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Can't We All Just Get Along? How Women MPs Can Ameliorate Affective Polarization in Western Publics
[journal article]
Abstract Concern over partisan resentment and hostility has increased across Western democracies. Despite growing attention to affective polarization, existing research fails to ask whether who serves in office affects mass-level interparty hostility. Drawing on scholarship on women's behavior as elected rep... view more
Concern over partisan resentment and hostility has increased across Western democracies. Despite growing attention to affective polarization, existing research fails to ask whether who serves in office affects mass-level interparty hostility. Drawing on scholarship on women's behavior as elected representatives and citizens' beliefs about women politicians, we posit the women MPs affective bonus hypothesis: all else being equal, partisans display warmer affect toward out-parties with higher proportions of women MPs. We evaluate this claim with an original dataset on women's presence in 125 political parties in 20 Western democracies from 1996 to 2017 combined with survey data on partisans' affective ratings of political opponents. We show that women's representation is associated with lower levels of partisan hostility and that both men and women partisans react positively to out-party women MPs. Increasing women's parliamentary presence could thus mitigate cross-party hostility.... view less
Keywords
representative; woman; polarization; Western world; democracy; party politics
Classification
Political Process, Elections, Political Sociology, Political Culture
Women's Studies, Feminist Studies, Gender Studies
Free Keywords
CSES - Comparative Study of Electoral Systems
Document language
English
Publication Year
2023
Page/Pages
p. 318-324
Journal
American Political Science Review, 117 (2023) 1
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055422000491
ISSN
1537-5943
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed