Affirmative Gatekeeping

Affirmative Gatekeeping: Informal Influences on Behalf of Women Candidates Quinn M. Albaugh∗ First Draft: May 23, 2019 This Draft: November 1, 2019 Abstract Political parties increasingly use voluntary targets (or \soft quotas") as a way to increase women`s representation. How can party actors enforce these targets in practice? In this paper, I develop the concept of affirmative gatekeeping { party actors' attempts to use organizational resources in pursuit of the goal of increasing the nomination of members of marginalized groups. I assess the effectiveness of this approach through a field study of Lib- eral party nominations in a Canadian provincial election. I draw on a multi-method design that combines electoral results, political finance records, elite interviews and participant- observation of nominating conventions. I find that affirmative gatekeeping was effective in helping the Liberals meet their gender target. However, affirmative gatekeeping fell short on three important normative standards. First, it only produced a marginal increase in the number of women elected. Second, it did not institutionalize representation for future elec- tions. Third, it did not meaningfully increase the nomination of disadvantaged sub-groups of women. ∗Department of Politics and Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University. Please direct correspondence to [email protected]. I gratefully acknowledge support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Princeton Canadian Studies and the Mamdouha S. Bobst Centre for Peace and Justice. Chris Achen, Julia Azari, Elizabeth Baisley, Bill Cross, Harry Doshay, Paul Frymer, Andrew Proctor, Dara Strolovitch and participants at the 2019 Canadian Political Science Association annual meeting and the 2019 American Political Science Association graciously provided comments on a previous draft. Any errors are, of course, my own. 1 Over the past few decades, feminist scholars and activists have focused considerable atten- tion on women`s representation in elected assemblies. In response, party organizations in many different countries have often adopted \voluntary targets," or \soft quotas," for women`s representation as an alternative to more institutionalized party and legal quotas (Krook et al., 2009, pp. 783-4). At the same time, feminist institutionalists have called for the need to open the \black box" of candidate selection to examine the activities that produce under-representation within party organizations (Kenny and Verge, 2016). However, existing scholarship largely focuses on how \gatekeeping" and informal influences over the nominations process keep members of marginalized groups out of nominations and, as a result, overlooks the potential of informal influences to support members of marginalized groups win candidacies.1 How do informal influences over the candidate selection process support party actors' attempts to ensure that the party meets the targets? I answer this question by putting forth the concept of affirmative gatekeeping. This concept includes both the goal of increasing the representation of a marginalized group and a range of activities that help realize that goal in practice. While the focus of this paper is on women`s representation, I mean for the concept of affirmative gatekeeping to be general enough that it may apply to a range of historically marginalized groups, including (but not limited to) women, racial and ethnic minority groups, LGBTQ people, the working class. This concept shares some parallels with discussions of how \targets" have improved women`s representation. However, affirmative gatekeeping does not require the setting of an explicit target. Furthermore, the concept of affirmative gatekeeping goes beyond targets in addressing the range of organizational activities that various party actors use to influence the nominations process. In doing so, this argument contributes to the small but growing body of work that opens the \black box" of candidate selection to trace out the mechanisms of candidate selection (Bjarneg˚ard,2013; Kenny and Verge, 2016). I demonstrate how party actors engage in affirmative gatekeeping and what the consequences were for women`s representation in an in-depth multi-method case study of Liberal Party nominations in a single Canadian province { New Brunswick { that provides a clear case of affirmative gatekeeping.2 The Liberal leader's office successfully influenced nominations races to ensure the successful implementation of a voluntary target of nominating women in fifty percent of the seats not held by Liberal incumbents, despite resistance from local party actors.3 The small size of this case offers the possibility of observing firsthand (rather than assuming a priori) (1) which individuals had influence over the candidate selection process, (2) why these individuals sought to influence the candidate selection process in particular races and (3) how they influenced the 1For an exception, see Piscopo (2016). 2The field study included all four parties that won seats in the 2018 provincial election. This paper focuses on the Liberals because they are a case of affirmative gatekeeping, while the others are not. 3In this paper, I use the words \district" and \riding" interchangeably to refer to electoral districts. Riding is the everyday term in Canadian politics. However, I use the term \riding association" to refer to the individuals involved in the local electoral district association. 2 choice of the nominated candidate across districts. I do this through a multi-method research design that combines participant-observation of 25 district-level nominating conventions; 95 elite interviews with 69 individuals, including party insiders, potential candidates, nominated candidates, current and former elected representatives, cabinet ministers, party leaders and individuals involved with feminist organizations; and quantitative analyses that combine these qualitative materials with district-level electoral results and political finance records that include detailed information about nomination races.4 While affirmative gatekeeping was successful in this case in producing a substantial short-term increase in the number women nominated, this case study suggests that affirmative gatekeeping may have some important limitations. First, since affirmative gatekeeping necessarily takes place within party organizations, its ability to affect the numbers within elected assemblies depends on the party's performance at the polls. Second, affirmative gatekeeping on its own does not institutionalize group representation for future periods of candidate selection. Third, in practice, party insiders are likely to take a \single-axis" view of group representation that focuses solely on one line of marginalization. As a result, affirmative gatekeeping, like quotas, may fall short on the representation of \disadvantaged subgroups" of marginalized groups without particular efforts to incorporate intersectionality into the targets (Celis et al., 2014; Hughes, 2011).5 Party Organizations and Candidate Selection I begin with a few of the main findings of past work on candidate selection and under-represented groups. Since the early 1990s, studies of inequality in candidate selection have traditionally focused on \supply" { who is willing to run { and \demand" { whom \party gatekeepers" want to run (Norris and Lovenduski, 1995). The emerging consensus is that \demand" is more likely to be the explanation for continuing inequalities in representation along race/ethnicity, gender and class lines than \supply" (Ashe and Stewart, 2011; Ashe, 2017; Broockman et al., 2014; Carnes, 2016; Crowder-Meyer, 2013; Dancygier et al., 2015). Feminist institutionalists (rightly) note that the supply-and-demand metaphor misses how gendered institutions produce structural inequalities that disadvantage women (Krook, 2010) and have documented many forms of gender bias in institutions (Bjarneg˚ard,2013; Bjarneg˚ardand Kenny, 2015, 2016; Franceschet and Piscopo, 2008; Franceschet et al., 2012; Franceschet and Piscopo, 2014; Kenny and Verge, 2016). In 4Although it is not the primary focus of this paper, the activities identified in this paper call into question the prevailing wisdom that candidate selection in Canada is decentralized and that local party organizations are the ones who hold most of the influence over candidate selection (Carty, 1991, 2002, 2004; Carty and Eagles, 2005). This assumption is particularly strong in scholarship on gender and race in candidate selection (Cheng and Tavits, 2011; Medeiros et al., 2018; Tolley, 2019; Tremblay and Pelletier, 2001). Instead, the process is one in which both central and local party actors have influence over nominations, as recent Canadian parties scholarship would suggest Cross (2018); Pruysers and Cross (2016). 5For a discussion of intersectionality, see Crenshaw (1991), Cohen (1999) and Strolovitch (2007). For a discussion of the language around \disadvantaged subgroups" in particular, see Strolovitch (2007, pp. 6-11) 3 parties research, a considerable body of scholarship has emphasized the importance of conflicts within party organizations, particularly \local" and \central" party actors (Erickson and Carty, 1991; Pruysers and Cross, 2016). At the same time, the \UCLA School" of American parties research has demonstrated the usefulness of examining not only those who occupy formal roles within the party but influential actors within the \extended party network," including activists, interest group leaders and others (Cohen et al., 2009; Koger

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