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.