NICEP Seminar: Mona Morgan-Collins (Durham University)

Competing for new votes: Mobilization of women in the wake of democratization

Abstract: How were newly enfranchised women mobilized? I argue that the mobilization of newly enfranchised women was on average more costly, which reduced politicians’ incentives to mobilize women. Building on elite models of mobilization, I then theorize that the extent of women’s undermobilization depends on an electoral system and local level of political competition. Under SMDs, politicians had an incentive to mobilize a greater share of women in the most competitive districts. Under PR, parties had an incentive to mobilize a greater share of women in the most uncompetitive within-district localities. I provide support for my theory using sex-separated turnout data after the introduction of women’s suffrage and PR in Norway and then demonstrate generalizability of my results using sex separated election data from five additional elections in three additional countries. The findings challenge the conventional wisdom that suffrage ‘automatically’ spurs politicians' interests in new electorates and therefore improves their representation.