DOCSLIB.ORG

Rethinking the Study of Electoral Politics in the Developing World: Reflections on the Indian Case

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Rethinking the Study of Electoral Politics in the Developing World: Reflections on the Indian Case Reflection Rethinking the Study of Electoral Politics in the Developing World: Reflections on the Indian Case Adam Michael Auerbach, Jennifer Bussell, Simon Chauchard, Francesca R. Jensenius, Gareth Nellis, Mark Schneider, Neelanjan Sircar, Pavithra Suryanarayan, Tariq Thachil, Milan Vaishnav, Rahul Verma and Adam Ziegfeld In the study of electoral politics and political behavior in the developing world, India is often considered to be an exemplar of the centrality of contingency in distributive politics, the role of ethnicity in shaping political behavior, and the organizational weakness of political parties. Whereas these axioms have some empirical basis, the massive changes in political practices, the vast variation in political patterns, and the burgeoning literature on subnational dynamics in India mean that such generalizations are not tenable. In this article, we consider research on India that compels us to rethink the contention that India neatly fits the prevailing wisdom in the comparative politics literature. Our objective is to elucidate how the many nuanced insights about Indian politics can improve our understanding of electoral behavior both across and within other countries, allowing us to question core assumptions in theories of comparative politics. he study of electoral politics and political behavior and diverse scholarship, a set of conventional wisdoms has T across the developing world has grown into a sub- emerged that structure our understanding of electoral stantial body of scholarship over the past several dynamics in the developing world. In particular, three decades. A hallmark of this literature has been to revise pieces of received wisdom stand out. models first developed to explain the politics of advanced First, electoral politics in the developing world is seen to industrial countries. While it would be unwise to speak of be dominated by various forms of “distributive politics” a unified “consensus” that has materialized out of this rich (Stokes et al. 2013), which stand in marked contrast with Adam Michael Auerbach is Assistant Professor in the School of International Service, American University (aauerba@ american.edu) and is the author of Demanding Development: The Politics of Public Goods Provision in India’s Urban Slums (Cambridge University Press, 2020). His research on politics and development in urban India also appears in the American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, Studies in Comparative International Development, World Development, and World Politics, among other journals. Jennifer Bussell is Faculty Director of the Center on Contemporary India and Associate Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley ([email protected]). Her research on India includes Corruption and Reform in India: Public Services in the Digital Age (Cambridge University Press, 2012) and Clients and Constituents: Political Responsiveness in Patronage Democracies (Oxford University Press, 2019). Simon Chauchard is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Leiden University ([email protected]). His research interests include ethnic politics, voting behavior, political representation, and politicians-citizens relations in India. His works have appeared in Political Opinion Quarterly, the American Political Science Review, Comparative Political Studies, the Journal of Politics, and Asian Survey. His book, Why Representation Matters: The Meaning of Ethnic Quotas in Rural India (Cambridge University Press, 2017), combines qualitative work and a series of innovative surveys to explore the impact of caste-based reservation policies on everyday intergroup relations in India’s villages. Francesca R. Jensenius is Professor of Political Science at the University of Oslo and Research Professor at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) ([email protected]). In Social Justice through Inclusion: The Consequences of Electoral Quotas in India (Oxford University Press 2017) she explored long-term effects of electoral quotas for the Scheduled Castes in India. Her work on state approaches to empowering minorities and women, party system institutionalization, and doi:10.1017/S1537592721000062 © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association 1 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 108.4.233.43, on 30 Mar 2021 at 20:32:36, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592721000062 Reflection | Rethinking the Study of Electoral Politics in the Developing World programmatic politics linked to tax-and-transfer policies. “vote-buying” as the dominant form of distributive polit- Prevailing notions of distributive politics are often pre- ics (Stokes 2005; Nichter 2008). mised on the idea of quid pro quo contingent exchange, A second, related element of the received wisdom is that whereby voters select leaders based on targeted benefits ethnicity is one of the most—if not the most—crucial and leaders, in turn, deliver these benefits to voters. The determinants of vote choice for large sections of the commitment problems governing such discretionary developing world, particularly in South Asia and Sub- exchanges require parties to deploy local brokers who Saharan Africa. Many scholars acknowledge that voters monitor electoral compliance. The distribution of might have expressive preferences for co-ethnic candidates promised goods is typically understood to take place and parties (Horowitz 1985; Carlson 2015). Perhaps even during elections, leading to a focus on campaign season more influential, however, is the belief that ethnicity can electoral dynamics has appeared in, among other journals, AEJ: Applied Economics, Comparative Political Studies, Daedalus, Journal of Asian Studies, Journal of Politics, and Party Politics. Gareth Nellis is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego, where he specializes in comparative politics, political economy, and South Asia ([email protected]). His research addresses the extent to which elections serve as instruments of inclusion or exclusion in developing democracies. One line of his work examines the electoral rise of violent ethno-religious nationalism; the other aims to understand the political marginalization of internal migrants. Mark Schneider is Non-Resident Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI) at the University of Pennsylvania ([email protected]). His research focuses on the micro-foundations of clientelism, elections, and distributive politics at the level of rural local governments in India. Neelanjan Sircar is Assistant Professor at Ashoka University and Senior Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi ([email protected]). His research interests include Indian political economy and comparative political behavior with an eye to Bayesian statistics, causal inference, social network analysis, and game theory. He is also a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania. Pavithra Suryanarayan is Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies ([email protected]). Her research agenda explores how different forms of inequality shape political behavior and state development in multi-ethnic and multi-racial contexts like India and the United States. She received a PhD in political science from Columbia University, and her dissertation won the Mancur Olson Award for the best dissertation in political economy at the American Political Science Association. Her research has been published in the American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Politics, Party Politics, and World Politics. Tariq Thachil is Director of the Center for Advanced Study of India (CASI), Associate Professor of Political Science, and Madan Lal Sobti Chair for the Study of Contemporary India at the University of Pennsylvania ([email protected]). He is the author of Elite Parties, Poor Voters: How Social Services Win Votes in India (Cambridge University Press, 2014). His research has appeared in American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies, and World Politics, among other venues. Milan Vaishnav is Senior Fellow and Director of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace ([email protected]). He also serves as Adjunct Professor at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He is the author of When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics (Yale University Press, 2017) and co-editor (with Devesh Kapur) of Costs of Democracy: Political Finance in India (Oxford University Press, 2018). Rahul Verma is a Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research (CPR), New Delhi ([email protected]). He is also the co-author of Ideology and Identity: The Changing Party Systems of India (Oxford University Press, 2018). Adam Ziegfeld is Associate Professor of Political Science at Temple University ([email protected]). He is the author of Why Regional Parties? Clientelism, Elites, and the Indian Party System (Cambridge University Press, 2016) as well as numerous articles on political parties and elections that have appeared in a variety
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Creative Personality and Social Risk-Taking Predict Political Party Affiliation
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Plymouth Electronic Archive and Research Library THE ‘RIGHT’ SIDE OF CREATIVITY 2 The ‘right’ side of creativity: Creative personality and social risk-taking predict political party affiliation Vaibhav Tyagi University of Plymouth and Queen Margaret University Yaniv Hanoch University of Plymouth Becky Choma Ryerson University Susan L Denham University of Plymouth This research was funded by the Marie Curie Initial Training Network FP7-PEOPLE-2013- ITN, grant number 604764. Corresponding author: Vaibhav Tyagi, Marie Curie Fellow, University of Plymouth, UK, PL4 8DR E-mail: [email protected] Phone: +44-7440125590 THE ‘RIGHT’ SIDE OF CREATIVITY 3 Abstract Factors that predict political party affiliation are of particular importance in research due to the wider implications in politics and policy making. Extending this line of work, the idea that creativity predicts party affiliation was tested using two conceptualizations of creativity: creative personality and creative ideation. Participants (N = 406) based in the US completed measures of creativity, socio-political attitudes, domain specific risk-taking and indicated their party affiliation. Results revealed a significant link between creative personality and political party affiliation. Furthermore, in addition to the socio-political attitudes, this link was explained, in part, by individuals’ social risk-taking. Specifically, individuals with higher scores on creative personality were more likely to affiliate to the Democratic party, whereas the reverse was true for affiliation to the Republican party. This article provides new insights into factors that predict political party affiliation and presents wider social implications of the findings.
    [Show full text]
  • Voting Behaviour in India and Its Determinants
    Voting Behaviour in India and Its Determinants Dr. Telani Meena Horo, Associate Professor & Head Dept. of Political Science Magadh Mahila College, P.U Email: [email protected] Topic: Voting Behaviour in India Subject: Political Science Course: B.A III Paper: VII Introduction „Voting‟ is one of the most commonly used terms in contemporary age of democratic politics. The ever increasing popularity of democratic theory and practice has even made this term a household name. In democratic systems, and their number is quite large and even increasing, each adult citizen uses „voting‟ as a means for expressing his approval or disapproval of governmental decisions, policies and programmers of various political parties and the qualities of the candidates who are engaged in the struggle to get the status of being the representatives of the people. In a limited way voting refers to the function of electing representatives by casting votes in elections. However, in broad terms, as Richaed Rose and Harve Massavir point out, voting covers as many as six important functions:- 1. It involves individual‟s choice of governors or major governmental policies; 2. It permits individuals to participate in a reciprocal and continuing exchange of influence with office- holders and candidates; 3. It contributes to the development or maintenance of an individual‟s allegiance to the existing constitutional regime; 4. It contributes to the development or maintenance of a voter‟s disaffection from existing constitutional regime; 5. It has emotional significance for individuals; and 6. For some individuals it may be functionless i.e devoid of any emotional or political significant personal consequences.
    [Show full text]
  • The Psychology Behind Voting Behavior in Kosovo
    Rochester Institute of Technology RIT Scholar Works Theses Thesis/Dissertation Collections 7-2018 The syP chology behind Voting Behavior in Kosovo Fjolla Qorri [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.rit.edu/theses Recommended Citation Qorri, Fjolla, "The sP ychology behind Voting Behavior in Kosovo" (2018). Thesis. Rochester Institute of Technology. Accessed from This Senior Project is brought to you for free and open access by the Thesis/Dissertation Collections at RIT Scholar Works. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses by an authorized administrator of RIT Scholar Works. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Psychology behind Voting Behavior in Kosovo Fjolla Qorri RIT Kosovo Advisor: Venera Demukaj July, 2018 TABLE OF CONTENTS: Abstract ............................................................................................................................................3 Acknowledgements ..........................................................................................................................4 I. Statement of the Problem .................................................................................................5 II. Literature Review .............................................................................................................6 III. Methodology ..................................................................................................................13 IV. Analysis of the Results ...................................................................................................15
    [Show full text]
  • Emotional Voting, Racial Animus and Economic Anxiety in the 2016 Presidential Election James J
    American Review of Politics Volume 37 No. 2 Emotional Voting, Racial Animus and Economic Anxiety in the 2016 Presidential Election James J. Fahey Tracy L. Johns J. Robyn Jon D. Morris Michael J. University of Florida University of Florida Goodman University of Florida Scicchitano Department of Florida Survey University of Florida Department of University of Florida Political Science Research Center Department of Advertising Florida Survey [email protected] [email protected] Advertising [email protected] Research Center [email protected] [email protected] Abstract: In the wake of Donald Trump’s presidential election victory, several competing theories were offered purporting to explain Trump’s appeal to American voters. These included arguments that Trump voters were mostly “white working class” voters who felt left behind in an increasingly globalized economy; that Trump voters were those who simply felt negatively about the direction of the economy; or that Trump voters were attracted to the candidates use of overtly racialized language against minority groups such as immigrants and Blacks. This paper utilizes data from AdSAM, an emotional response survey system, to measure the emotive responses of likely voters toward candidates in the 2016 election. The survey also measured emotional responses towards issues including immigration, the economy, and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. The results suggest that the strongest predictors for voting for Trump were negative feelings towards the economy and negative responses to the BLM movement, and emphasizes emotional, rather than cognitive responses as explaining support for Trump. Introduction Following Donald Trump’s Electoral College victory in the 2016 presidential election, researchers offered several alternative theories explaining Trump’s appeal to voters, including economic anxiety, authoritarian tendencies, or positive reactions towards Trump’s racist and sexist appeals.
    [Show full text]
  • Gender Stereotypes, Political Leadership, and Voting Behavior in Tunisia
    Political Behavior https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-019-09582-5 ORIGINAL PAPER Gender Stereotypes, Political Leadership, and Voting Behavior in Tunisia Alexandra Domike Blackman1 · Marlette Jackson2 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019 Abstract Although female political representation in the Arab world has nearly doubled in the last decade, little is known about how voters in the region view female politi- cians and their political platforms, particularly in a new democracy like Tunisia. We conduct original conjoint and vignette survey experiments to examine the efects of candidate gender and gender- and leadership-congruent political platforms on voter support. Building on role congruity theory, we fnd evidence of bias against female candidates among voters, particularly among respondents who hold patriarchal gen- der norms. Additionally, we fnd that all respondents are more likely to prefer candi- dates who emphasize security issues rather than women’s rights. Overall, our study suggests that female candidates who emphasize issues congruent with stereotypes of political leadership, such as security, can increase voter support, though respondents also reward male candidates who appeal to leadership congruent issues. Alexandra Blackman is a Post-Doctoral Associate (Division of Social Science) at New York University Abu Dhabi, and Marlette Jackson is the Assistant Director of Equity and Inclusion at the Stanford School of Engineering. Author names are listed alphabetically. This research received IRB approval from Stanford University (IRB-39949). We would like to thank Stanford’s Philanthropy and Civil Society (PACS) Center and the American Institute for Maghrib Studies (AIMS) for their generous support of this project.
    [Show full text]
  • Rain, Emotions and Voting for the Status Quo
    IZA DP No. 10350 Rain, Emotions and Voting for the Status Quo Armando N. Meier Lukas Schmid Alois Stutzer November 2016 DISCUSSION PAPER SERIES Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit Institute for the Study of Labor Rain, Emotions and Voting for the Status Quo Armando N. Meier University of Basel Lukas Schmid University of Lucerne Alois Stutzer University of Basel and IZA Discussion Paper No. 10350 November 2016 IZA P.O. Box 7240 53072 Bonn Germany Phone: +49-228-3894-0 Fax: +49-228-3894-180 E-mail: [email protected] Any opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but the institute itself takes no institutional policy positions. The IZA research network is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character.
    [Show full text]
  • We Were the Robots: Automation and Voting Behavior in Western Europe
    DISCUSSION PAPER SERIES IZA DP No. 12485 We Were the Robots: Automation and Voting Behavior in Western Europe Massimo Anelli Italo Colantone Piero Stanig JULY 2019 DISCUSSION PAPER SERIES IZA DP No. 12485 We Were the Robots: Automation and Voting Behavior in Western Europe Massimo Anelli Bocconi University and IZA Italo Colantone Bocconi University Piero Stanig Bocconi University JULY 2019 Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but IZA takes no institutional policy positions. The IZA research network is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity. The IZA Institute of Labor Economics is an independent economic research institute that conducts research in labor economics and offers evidence-based policy advice on labor market issues. Supported by the Deutsche Post Foundation, IZA runs the world’s largest network of economists, whose research aims to provide answers to the global labor market challenges of our time. Our key objective is to build bridges between academic research, policymakers and society. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. ISSN: 2365-9793 IZA – Institute of Labor Economics Schaumburg-Lippe-Straße 5–9 Phone: +49-228-3894-0 53113 Bonn, Germany Email: [email protected] www.iza.org IZA DP No. 12485 JULY 2019 ABSTRACT We Were the Robots: Automation and Voting Behavior in Western Europe* We investigate the impact of robot adoption on electoral outcomes in 14 Western European countries, between 1993 and 2016.
    [Show full text]
  • Buying Votes and International Organizations: the Dirty Work
    Buying Votes and International Organizations: The Dirty Work-Hypothesis Axel Dreher a, Valentin F. Lang b, B. Peter Rosendorff c, James Raymond Vreeland d October 2018 Abstract: We show how major shareholders can exploit their power over international organizations to hide their foreign-policy interventions from domestic audiences. We argue that major powers exert influence bilaterally when domestic audiences view the intervention favorably. When domestic audiences are more skeptical of a target country, favors are granted via international organizations. We test this theory empirically by examining how the United States uses bilateral aid and IMF loans to buy other countries’ votes in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Introducing new data on voting behavior in the UNSC over the 1960-2015 period, our results show that states allied with the US receive more bilateral aid when voting in line with the United States in the UNSC, while concurring votes of states less allied with the US are rewarded with loans from the IMF. Temporary UNSC members that vote against the United States do not receive such perks. Keywords: United Nations Security Council, Voting, Aid, IMF JEL-Codes: O11, O19, F35 Acknowledgments: This paper builds on Dreher and Vreeland (2011) and Dreher, Rosendorff, and Vreeland (2013). We thank Andreas Fuchs, Simon Hug, Christopher Kilby, Moritz Marbach, participants of the Annual Meeting of the European Public Choice Society (Rome 2018), the Center for the Study of African Economies (CSAE) Conference (Oxford 2018), seminars at Heidelberg University and the University of Zurich for helpful comments. a Heidelberg University, University of Goettingen, CEPR, CESifo, KOF Swiss Economic Institute ([email protected]) b University of Zurich ([email protected]) c New York University ([email protected]) d Princeton University ([email protected]) 1 1 Introduction After the collapse of the Soviet Union, one of the United States´ key geostrategic goals was to manage the threat posed by an emergent Russia.
    [Show full text]
  • Voting: a Behavioral Analysis
    Behavior and Social Issues, Volume 6, No. 1, Spring 1996 Voting: A Behavioral Analysis Max Visser University of Twente ABSTRACT: The behavior of voting for a party in an election has important social implications, yet, due to strong mentalistic influences in electoral research, it has rarely been studied from the behavior analytical perspective. In this article a behavioral analysis of voting is presented and a derived behavioral model is empirically tested on data from a Dutch election survey. It is concluded that such an analysis is both theoretically fruitful and empirically relevant. Introduction Of all possible behaviors a person emits in the course of his life, few may have as many implications as the behavior of voting for a party in an election. By casting a vote, the individual person, directly or indirectly, lays down a course of action for parliaments and governments, and, thus, for the sociopolitical and physical organization of the country he or she inhabits. Through elections, leaders have risen to power who dramatically changed the course of world politics and instigated policies affecting the daily lives of millions. While socially relevant, voting behavior seldom has been researched from a behavior analytical perspective (an exception is Lamal & Greenspoon, 1992). For a long time the study of voting has been dominated by normative considerations, ascribing to the average voter a strong sense of rationality with regard to political matters. The first psychological investigations of electoral behavior quickly shattered this optimistic vision, but they replaced it by a form of semi-rationality, according to which the voter's choices at the voting booths are determined by more or less stable set of mental constructs (political beliefs, attitudes, values, etc.) (Visser, 1994a).
    [Show full text]
  • The Role of Psychological Factors on Voting Behavior
    International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Invention (IJHSSI) ISSN (Online): 2319 – 7722, ISSN (Print): 2319 – 7714 www.ijhssi.org ||Volume 9 Issue 8 Ser. I || August 2020 || PP 01-02 The role of psychological factors on Voting behavior Dr. (Smt.) Shilpi Singh Lecturer, Deptt. Of Psychology, H.R.P.G. Collage Khalilabad ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- Date of Submission: 18-07-2020 Date of Acceptance: 02-08-2020 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- I. INTRODUCTION Voting as means for expression his/her approval or disapproval of governmental decision, policies and programmers of various political parties and the candidate who are engaged in the struggle to get the status of being the representatives of people. In other way voting refers to the function of election representatives by casting voter in elections. According to Samuel S. Elderveld voting behavior is not new term. It is not confined to the examination of voting statics, records and computation of electoral shifts and swing. It also involves an analysis of individual psychological process likes perception, emotion, and motivation and their relation to political action as well as of institutional patterns, such as the communication process and their impact on election. The behavior of voters is influenced by motivation factors. The more motivation or ability a person has to vote, the more likely he or she is to turn out on a given election day. Thus, a citizen’s turnout behavior is likely to be a joint, multiplicative function of these three classes of causes, so pointing to a single factor as causing a person’s turnout or lack of turnout would be a vast oversimplification.
    [Show full text]
  • Does Gender Stereotyping Affect Women at the Ballot Box? Evidence from Local Elections in California, 1995-2013
    Does Gender Stereotyping Affect Women at the Ballot Box? Evidence from Local Elections in California, 1995-2013 Sarah F. Anzia Goldman School of Public Policy University of California, Berkeley [email protected] Rachel Bernhard Department of Political Science University of California, Berkeley [email protected] August 25, 2017 Abstract: Research demonstrates that many voters use gender stereotypes to evaluate candidates, but does that stereotyping affect women’s electoral success? In this paper, we try to make headway in answering that question by combining a novel empirical strategy with local election data from California. Our empirical strategy relies on two key findings from the existing literature: first, that individuals are more likely to rely on stereotypes when they have less information about the candidates, and second, that the average voter in elections held concurrently with national elections has less information about local candidates than the average voter in off-cycle elections. We propose that we can therefore estimate the electoral effect of increased gender stereotyping by examining the difference in women’s win rates in higher- information (off-cycle) and lower-information (on-cycle) elections—and how that difference varies by constituency and the office sought. Our preliminary results show that the effect of increased stereotyping is more negative for female candidates in mayoral races than in city council races, and also that the effect of greater stereotyping is more negative for women running in conservative cities than in more liberal cities. Thus, we conclude that there probably isn’t a single, one-size-fits-all answer to the question of how gender stereotyping affects female candidates, but rather that the direction and magnitude of the effect varies across contexts.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Gender Stereotypes, Candidate Evaluations, and Voting for Women
    Gender Stereotypes, Candidate Evaluations, and Voting for Women Candidates: What Really Matters? Kathleen Dolan Department of Political Science University of Wisconsin Milwaukee P.O. Box 413 Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53211 414-229-3892 – voice 414-229-5021 - fax [email protected] Keywords: women candidates, gender stereotypes This research was supported with a grant from the National Science Foundation. The author thanks Tim Lynch for his excellent research assistance and the reviewers for their comments. 1 1 Abstract Elections involving women candidates in the United States can offer unsettling examples of voter gender stereotypes, but research on women candidates provides little in the way of available data that allows us to link stereotypes to voter decision-making. This project reports results from a 2010 survey designed to examine gender stereotypes, candidate evaluations, and voting behavior in U.S. House elections with women candidates running against men. In general, stereotypes are not a central part of candidate evaluations or voting decisions, but the political party of the woman candidate can shape their role in candidate evaluations and vote choice. 2 The presidential election of 2008 was thought to be a breakthrough moment for women candidates in the United States. Senator Hillary Clinton, the first woman candidate with a real chance of winning a major party’s nomination for president, won 18 million votes before losing the nomination to then-Senator Barack Obama. Governor Sarah Palin became the first woman on a Republican party ticket when Senator John McCain chose her as his vice-presidential running mate. Each woman campaigned around the country as a highly visible symbol of how far American women have come in political life.
    [Show full text]