Article
The puzzling success of populist parties
in promoting women’s political
representation
Party Politics
1–13
ª The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/1354068815601604
ppq.sagepub.com
Tatiana Kostadinova
Department of Politics and International Relations, Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA
Anna Mikulska
Baker Institute for Public Policy, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA
Abstract
Previous research dismisses the possibility that populist, male-dominated parties could positively affect gender equality.
Yet, evidence from Eastern Europe points at the opposite: Center-rightist formations, led by notable men, have
effectively nominated women to office. What can explain such a puzzling phenomenon? This study argues that i) the
centralized structure and practices in these populist parties make it possible to avoid the reluctance of gatekeepers to
let female candidates run; and that ii) regardless of ideological or cultural predispositions, supporters loyally approve
the nomination decisions made by their charismatic leader. We analyze data on three populist parties in Bulgaria and
Poland. Our findings confirm that these formations elected more women than the leftist parties because of strategies
to nominate female candidates higher on the list. Voters were also more likely to favor female candidates in the openlist system in Poland.
Keywords
candidate nomination, personalist leaders, populist parties, voter ranking, women’s representation
The last decade of post-Communist transformation witnessed a significant rise in women’s representation in
Eastern Europe. From Bulgaria to Poland and from Latvia
to Slovenia, many more women were able to win legislative
seats compared to the early 1990s when the Communist-era
rates of descriptive representation dropped dramatically.1
The noticeable progress made lately has been welcomed
as a positive development in these young democratic systems. At the same time, the success faced observers, transitologists, and students of political representation with the
question of what were the genuine causes for the sharp
increase of women in East European politics. The identification of factors which facilitated the election of female
candidates when less expected, would contribute to a better
understanding of the mechanisms that effectively promote
gender equality, as disadvantaged communities still remain
under-represented worldwide. Moreover, a careful analysis
of such conditions would also produce insights about substantive representation, especially with regard to real opportunities for women to impact the policy making process.
The increased rates of electing women in Eastern
Europe coincide in time with the rise of a new generation
of parties in the late 1990s to early 2000s. At a time when
it seemed the post-Communist party systems were moving
towards consolidation, new parties started to emerge and
challenge the status quo established after 1989, and some
of them even won access to power (Bennich-Björkman,
2006; van Biezen and Rashkova, 2014). Examples include
Res Publica in Estonia, New Era in Latvia, SMER in Slovakia, and Simeon II’s movement in Bulgaria. Many of
these ‘‘non-orthodox parties,’’ to use Pop-Eleches’ (2010)
term, elected a considerable number of women in parliamentary elections. The newcomers share a common
Corresponding author:
Tatiana Kostadinova, Department of Politics and International Relations,
Florida International University, 11200 SW 8th St., SIPA 419, Miami, FL
33199, USA.
Email: [email protected]
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Party Politics
characteristic: more or less they all ran on an antiestablishment platform, condemning the transitional elites
for exposing the population to extreme hardships during
the economic transformation to a free market. Many
among the most successful parties of this generation
formed around charismatic male politicians with uncontested authority. Oddly, deficiency in intra-party democracy does not appear to have precluded the recruitment
of women to positions in government as parliamentarians,
ministers, and diplomats. Furthermore, male leadership has
not been an obstacle either, despite a relation suggested by
previous research between party gatekeepers’ gender characteristics and women’s nomination (Cheng and Tavits,
2011).
This paper seeks to explain the puzzling success of
populist parties in post-Communist Europe in electing
women to public office. Among several broad approaches
to conceptualizing populism as a phenomenon (see Kostadinova and Levitt, 2014 for a discussion), the one based on
leadership and organization best fits most of the new parties
that emerged in the region. As described in the literature on
populism, such parties are headed by influential leaders,
lack organizational sophistication, and rely on a direct and
unmediated link with supporters (Barr, 2009; Weyland,
1999). Their vague policy platforms, ‘moralistic rather than
programmatic’ (Mudde, 2004), are attractive, with its main
promise to ‘save the people’ (in the East European context
from the corrupt elites of the transition). Some ideological
differences notwithstanding, it is the vertical system of
leader-followers and intra-party connections that we consider relevant for the recruitment of party representatives.
In short, the relatively weak formal structures allow for a
highly centralized decision-making process, where the
traps of partisanship can be avoided and new faces can
be brought in.
We focus our investigation on two countries, Poland and
Bulgaria, where such formations have emerged as dominant players in national politics since 2001. Our analysis
covers the practices of candidate nomination and election
of female representatives to parliament by the Party of Law
and Justice (PiS) in Poland, and the National Movement
Simeon II (NMSII) and Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB) in Bulgaria. We draw upon existing studies to formulate theoretical expectations about this,
as it appears at first glance, paradox. Our findings suggest
that the big populist parties in the two countries deliberately sought to nominate more female candidates, and the
high numbers of women they elected were not just the
product of a significant electoral victory. The results of our
regression tests also indicate that the followers of populist
parties may indeed prefer to vote for women, despite cultural or ideological constraints.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. The next
section introduces the phenomenon of populist parties in
post-Communist politics. Then we turn to the literature for
possible answers to the populists’ surprising success in
improving gender representation. The next part of the paper
analyzes patterns of candidate nominations across parties
by testing two propositions from previous research, that
leftist parties and big election winners are more likely to
recruit women. Focusing on meso-level factors and using
empirical data from Poland and Bulgaria, we then show
that party type provides a better account of the achievements made by populist formations led by charismatic individuals. The following section offers regression tests of two
models of candidate ranking, by party gatekeepers and by
voters, in the context of Poland’s open-list proportional
representation system. This gives an opportunity to first,
compare parties’ nomination preferences and see whether
the populist parties are different and second, explore
whether their voters re-arrange the ballot by gender later.
The final part of the paper discusses the findings and the
possible reasons for some of the unexpected choices made
by populist parties and voters.
The rise of populist parties: The cases
of Bulgaria and Poland
By the late 1990s most Central-East European countries
had completed the core set of reforms of their political
institutions and the transformation to a market economy.
These remarkable achievements were not without any
costs, however. The social effects of price liberalization,
economic restructuring, and privatization of state-owned
enterprises include troubling hikes in inflation, increased
levels of unemployment, and the impoverishment of large
segments of the population (Appel, 2001). The functioning
of the previously existing social safety networks was disturbed, and in some cases the networks simply collapsed.
Economic growth recovered early in countries such as the
Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, but later in Bulgaria
and Romania where delays in reforming the older system
hindered growth and did not spare at all the hardship
of transformation. While the average citizen in all postCommunist countries carried the heavy burden of the
changes, it soon became evident that a few individuals
managed to become miraculously rich. Mass disaffection
and disillusionment spread and perceptions that politicians
had failed to represent the demands of their constituents
augmented (Holmes, 2006). By 2000 a majority of the population in Eastern Europe was convinced that corruption in
politics had become rampant (Grigorescu, 2006; Kostadinova, 2012). Perceptions that the outcome of the transition
was not fair, and that the elites betrayed the expectations
for an accountable government, eroded public trust in the
new institutions and demobilized voters (Kostadinova,
2009).
The demand for ‘real’ representation was soon met by a
generous supply of new parties, some of them genuinely
new and others splinters from older formations. Their
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Kostadinova and Mikulska
3
pledge to save the ‘good and honest’ people from the ‘evil,’
corrupt elite won the hearts of millions whose hopes for a
better life resumed. Many East Europeans were charmed
by the charisma of the new ‘saviors’ as strong and independent of party-politics, politicians who could be trusted.
These parties were conceived as ‘personal vehicles’ of the
leaders who ignored organizational building and reached
out to followers directly, often against established democratic structures and practices (Barr, 2009; Deegan-Krause
and Haughton, 2009; Weyland, 1999).
Victorious populist parties in Bulgaria
Among the new political organizations formed in Bulgaria
after 2000, two fit well the profile of a personalist populist
party with a significant following. The first, the NMSII,
was formed in 2001, on the eve of the general election in
which it won a landslide victory and half of the seats in the
National Assembly. The party governed in two coalitional
governments with the Movement for Rights and Freedoms
(MRF) in 2001–2005 and again with the MRF and the
Socialists (BSP) in 2005–2009. After the withdrawal of the
leader in 2007, the NMSII lost its initial attractiveness and
support. In 2009 another new populist formation, GERB,
led by then Sofia-mayor Boyko Borissov, won a plurality
of the parliamentary seats and formed a government.
In their rise to power, both the NMSII and GERB relied
on the personal charisma of their leaders. Simeon II
Sakskoburggotski, heir to the Bulgarian throne since
1943, returned to the country after years of exile abroad.
He was embraced by many in the country as a savior, a
symbol of national unity–neither ‘red’ nor ‘blue’ but intelligent and honest, unlike other politicians. His appeal was
magnetic—his appearance was uncommon, aristocratic; his
intention was to become part of political life, ‘a historic
duty to Bulgaria.’ Simeon II promised more integrity in
public life and significant improvement in the living standards of the people, to be achieved in just 800 days. A new
majority among the electorate wished to hear exactly this,
after four years of tough economic reforms carried out by
the government of the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF).
Borissov is also a charismatic figure, albeit of a different
type. He charms the ordinary people by building an image
of himself as someone who is close to them, one who
speaks their language and shares the same interests, passion
for sports, and taste of music. This balanced out GERB’s
apparent lack of a coherent policy program, which turned
out to be of minor importance for voters. In 2009 Borissov
was perceived as the new hope for the country, different
from those who governed before him, a man people could
connect to.
At the time of their first appearance in the electoral
arena, the NMSII and GERB lacked clear rules and procedures for decision-making, solving of intra-party disputes,
and candidate nomination. The two leaders’ opinions
became crucial in choosing who would be on the ballot;
they unilaterally picked candidates and decided on their
ranking. Thus, the recruitment processes in the NMSII and
GERB were shaped as very centralized and under the control of the leader himself. Therefore, if women were nominated, this could not have happened without Simeon II’s or
Borissov’s personal approval or insistence. The interesting
question is, did they target women as a group in particular?
While we are not aware of direct evidence for this of
Borissov, there are indications that Simeon II did indeed
pay special attention to gender balance on the NMSII’s
ballot. In a radio broadcast speech on April 6th 2001,
Simeon II stated: ‘[Besides], I would like to see a considerable part of the deputies to be women, because I have
always believed that their participation is one way to make
politics more humane and therefore, more successful!’
(Simeon, 2001).
For some experts, the main reason for NMSII’s successful recruitment of women to public office is its coalition
partnership with the Party of Bulgarian Women (PBW)
(Rashkova and Zankina, 2013), but that may not necessarily be the case. Having failed to register his movement
with the court on time for the upcoming election,
Simeon II had to form a pre-electoral coalition with a couple of small parties, one of which was the PBW. However,
the role of the PBW’s National Council in the nomination
process was quite limited. In an interview given to a major
newspaper, PBW’s leader Vesela Draganova admits that
quotas and conditions on nominations were never discussed
(Basheva, 2001). The former king and his close circle of
advisors had full authority over the composition of the lists.
Most PBW nominees were placed in unwinnable slots,
according to party operatives (interview with Lilia Voinova, Deputy Chair of the Bulgarian Women’s Party,
March 19, 2004; Report of the National Council of the Bulgarian Women’s Party, 2003). It remains uncertain whether
Draganova’s party impacted the overall gender composition of the coalition lists.
The rise of Law and Justice in Poland
Several populist parties appeared in the political arena in
Poland but one of them stands out as the most successful
in winning voter support and participation in national government. The PiS was one of two major splinter groups
from the Solidarity Electoral Action (AWS) that ruled the
country in 1997–2001. The PiS was formed as a more conservative, Catholic values-focused alternative to AWS. The
party claimed it represented those who felt unhappy with
the failure of the mainstream transitional elite to nurture
a national community (Kunovich, 2012) and to remove the
remnants of the former Communist regime from public life.
In its second electoral appearance in 2005, the PiS arose as
the plurality winner in the Sejm and formed a coalition government with two other, smaller populist parties. In the
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4
Party Politics
following election the party won more legislative seats, but
it has not served in the executive again.
Unlike the NMSII or GERB, PiS has a clearer ideological profile, yet it also exhibits some of the attributes of a
personalist populist party. From the very beginning, party
life was dominated by two prominent individuals, Jaroslaw
Kaczynski and, to a lesser extent, his twin brother Lech
Kaczynski. Jaroslaw served as prime minister and Lech
as mayor of Warsaw and president of Poland until his tragic
death in 2010. The Kaczynskis became the symbol, the face
of the party. They rose to high levels of esteem among PiS
members and activists, while called ‘authoritarian’ by
political rivals (Wprost Online, 2012). Effective speakers
and assertive personalities, the two brothers won the hearts
of many followers and the authority to have the final word
in the party.
The candidate nomination strategy applied by the PiS
has several important features that make it distinct from
other parties, including the party strategy towards women.
Experts note that the PiS has clearly preferred to advance
the candidacy of younger people with a particular professional profile and gender identity (Mikulska, 2013). Young
candidates were expected to help party development in the
future; lawyers and economists were desired to enhance the
work of the parliamentary group in the assembly. Interestingly, if one female candidate and one male candidate with
comparable qualifications were considered for inclusion in
the district list, the woman was more likely to be awarded
a higher position on the ballot (interview with Adam
Lipinski, 2008). Unlike the NMSII in Bulgaria which was
a totally new party with just one incumbent MP running for
it in its first election, the PiS could rely on the popularity
and prestige of incumbent female representatives in the
Sejm (Kunovich, 2012).
In sum, significant populist parties with dominant leaders emerged in the early 2000s in Bulgaria and Poland as
major challengers of the status quo. These parties obtained
big gains in legislative elections, targeting large constituencies and declaring interest in engaging more women in the
electoral contest. Why and how they managed to succeed in
this are questions addressed in the rest of this paper. We
start by turning to existing scholarly work for insight.
Consulting previous scholarship
Extant research establishes a number of factors working at
different levels that can be applied to explain variation
in women’s recruitment to public office. These include
system-specific and party-specific determinants of gender
representation.
The context
At the system level, certain characteristics of the economic,
institutional, and cultural environment are proposed as
being influential in the nomination and election of female
candidates. In more affluent countries, women are financially emancipated and are more likely to have the resources
needed for campaigning (WÌngnerud, 2009). Likewise, more
democratic systems promote the principles of respect for
human rights and civil liberties, including the right of
women not only to vote but also to get elected (Rule
1987). Good quality governance, based on transparency and
equal treatment, creates a favorable environment for electing
more women to public office (SundstrÎm and WÌngnerud,
2014). We have also learned that electoral systems vary in
their propensity to secure representation for women and
minorities in legislative and executive bodies at the national
and regional level (Matland and Studlar, 1996; Matland and
Montgomery, 2003; Norris, 2004; Paxton and Kunovich,
2003; Vengroff et al., 2003).
Analyzing the specifics of post-Communist transformation, experts note that women suffered disproportionately
more than men from the economic transformation and the
weakening of the social security networks (Chimiak,
2003; Miroiu, 2010). Many Polish and Bulgarian women
chose to stay at home and take care of their families; others
preferred to work in private enterprises where the pay is
significantly higher. The reduction in the pool of female
aspirants for the time-demanding office of an MP partially
explains the overall decline in women’s representation after
Communism. In the first decade following 1989, the share
of unmarried female representatives in the Bulgarian
National Assembly was two to three times bigger than that
of single male representatives (Kostadinova, 2003: 308).
National institutions are also confirmed as determinants
of gender representation. Regime type, for example, is
identified as responsible for the recruitment of women to
positions in executive office. Thus, Blondel (1985) maintains that presidential systems, where the chief executive
has a mandate independent from the parliament, are more
likely to have female cabinet ministers. Focusing on Eastern Europe, Bego (2014) finds that semi-presidential systems where presidents have some decision power over
cabinet formation give more chances for women to get
appointed than parliamentary systems (with presidents
elected by the assembly). Furthermore, regulations setting
low thresholds for the allocation of seats and gender quotas
are often referred to as mechanisms more friendly to
women’s access to political power (Rashkova and Zankina,
2013; but also see Matland and Taylor, 1997 for a more
specific argument). The literature points to the favorable
effect of large-district PR systems as creating incentives for
parties to balance the ticket (Matland, 1995; Valen, 1988).
In such systems, parties tend to nominate women in districts where the organization had previously won a bigger
portion of the seats, i.e. where the ‘party magnitude’ is
large (Matland, 1993). At the same time, cases of proportional systems that failed to facilitate women’s election
(such as Romania) are not exceptions.
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Kostadinova and Mikulska
5
Finally, culture-based explanations emphasize the
impact of traditions, religion, and political attitudes
toward gender parity in politics. Some scholars emphasize
that traditional beliefs reducing the role of women to childrearing and housekeeping may affect all participants in
the recruitment process—women, party leaders, and voters
(Lovenduski, 2005; WÌgnerud, 2009). In countries with
more traditional value systems, women would be discouraged to run for public office, elites would decline to support
them, and many voters would be reluctant to cast a ballot
for a woman (Inglehart and Norris, 2003; Norris, 2004).
Findings about political ‘culture of feminist activism’ and
‘gender ideology’ support the hypothesis that values and
perceptions are correlated with women’s representation
(Inglehart and Norris, 2003: 138; Paxton and Kunovich,
2003). Research on media representation of female politicians in Eastern Europe describes it as ‘stereotypical’ and
‘sexist,’ fueling negative perceptions through repudiation
of leadership skills and obsession with female outer appearance (Ibroscheva, 2009).
To summarize, extant research identifies system characteristics that do explain variation in equal representation
across genders, however, at the national level. In both Bulgaria and Poland, with contexts generating comparable
problems for women’s emancipation (Chimiak, 2003), different parties managed to elect women at different rates
(see Tables 1 and 2). To develop a better explanation of the
strikingly high numbers of women elected by particular
organizations, such as the NMSII and PiS, one should turn
to meso-level factors and focus closer on parties.
The role of political parties
When it comes to populist parties, most effort in the past
was focused on analyzing the sources of the so-called ‘gender gap’ with regard to support for these parties. This body
of research seeks to establish whether women are likely to
vote for radical-right populist parties and what the social
base of such support is in western countries (Gidengil
et al., 2005; Givens, 2004; Rippeyoung, 2007; Sineau,
2006). For our purposes, we need to turn to the literature
that answers questions about the nomination and election
of women, preferably by populist parties as defined in this
study. The first line of research using party-level characteristics establishes that leftist parties are more favorable to
women than parties on the ideological right. Being more
sensitive to the issue of gender equality, leftists are more
likely to introduce particular women-friendly policies and
to promote women and minorities to public office (Caul,
2001; Lovenduski and Norris, 1993; Paxton and Kunovich,
2003; Rule and Zimmerman, 1992; WÌgnerud, 2009). More
recent scholarship on Eastern Europe, however, questions
the validity of this proposition, arguing that an ideologygender causal link cannot be found in the ‘undefined ideological spectrum’ of post-Communist politics (Bego, 2014).
Table 1. Women elected to the Bulgarian National Assembly (by
party), 2001–2013.
Year
Party
% Votes
# Seats
Women
% Women
NMSII
UDF
BSP
MRF
Total
42.74
18.18
17.5
7.45
120
51
48
21
240
46
9
4
2
61
38.3
17.6
8.3
9.5
25.4
NMSII
BSP
MRF
Ataka
UDF
DSB
BNS
Total
19.88
30.95
12.81
8.14
7.68
6.44
5.19
53
82
34
21
20
17
13
240
21
16
3
1
4
4
1
57
39.6
19.5
8.8
4.8
20.0
23.5
7.7
20.8
GERB
BSP
MRF
Ataka
BC
OLJ
Total
39.72
17.7
14.45
9.36
6.7
4.13
116
40
38
21
15
10
240
33
7
4
3
2
2
51
28.4
17.5
10.5
14.3
13.3
20.0
21.3
GERB
BSP
MRF
Ataka
Total
30.5
26.6
11.3
7.3
97
84
36
23
240
32
17
4
3
56
33.0
20.2
11.1
13.0
23.3
2001
2005
2009
2013
Notes: NMSII: National Movement Simeon II; UDF: Union of Democratic
Forces (United Democratic Forces in 2005); BSP: Bulgarian Socialist Party/
Coalition for Bulgaria; MRF: Movement for Rights and Freedoms; DSB:
Democrats for Strong Bulgaria; BNS: Bulgarian National Union/Agrarians;
GERB: Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria; BC: Blue
Coalition; OLJ: Order, Law, Justice
Sources: 2001–2009 from Adam Carr (http://psephos.adam-carr.net/);
2013 from Official Website of the National Assembly of Bulgaria (http://
www.parliament.bg).
Second, women may or may not be nominated for
strategic reasons. Calculating the risk of losing, party
gatekeepers may decide to prevent or encourage the inclusion of female candidates in the lists. Previous electoral
success reduces the uncertainty of running women on the
ballot, especially in large districts where the ballot is long.
Richard Matland (1993) shows that the bigger the ‘party
magnitude,’ i.e. the party victory in a district, the safer
gatekeepers feel it is to nominate women. In general, parties that win big are the ones likely to give a chance to and
to support female candidates.
Finally, parties differ in organizational structure and
procedures, and in history. Scholars argue that a more centralized mode of decision-making facilitates the election
of women because in such organizations, pressure from
local and other structures on nomination is weaker
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Party Politics
Table 2. Women elected to the Polish Sejm (by party),
2001–2011.
Year
Party
% Votes
# Seats
Women
% Women
PO
PiS
PSL
SLD
Total
12.68
9.5
8.98
41.04
65
44
42
216
460
13
6
0
55
74
38.3
17.6
8.3
9.5
25.4
PO
PiS
PSL
SLD
Total
24.14
26.99
6.96
11.31
133
155
25
55
460
33
29
1
11
74
39.6
19.5
8.8
4.8
20.8
PO
PiS
PSL
LiD
Total
41.51
32.11
8.91
13.15
208
166
31
53
460
48
34
1
11
94
28.4
17.5
10.5
14.3
21.3
PO
PiS
PSL
SLD
Total
39.18
29.89
8.36
8.24
207
157
48
27
460
72
27
2
4
105
33.0
20.2
11.1
13.0
23.3
2001
2005
2007
2011
Notes: PO: Civic Platform; PiS: Law and Justice; PSL: Polish Peasant
Alliance; SLD: Social Democratic Alliance.
Source: Official Website of the National Electoral Commission in Poland
(http://www.pkw.gov.pl/).
(Norris, 1993: 321; Matland and Studlar, 1996). Paradoxically, the involvement of fewer party functionaries in determining who gets on the ballot might mean less intra-party
democracy, but could also reduce the transactional costs of
selecting non-traditional candidates such as women.
With regard to history, existing scholarship suggests that
new parties may be more likely to place female candidates
on their ballots (Matland and Studlar, 1996). Youth matters, as younger parties try to enter the political arena by
competing with older, established parties for votes. They
may not have a large pool of qualified men in terms of
cadres, which opens opportunities for female candidates
to get approved and a chance to be elected. Strategically,
new parties are also at a disadvantage because they do not
have a record from previous elections; the level of uncertainty for them is much higher than for the rest of the election contesters. Yet, their newness allows an opportunity
for these parties to claim they are different, not corrupt, and
more attentive to the people’s needs (Sikk, 2011). By
including women in their lists, new parties can send a message: they attend to the popular demand for a more representative government and integrity in public life.
Next, the arguments advanced by previous research will
be tested for the cases of the large populist, maledominated parties in Bulgaria and Poland. Our survey of
the scholarship on female representation did not identify
studies that explicitly argue for the case of the populist parties. We can, however, start by testing meso-level propositions developed for parties in general, including ideology,
organizational structure, and age. In the following section
we analyze the experiences of the NMSII, GERB, and the
PiS from a comparative perspective, i.e. assessing the gender composition of their lists and elected representatives
compared to those of leftist, organizationally more pluralistic, and older parties.
Nominating and electing women
We start with ideology and find no evidence for a pattern
associating election of women with leftist ideas. Neither
NMSII nor GERB or PiS is leftist by ideology. In fact, the
PiS has moved more to the right since 2005 (Pop-Eleches,
2010) and is now often characterized as conservative; the
NMSII and GERB carried out policies of privatization and
strict financial discipline when in power. These three parties have consistently elected more women than the leftist
BSP and the Polish Democratic Left Alliance (SLD). Overall, Tables 1 and 2 show that both the NMSII and GERB
elected significantly more women than any other Bulgarian
party and that the PiS in Poland emerged second best after
the centrist Civic Platform (PO) in that regard. The PiS, as
well as the NMSS and GERB, have not used internal quotas
to secure a certain proportion of the positions for female
candidates.2
The ‘party magnitude’ argument also does not provide a
convincing explanation for the strange success of the Bulgarian and Polish populists. In the case of the PiS, the data
do suggest an increase in the number of female deputies:
from just 13 in 2001 to 34 in 2007 (before a national gender
quota was introduced). In its first appearance on the electoral scene, the NMSII in Bulgaria elected more women
than any other party in Bulgaria had before. Both the
NMSII and GERB managed to nominate and elect female
candidates before it could be established in which districts
it would be ‘safe’ to include women.
Yet, is it because these parties won large portions of the
seats that they were able to elect more women? Interestingly, in 2001 the PiS got almost the same amount of the
vote as the Polish People’s Party (PSL) and sent six women
to the Sejm while the PSL sent none. This should not be
surprising, given the fact that the former nominated women
at the top of the ballot in 7.3% of all districts and the latter
in just 2.4%. Table 3 offers a more detailed picture of the
nomination practices of the main parties in Poland and Bulgaria. A closer look at how frequently they nominated
female candidates in winnable slots on the ballot suggests
that overall the three populist parties did place women in
favorable positions at remarkable rates.
Over the course of four elections, the PiS increased the
number of districts where women led the party list from
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Kostadinova and Mikulska
7
Table 3. Women’s positions on party lists (parliamentary parties,
from left to right).
Party/year
Bulgaria
BSP
2001
2005
2009
2013
NMSII
2001
2005
GERB
2009
2013
ODS, 2001
UDF, 2005
DSB, 2005
BC, 2009
Poland
SLD
2001
2005
2007
2011
PO
2001
2005
2007
2011
PiS
2001
2005
2007
2011
1
2
3
4
5
6 & lower
All
6.5
6.5
12.9
22.6
16.1
22.6
16.1
6.5
9.7
32.3
25.8
35.5
19.4
22.6
32.3
38.7
12.9
16.1
45.2
45.2
23.1
24.5
30.0
33.7
19.3
23.0
28.6
32.3
48.4
25.8
38.7
41.9
54.8
35.5
25.8
41.9
22.6
48.4
32.2
40.3
36.0
39.8
16.1
29.0
19.4
9.7
19.4
9.7
32.3
35.5
19.4
12.9
19.4
29.0
25.8
9.7
12.9
12.9
22.6
25.8
22.6
22.6
19.4
12.9
48.4
16.1
35.5
22.6
12.9
25.8
22.6
9.7
33.8
33.9
22.0
21.8
34.0
27.3
31.1
30.4
20.2
19.2
31.2
23.3
17.07
14.63
14.63
14.63
12.20
20.00
14.63
43.90
26.83
29.27
17.07
51.22
24.39
29.27
36.59
26.83
34.15
41.46
29.27
46.34
40.03
27.88
22.08
46.61
36.16
27.63
22.16
44.36
14.36
21.95
12.2
34.15
17.07
17.07
39.02
46.34
14.63
21.95
31.71
41.36
14.63
26.83
24.39
34.15
21.95
14.63
12.20
51.22
17.27
21.11
20.28
43.94
17.08
20.96
21.10
43.39
7.32
12.20
21.95
24.39
17.07
29.27
26.83
14.63
12.20
21.95
24.39
24.39
19.51
14.36
19.51
29.27
19.51
29.27
21.95
36.59
18.72
20.93
18.09
43.88
17.73
21.05
19.17
39.85
do have a more centralized system of decision making than
their main political rivals, with much power vested into the
hands of the top leadership. The NMSII and GERB have
been categorized in the literature as personalist parties with
a dominant and charismatic leader, underdeveloped organizational procedures, and weak local structures (Levitt and
Kostadinova, 2014). Almost all decisions over nomination
of candidates for elections and the few top party positions
have been left entirely in the hands of the leader. In the case
of NMSII, Simeon II had explicitly stated that more women
should be engaged in the work of the parliament and the
government. By statute, GERB’s leader summons and
chairs an executive committee that determines the candidates of the party in national, local government, and
European elections.3 Similarly, the PiS has relied on
an ‘executive-dominated system’ in which the leader
exercises ‘effective veto power over all nominations and
appointments’ (Daniel, 2015: 147).
Finally, the three organizations ran as new parties,
claiming the innocence of the young and distancing
themselves from the mainstream elite. As new entrants in
politics, however, they had to earn their electorate, and they
appealed to all who felt underrepresented, including
women. How voters accepted the populist project, and how
they reconciled their preferences for a strong leader with
gender equality in representation, is a question we investigate empirically in the next section.
Ranking the candidates in Poland:
Regression analysis
To analyze the choices made by populist parties and their
voters with regards to female candidates, we focus on the
Notes: Entries for 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 are % of the total number of districts
Polish PiS, since only in Poland can we observe voter pre(31 for Bulgaria and 41 for Poland); entries for 6 & lower are % of all
candidates run by a party in 6th and lower positions; entries for All are % of ferences directly. The Polish open-list PR system allows
a nominated party’s candidates that are women of the total number of a
one to explore the decisions of parties and voters, measured
party’s candidates.
by their choices of whom to nominate to the top list
Sources: 2001–2009 from Adam Carr (http://psephos.adam-carr.net/); 2013
positions.4
from Official Website of the National Assembly of Bulgaria (http://www.
For our analysis, we construct two different dependent
parliament.bg); Official Website of the National Electoral Commission in
Poland (http://www.pkw.gov.pl/).
variables and run two different models at the individual
candidate level. The initial position of a candidate on the
7.3 to 24.4%. The record of the leftist SLD shows the oppo- ballot is an indicator of the party ranking of this person.
site trend, from 17 down to 14.6%, despite the internal Voters’ preferences for a candidate are measured as the
quota. The centrist PO has also been inconsistent in placing respective number of votes received by this candidate. Supwomen first in the lists, and offered them better chances for pose a party ran 10 candidates in a hypothetical district and
the second position. In Bulgaria, the NMSII and GERB candidate A was listed as first on the ballot. S/he will be
nominated female candidates at the top of the ballot more thus assigned a value of 1 for the dependent variable Party
often than any other party in four elections since 2001. The Preference. After the election was concluded and votes
record was set by Simeon’s party which gave the first place were counted, candidate A received 1,000 votes, but candito women in 15 (48%) of all 31 districts. The two Bulgarian date B, who was listed second by the party, received 1,100
parties nominated considerably more female candidates votes. The remaining candidates received fewer votes than
second than other parties, NMSII in about 40% of the dis- either candidate A or B. Thus in a final ranking, as decided
tricts and GERB in about a third.
by the voters, candidate A ranks second and candidate B
What makes PiS, NMSII, and GERB different is their ranks first. The value assigned to candidate A for Voter
organization and history. The three big populist parties Preference will be 2.
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8
Party Politics
The dependent variables are then regressed on the same
set of independent variables. The only exception is that in
order to assess voters’ preferences, we also account for
party preferences, recognizing that voters may be affected
by the party assignment (Kunovich, 2003). Two indicators
reflect initial party assignment, the initial positioning of a
candidate and being one of the top three (a dummy
variable).
The key independent variable in our analysis, parties/
voters’ commitment to women’s success, is an interaction
term that includes a dummy variable distinguishing
between female and male candidates (female ¼ 1), and
a dummy variable for each party. We use the leftist party
(SLD) as the reference category that, as suggested by the
literature, should be more likely to recruit women and
more likely to place them higher on the list. Also, the SLD
has a significantly more sophisticated organizational
structure and procedure, inherited from the former Communist party.
In addition, we include a set of controls found as relevant by previous studies. Thus, we account for contextual
factors: district-level elements such as district magnitude
(number of representatives in a district) and party magnitude (number of seats won by the candidate’s party in the
district in previous elections), the use of quotas, and the
degree of urbanization (% urban population in the district).
The second type of factors that we control for are candidate
individual characteristics. Our models account for three
characteristics, previously identified as indicators of a candidate’s qualities: profession, political office, and age.
Prestigious occupations (doctor ¼ 1, lawyer ¼ 1, and politician ¼ 1) and older age (in years) are expected to positively affect a candidate’s chances for election. Data are
acquired from the National Electoral Commission in
Poland (pkw.gov.pl) and organized with candidates as units
of analysis.
The multitude of factors that potentially influence voters
and parties in their choices requires a systematic exploration using multivariate statistical techniques. Our statistical
models are as follows:
1) Party Preference model:
Y ¼ b0 þ b1 FEMALE þ b2 AGE: þ b3 LAWYER
þ b4 DOCTOR þ b5 POLITICIAN þ b6 DIST:MAG
þ b7 DIST:MAG:xFEMALE þ b8 PARTY:MAG
þ b9 PARTY:MAG:xFEMALE þ b10 URBANIZATION
þ b11 URBAN:xFEMALE þ b12 PSL þ b13 PiS
þ b14 PO þ b15 PSLxFEMALE þ b16 PiSxFEMALE
þ b17 POxFEMALE þ b18 ELECTION 2001þ
þ b19 ELECTION 2005 þ b20 ELECTION 2007
þ b21 ELECTION 2001xFEMALE
þ b22 ELECTION 2005xFEMALE
þ b23 ELECTION 2007xFEMALE þ ei
2) Voter Preference model:
Y ¼ b0 þ b1 PARTYPREFERENCE
þ b2 PARTYPREFERENCE 1 3 þ b3 FEMALE
þ b4 AGE: þ b5 LAWYER þ b6 DOCTOR
þ b7 POLITICIAN þ b8 DIST:MAG
þ b9 DIST:MAG:xFEMALE þ b10 PARTY:MAG
þ b11 PARTY:MAG:xFEMALE þ b12 URBANIZATION
þ b13 URBAN :xFEMALE þ b14 PSL þ b15 PiS
þ b16 PO þ b17 PSLxFEMALE þ b18 PiSxFEMALE
þ b19 POxFEMALE þ b20 ELECTION 2001 þ
þ b21 ELECTION 2005 þ b22 ELECTION 2007
þ b23 ELECTION 2001xFEMALE
þ b24 ELECTION 2005xFEMALE
þ b25 ELECTION 2007xFEMALE þ ei
Next, we consider a few methodological issues. At
first sight, it seems that the data might need multilevel
modeling, where each candidate is nested within the district and within the party. However, preliminary examination of possible multilevel models revealed that once
all variables are introduced, the variance at the district
and party level disappears completely. Hence, there is
no advantage a multilevel model can bring over a typical
regression. Looking at the distribution of the dependent
variables (count variables) we see that OLS would not
be appropriate and that both cases follow a Poisson distribution. At the same time, the variance and the mean
are not equal either for the Party Preference model or the
Voter Preference model, which is a sign of overdispersion. This is confirmed by the goodness-of-fit statistic
obtained in the preliminary tests. Consequently, we
choose to run negative binomial regression that accounts
for overdispersion.
The results of the regression analysis are presented in
Table 4. Our statistical models are maximum likelihood
and the coefficients cannot be interpreted directly as
changes in party or voter preferences, but as changes
in log count of the (party) positioning or (voter) ranking
of a candidate. We also compare the magnitude of the
effects of interest across models, and check whether
they are significantly different by using seemingly unrelated estimation (Flebig, 2001).5 The comparison allows
us to examine whether populist parties really are more
conducive to women’s success and whether voters follow
their populist party leaders by ranking women higher on
the list.
Before we look at the key terms, some general trends
that both models show are worth noting. Firstly, the variable Female is relatively high in magnitude, statistically
significant, and in the positive direction for both parties
and voters. This indicates that even after controlling for
individual-, district-, and party-level factors, a bias against
women persists; all else equal, women are systematically
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Kostadinova and Mikulska
9
Table 4. The determinants of party and voter preferences of
female candidates.
Party
Preferences
Voter
Preferences
Party Preference
X
Party Preference
1–3
Female
X
0.04***
(0.00)
–0.99***
(0.02)
0.33***
(0.04)
–0.001**
(0.00)
–0.10***
(0.02)
–0.08***
(0.02)
–0.14***
(0.02)
0.02***
(0.00)
–0.01*
(0.00)
–0.00
(0.00)
0.04***
(0.01)
0.0008**
(0.0002)
–0.004***
(0.001)
–0.004
(0.01)
0.01
(0.01)
0.02
(0.01)
0.11***
(0.02)
–0.09***
(0.02)
–0.15***
(0.03)
0.02*
(0.01)
0.02
(0.01)
0.05***
(0.01)
–0.17***
(0.02)
–0.11***
(0.02)
–0.19***
(0.02)
1.65***
(0.03)
13,980
Age
Lawyer
Doctor
Politician
District magnitude
Dist. mag*Female
Party magnitude
Party mag*Female
Urbanization
Urban.*Female
PSL
PiS
PO
PSL*Female
PiS*Female
PO*Female
2001
2005
2007
2001*Female
2005*Female
2007*Female
Constant
N
0.22 ***
(0.06)
–0.01***
(0.00)
–0.17***
(0.02)
–0.06**
(0.03)
–0.17***
(0.02)
0.08***
(0.00)
–0.00
(0.00)
0.01**
(0.00)
0.02**
(0.01)
0.00
(0.00)
–0.001*
(0.00)
0.07***
(0.02)
0.02
(0.02)
0.01
(0.02)
0.01
(0.03)
–0.03
(0.03)
–0.11**
(0.03)
0.01
(0.02)
–0.02
(0.02)
0.05**
(0.02)
–0.07**
(0.03)
–0.09**
(0.03)
–0.16***
(0.03)
1.76***
(0.04)
13, 980
Notes: Numbers in parentheses are standard errors. *p < 0.1, **p < 0.05,
***p < 0.01.
listed (by parties) and ranked (by voters) lower than their
male counterparts. Despite the introduction of a quota,
despite the parties’ campaigns geared toward showing
commitment to women’s political success, and despite a
seemingly positive public opinion, a pattern of undermining women as viable candidates emerges from the data.
Parties and voters are more likely to choose a male candidate over an equally qualified female candidate running in
the same district. And this relationship holds for all parties,
despite what PiS leaders like Adam Lipinski would like us
to believe. Using the seemingly unrelated estimation technique, we establish that the Female coefficients for party
and voter preferences are not significantly different from
each other.
Turning now to the interaction terms between the party
variables and Female, we can see that the PiS does not differ from the leftist SLD in the positioning of women candidates. However, the PiS electorate invests more in women’s
success than the electorate of the SLD (and so does the
electorate of the PO). This is an interesting finding, given
the common belief that leftist voters are more likely to support female candidates. The PiS also performs better than
the PSL in promoting women but it consistently trails the
PO (when the PiS is reference category). All in all, the PiS
does surprisingly better than the leftist SLD but does not
match the level of ‘friendliness’ toward women that characterizes the PO, a party more centrist in its ideology and less
centralized than the Kaczynskis’ organization.
Among the control variables, contrary to the initial
expectation the statistical analysis shows that a higher party
magnitude reduces the chances of women being listed/
ranked higher on the list. Surprisingly, the data imply that
the more powerful the party is in a district, the lower the
average ranking of women is on that list. Furthermore, the
effect that party magnitude has on voters is approximately
twice as large as the effect it exercises on the parties. The
seemingly unrelated estimation confirms that the coefficients are indeed significantly different across the two
models.
The estimates obtained for District Magnitude and
Urbanization confirm the relationships suggested by the literature. In districts of higher magnitude, being a woman
affects the initial position and the final ranking of candidates in a positive direction. Also, women are found to
do better in urban environments than in rural. Unlike for
Party Magnitude, however, the seemingly unrelated estimation indicates that the coefficients for district magnitude
and urbanization for the voter and the party models are statistically indistinguishable from each other.6
Lastly, while quotas have indeed increased the representation of women on lists numerically, this seems not to be
the case when it comes to ranking. In 2011, female candidates did worse on initial list placement and, most of the
time, on voter support than in any other election when a
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10
Party Politics
quota was not used. It appears that when all parties were
required to assign at least 35% of all their nominations to
women, ranking of females in top positions worsened.
Discussion and conclusion
Populist parties have penetrated the electoral arena in many
Eastern European countries since the beginning of the new
century, receiving support from large groups of voters and
recruiting significant numbers of women to public office.
The latter unexpected achievement presents scholars and
practitioners with a puzzle, mostly because it has become
conventional wisdom to consider leftist parties as the
champions of gender equality. Another intriguing detail
of the story is that many of these populist parties are dominated by charismatic men who have authoritarian styles of
leadership and are thus less committed to the principles of
liberalism in politics. This paper started to unveil the story
of populist parties’ success in recruiting women to public
office by focusing more closely on how party leaders
balanced the ballot in terms of gender and how these
choices vary across parties. Since voters play an important
role in the electoral process too, we also sought to assess if
their preferences converge with those of party gatekeepers.
These strategies offer us an opportunity to go beyond a simple observation that populists do indeed elect women, and
see how they do it and how different they are in this regard
from other parties.
Our first finding—that the big populist parties in Bulgaria and Poland managed to elect more women to the
national legislature than the main leftist parties—questions
the validity of the ‘ideology hypothesis’ advanced in previous studies. It confirms insights from more recent research
that contests the impact of ideology, at least with regard to
descriptive representation. Our results also challenge the
hypothesis that big parties elect more women because they
simply elect more representatives, including women placed
lower on the ballot. The analysis of nomination strategies
reveals that the populist parties did much better in ranking
women high on the list than the leftists, and in the case of
Bulgaria, than all other parties. This suggests that even with
a more modest share of the vote, the PiS, the NMSII, and
GERB would still have elected significant numbers of
women.
How does all this affect voters at the ballot box? Even if
not particularly supportive of having more women in politics, in a PR party-list system voters may simply accept the
choices made by their favorite party leader. This is likely to
happen, given the charisma of the leaders of the populist
parties we studied and the magnetism of their appeal among
followers. While more detailed sociological analysis of the
populist parties’ electorate is needed, in this paper we
assessed how voters felt by analyzing their choices in the
context of an open-list PR. Poland with its preferential
system offers a good opportunity to undertake such an
investigation (until October 2014, Bulgaria had used a
closed-list PR for legislative elections). Our results suggest
that the PiS voters, along with those of the PO, invest more
in female candidates by ranking them higher on the list than
do leftists’ supporters.
One important question emerges from the results
reported in this study. Why do personalist populist parties
put significant effort and resources into electing women?
At this point, we have only the direct claim made by the
leader of the NMSII in Bulgaria, Simeon II, according to
whom women make politics more ‘humane.’ Aside from
this, one possible answer to the question above is that populist parties appeal to very broad constituencies. Attention to
women, who are about half of the population everywhere,
would benefit the party at the ballot box. By including more
women, populist parties may not only change the political
preferences of the women who vote, but may also be able to
activate the so-far dormant electorate. In Eastern Europe it
is possible that women, affected by the hardships of the
reforms, may have become more responsive to the populist
rhetoric. As candidates for office, women also could be
considered better choices by those who believe that women
are less corrupt.
Some scholars argue that women are less likely to get
involved in bribery and that as a consequence, corruption
levels are lower in countries with more female participation
in government (Swamy et al., 2001). Others state that the
link between gender and corruption can only be confirmed
in the electoral arena (StensÎta et al., 2014) and that such a
relationship is more likely to exist in democratic systems
than in autocratic states (Esarey and Chirillo, 2013).
Pledges to fight and eliminate corruption have been a
central, if not the only, major policy promise made by
populists. Our findings cannot be stretched far enough,
however, to conclude that the Polish and Bulgarian populist
parties recruited women because of commitments to
enforce strict anti-corruption measures. Nor is there solid
evidence from opinion polls that voters do indeed perceive
women as the fairer sex and that parties have thus exploited
such sentiments. What we can claim with certainty, however, is that the NMSII, GERB, and the PiS sought to nominate outsiders, individuals not already tainted by the spoils
of politics. As less involved in previous governments,
women were preferred for nomination, especially when
male candidates with a clean record were in short supply.
Another factor we consider relevant is the organizational nature of personalist populist parties, such as the
NMSII, GERB, and the PiS. From a comparative perspective, they have a highly centralized method of decision
making and weak institutionalization. In some ways these
formations resemble the ‘informal-centralized recruitment’
type in the classification scheme developed by Pippa Norris
(1993: 321–323). If the leaders are sympathetic to the idea
of recruiting women (as were the PiS high-level functionaries and NMSII’s Simeon II), it would be hard for local
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Kostadinova and Mikulska
11
organizations not to comply. In addition, the nominations
procedure is often unclear and the lack of formality in how
nominees are selected helps, if there is will at the top to
impose particular individuals without contestation. It is
uncertain, though, how consistent populist leaders will be
in their inclination to nominate women. A warning signal
for how quickly they can change strategies came recently
from GERB’s Borissov. Addressing the General Assembly
of his party’s women’s organization in January 2015, he
suggested that the next president of Bulgaria might be a
woman, only to rebuff the idea a day later by explaining
that it was just ‘a joke’ (Focus Information Agency, 2015).
As we write this, PiS’s leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski has nominated a woman—Ms. Beata Szydlo—as a candidate for the
position of prime minister should PiS win the parliamentary
election in the fall of 2015. It remains to be seen whether
Szydlo will continue as a prime ministerial candidate and
whether, in the case of a PiS victory, Kaczynski will be willing to give away the post or will experience a change of heart
and take over the position himself. For now, Szydlo’s candidacy strengthens PiS’ rankings in the polls, adding a ‘breath
of a fresh air’ to a rather established PiS leadership.
There are many themes and questions for future research
that stem from our study. To complete the analysis on Bulgaria which recently switched to an open-PR system, as
soon as data become available a replication of the regression analysis should be conducted to see whether the more
nuanced conclusions obtained here for Poland are confirmed. A similar investigation of populist parties in other
countries would facilitate a more systematic comparison
and would check the validity of our findings for other political conditions. Could personalist populist parties be that
successful under majoritarian systems or in different socioeconomic contexts? Also, future studies need to examine
whether populists’ achievements in descriptive representation translate into changes in the policy agenda. This line of
research would benefit from investigating the sociological
profile of the female representatives elected by populist parties. Who are these women? Are they just young, pretty faces
or professionally realized individuals, or both as the PiS experience indicates? Once elected, have they supported policy
proposals advancing issues of importance to women, or just
stayed loyal to the party leaders and their private agenda? Yet
another interesting theme that deserves attention is whether
the success of the new, populist parties in Eastern Europe has
had any contagion effect, as Matland and Studlar (1996) suggest. The mainstream parties might have felt the pressure of
competition coming from newcomers who defeated them in
elections, and become less ignorant and reluctant to nominate
women. In general, that would be good news for the cause of
achieving gender equality in politics.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect
to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Notes
1. For comparative data, see Women in National Parliaments,
Inter-Parliamentary Union, available at: http://www.ipu.org/
wmn-e/classif.htm.
2. No Bulgarian party has used an internal quota for nomination
of women. In Poland, the SLD adopted such a mechanism in
2001.
3. Art. 36.12, Statute of Political Party GERB, http://gerb.bg/bg/
pages/ustav-ppgerb-89.html.
4. The open-list PR system in Poland gives parties an opportunity
to make the initial list ordering, but leaves it to voters to determine how candidates will be finally ranked. At the ballot box, a
voter must express preference for one candidate on the party
list of her choice. This vote counts for both the candidate
and the party. The candidate who collects the most votes is
assigned the first position on the list and is the first to get a legislative seat, etc if her party has collected enough votes in the
district and crossed the national legislative threshold (5% for
parties and 8% for coalitions).
5. For application in STATA, see http://www.stata.com/manuals13/rsuest.pdf.
6. Even though the party variables are operationalized the same
way for both models (as party dummies), their conceptualization is very different. In the Party Preference model they reflect
the specific party organization and its strategy, while in the
Voter Preference model they account for the electorate of a
particular party. Given this important distinction, there is no
reason to compare the magnitudes of the effects these variables
(and their interactions) have across the two models.
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Author biographies
Tatiana Kostadinova is Associate Professor at the Department
of Politics and International Relations, Florida International
University, USA. She received her M.S. and Ph.D. in political
science from the Florida State University, USA. Her interests
include elections, representation, political parties, and democratic transition.
Anna Mikulska is a nonresident scholar at the Baker Institute, Rice University, USA. She received a law degree from
Adam Mickiewicz University, a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Windsor in Canada,
and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of
Houston, USA.
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