on June 1st, 2025, is key for the parties of the previous government, to stop these fundamentally important reforms.

The current government is facing important challenges in many policy areas and effective  cooperation with the new President will be fundamental. Given the current level of government debt and high budget deficits, it will have to take significant steps to consolidate public finances. At the same time, it has committed to increasing spending on healthcare and education, while maintaining one of the highest levels of military spending among NATO countries.  The government must also handle the challenges of demographic ageing and migration flows – all in the context of the continuing Russian aggression in Ukraine, and the overall global uncertainly. Even with strong presidential support, tackling all these issues will be challenging.Facing them under an antagonistic Head of State—in the case of Nawrocki’s victory—would not only make the government’s task significantly harder, it with also have serious implications for medium-term political stability in Poland and potentially other European countries.

References

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.

Electoral Competition and Political Selection

Posted on January 18, 2016 | Policy Brief

20160118 FREE Network Policy Brief Featured Image

Research in political economy has recently rediscovered that individuals, and not only institutions, matter for economic outcomes: not all politicians are of the same quality. Competition in the political market may have another virtue than its traditional disciplining role: it may favor the selection of good politicians. In a recent paper, Marijn Verschelde and I study the (time-varying) relationship between political competition and the quality of French deputies.

Note: this column draws heavily on a paper written with Marijn Verschelde, which is available here. The figures are taken from it.

How to design the political selection mechanism in order to favor the emergence of “good” politicians? The traditional public-choice literature emphasized the role of institutions in shaping the behavior of politicians, but have paid little attention, if any, to the individual decision maker. From this point of view, it is purely illusive to seek for “morally superior agents who will use their powers in some public interest” (Buchanan, 1989): all politicians are purely self-interested agents who have to be incentivized to act in accordance with voters’ preferences.

However, a recent stream of empirical papers provides evidence that individual politicians matter for economic outcomes (Besley et al., 2011; Jones and Olken, 2005). In other words, as suggested by common sense, they are not all cut from the same cloth. This emphasizes the need not only to shape institutions in order to discipline incumbent politicians, but also to select “good” decision makers.

Several determinants have been shown to affect political selection: the wage of politicians (Besley, 2004; Messner and Polborn, 2004), the transparency of politics (Mattozzi and Merlo, 2007), the institutional flexibility (Acemoglu et al., 2010), and reservation quotas (Besley et al., 2005; Besley et al., 2013). In addition to a well-known disciplining effect (for instance Stigler, 1972, and Becker, 1983), electoral competition is also likely to enhance this selection process as well (Galasso and Nannicini, 2011): competition pushes parties to select candidates of good quality in order to seduce neutral voters, who, contrary to partisans, are sensitive to the quality of the candidates. As recruiting experts are difficult, hence costly, parties will allocate them in the most contested districts only.

In a recent paper, Marijn Verschelde and I investigate the relationship between quality and competition in the case of the French National Assembly. Measuring the quality of politicians is not straightforward. A wide theoretical definition of quality is a combination of competence and motivation. Such a broad definition is challenging to operationalize in empirical work. Some papers approximate quality by variables like level of schooling and experience of politicians (Baltrunaite et al., 2014; Besley et al., 2011; Kotakorpi and Poutvaara, 2011), while others use their absenteeism rate or vote attendance (Galasso and Nannicini, 2011; Gagliarducci and Nannicini, 2013). We innovate by proposing a measure of quality based on productivity, i.e., on what deputies actually do. We gathered from the Assemblée Nationale archive all the information that has been systematically collected over the years for each deputy and for each year from 1958 to 2012: (i) propositions of law, (ii) oral questions, (iii) reports, and (iv) debates in which the deputy has been involved in. From these four aspects of parliamentary work, we compute a composite indicator of productivity (bounded between 0 and 1, higher values indicating higher performance). To measure political competition, we use a measure based on a Herfindahl index of the vote shares at the first round (bounded between 0 and 1, larger values indicating stiffer competition).

Figure 1. Estimated Productivity Conditional on Competition

fig1

We document a strong effect of competition on deputies’ productivity, in accordance with the theoretical framework. Figure 1 displays the estimated level of productivity as a function of the degree of competition, controlling for personal (age, schooling, etc.) and political (party, committee, and the likes) variables. Everything else equal, a deputy elected in the a priori most contested district is estimated to reach a productivity close to 0.8, while if she is elected in a safe district her productivity is estimated to be at most 0.6. This means that the productivity of deputies can vary by up to 30% depending on the degree of contestability. This relation holds even after minimizing problems of potential reversed causality and controlling for reelection incentives, indicating that we actually observe a selection effect.

Considering the time span of our dataset, it is interesting to observe how the positive relationship between electoral competition and political selection evolved over time. The most noticeable evolution over the second part of the XXth century in France is certainly the ideological convergence after the 80’s, marked with the reconciliation of the Socialist Party with the market and the rise of the Pensée unique (“one track thinking”, Knapp and Wright, 2001). Such an evolution should have decreased ideological voting and produced more competence-based elections, hence increasing the effect of competition on quality.

Figure 2. Effect of Competition over Time

fig2

However, we uncover a clear inverse-U shaped evolution. Figure 2 plots the effect of competition conditional on the year: the effect of electoral competition sharply increased till the 1980’s, but it has continuously decreased since then. How to explain this pattern? A possible explanation is the increased voters volatility, i.e., a higher unpredictability in voters’ behavior. If at first sight this phenomenon indicates an increase in the share of neutral voters, this is however not necessarily the case. Instead of moving from partisanship to neutrality, it is possible that supporters of a party A at election t turn into supporters of party B at election t+1. Partisans disappointed by the behavior of their party while in office might provide an unconditional support to the competing party at the next election. This is consistent with the fact that not any party succeeded to win two national elections in a row since the 80’s.

Conclusion

Our analysis point out a clear positive relationship between electoral competition and the quality of the French deputies, measured by a composite indicator of productivity. Overall, deputies elected in contested districts tend to perform better than others. From a public policy perspective, this result suggests that reforms enhancing political competition (for instance by redistricting jurisdiction in a proper way or by ensuring a fair access to media to competing parties) should be supported. However, we observe that the impact of competition increased till the 80’s, but continuously decreases since then. This opens the door for a vast research agenda, as it indicate that drivers of an efficient selection mechanism are not necessarily stable over time.

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References

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  • Gavoille, N., Verschelde, M., 2015. Electoral competition and political selection: An analysis of the productivity of French politicians, 1958-2012. Condorcet Center working paper series.
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