Politics Close to Home: The Impact of Meso-level Institutions on Women in Politics Candice D. Ortbals*, Meg Rinckery, and Celeste Montoyaz *Pepperdine University; [email protected] y Purdue University Calumet; [email protected] Downloaded from zUniversity of Colorado; [email protected] Scholars recognize a worldwide increase in decentralization as well as the prevalence of multilevel governance in Europe. This article examines the advantages and disadvantages that meso-level http://publius.oxfordjournals.org/ institutions present for women’s political representation in three European Union member-states that are decentralized, unitary states. Using the framework of the triangle of women’s empower- ment, we ask whether women are represented in meso-level legislatures, women’s policy agencies, and women’s movements in Italy, Spain, and Poland. We find that gains in meso-level legislatures are slow, but meso-level women’s policy agencies and movements provide important access for women to politics. Like scholars studying women and federalism, we conclude that decentralized institutions in unitary states offer both opportunities for and impediments to fem- inist policy and activism. at University of Colorado on March 13, 2012 Current discourses about decentralization promise political participation, repre- sentation, and policy for women citizens. For example, in Spain, a sub-state government institute charged with improving gender equality lauded itself as an institution ‘‘with a new philosophy ...where women as individual subjects and as a collective achieve full participation’’ (Delegacio´n de la Mujer 2003, 19). Nevertheless, evidence from other countries suggests that subnational governments are not providing women greater political participation and rights. South Korean feminists, facing low representation in national institutions, emphasized success in local elections, hoping success there would ‘‘spillover’’ into the national sphere. Disappointed with local politics, they began targeting the national level again (Chin 2004). Moreover, in 1999, a regional autonomy law gave wide power over social and economic policy to regional governments in Indonesia, and conservative ones responded by imposing strict dress codes for women (Siahaan 2003). Decentralization and federalization became prevalent characteristics of the modern state in the latter decades of the twentieth century (Elazar 1991; Publius:TheJournal of Federalism volume 42 number1,pp.78^107 doi:10.1093/publius/pjr029 AdvanceAccess publication August 5, 2011 ß TheAuthor 2011.Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of CSFAssociates: Publius, Inc. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: [email protected] Impact of Meso-level Institutions on Women in Politics 79 Watts 1999; Falleti 2005). Sub-state institutions historically have allowed strong regional identities to assert themselves, and more recently they have elicited hopes for increasing citizen participation (Cain, Dalton, and Scarrow 2003), reducing the obligations of the central state (see Banaszak, Rucht, and Beckwith 2003), or winning partisan battles for electoral dominance (O’Neill 2003). As women in most societies disproportionately work in paid and unpaid care professions (Folbre 2001), political outlets situated geographically closer to work may facilitate women’s representation. This is important because women lack representation in national political institutions; as of 2009, they constituted 18.5 percent of national Downloaded from legislators worldwide, thus additional arenas for representation pose great advantages for them (Interparliamentary Union 2009). Alternatively, federalism scholars find that meso-level institutions, though offering opportunities to feminists, impede their success by requiring them to contend with multiple http://publius.oxfordjournals.org/ governance sites (Chappell 2002). Therefore, scholars ‘‘need to consider the gender-specific implications of decentralization,’’ both advantages and disadvan- tages (Rai 2003, 35). Scholarship about gender politics and subnational institutions in historic federations is instructive (Gray 2006; Chappell 2002; Vickers 2010), yet, according to Gray, it ‘‘is missing important [comparative] evidence’’ by failing to examine decentralized, unitary states—some of which may experience policy decentralization as far-reaching as federalized states (2006, 38). As such, there is a need for cross-national, cross-institutional, comparative research in recently decentralized at University of Colorado on March 13, 2012 countries examining whether women are present in meso-level political institutions and whether institutions further and/or impede feminist policies and activism. Thus, we ask how do meso-level institutions influence women’s representation in politics in recently decentralized countries? This comparative case analysis examines meso-level units between municipal and national administrative levels, in the three most-similar European Union countries of Italy, Spain, and Poland, all of which experienced decentralization from the 1970s to 2000s and, currently, multilevel governance in which European Union, national, provincial/regional, and local governments influence public policy. We evaluate whether bringing ‘‘politics close to home’’ improves women’s representation through Lycklama a Niejholt et al.’s (1998) concept of the ‘‘triangle of empowerment,’’ that includes (i) women legislators (ii) women’s policy agencies, and (iii) women’s movement organizations, whose collaboration is associated with the development of feminist policies. Relative to each node of the triangle, we report women’s representation by documenting whether (i) meso-level legislatures yield 30 percent women (estimated by the United Nations to ‘‘fairly represent’’ women, see Lovenduski 2001), with more women serving in meso-level than national legislatures (ii) meso-level women’s policy agencies engage in feminist collaborations and further feminist policies expected of European member-states, 80 C. D. Ortbals et al. including employment, work-family balance, and anti-gender violence, and (iii) women’s organizations establish themselves and work outside national capitals, in the countries’ peripheries. Our analysis shows that actors in the triangle of empowerment do not always act in concert to develop feminist policies and, contrary to popular belief, women’s descriptive representation is sometimes lower in meso-level than national legislatures, not reaching 30 percent women representatives unless specific quotas for women are passed to ensure women’s representation. Under decentralization, however, women’s representation increases through meso-level women’s policy Downloaded from agencies that tend to address feminist policy and women’s movements that have become more numerous in the peripheries since decentralization. Similar to studies of women’s representation in federal states, we conclude that meso-level institutions hold significant potential but do not constitute a panacea. Moreover, http://publius.oxfordjournals.org/ we find notable variation among our most-similar decentralized states just as scholars have found variations between most-similar federal states (Chappell 2002). Thus, in the conclusion, we begin a conversation about the benefits posed by decentralized states, what variables facilitate said benefits, and the variations among seemingly similar states that beg for more comparative studies of ‘‘politics close to home.’’ The article is organized in four sections: terminology and case selection, theory review, comparative case analysis, and conclusions. at University of Colorado on March 13, 2012 Terminology and Case Selection It is important to clarify definitions of meso-level institutions, decentralization, federalism, feminism, and the triangle of empowerment. To not conflate decen- tralization and federalization, we use the term ‘‘meso-level institutions’’ as shorthand for institutions resulting from sub-state dispersal of power. In broad terms, decentralization is the ‘‘assignment of fiscal, political, and administrative responsibilities to lower levels of government’’ (Litvack, Ahmad, and Bird 1998, 4; Litvack and Seddon 2002; Rodden 2004). Federalism is ‘‘an arrangement of shared-rule through common institutions and regional self-rule for the govern- ments of the constituent units’’ (Watts 1999, 7). Table 1 shows that all three countries experienced decentralization reforms between the 1970s and 2000s. Fiscal, political, and policy/administrative decen- tralization has occurred in Italy, Spain, and Poland. Each country demonstrates moderate levels of fiscal decentralization. As of 2005, these meso-level governments are responsible for collecting around 15–30 percent of revenues, showing that central governments remain influential over regions. Our cases fall near the 30–50 percent for meso-level expenditure as a percentage of total expenditure, with Italy, Spain, and Poland respectively with 31, 54, and 31 percent, compared to Denmark with 65 percent, thus meaning that meso-units in our study manage Table 1 Case selection table of European, Catholic countries with decentralization to meso-level units Impact of Meso-level Institutions on Women in Politics Italy Spain Poland Number of Meso-level Units 20 17 16 Timing of decentralization 1970–1990 1980–1990 1998–2008 Political decentralization Directly elected regional legislators ˇˇ ˇ Directly elected regional governors ˇˇ Regions created by constitution