Universität zu Köln

Gushchina, Kristina ORCID: 0000-0001-8575-7659 (2020). Womens' political representation in East-European post-communist and post-Soviet countries: Macro- and Micro-Level Analysis of the Factors of Election to the National and Regional Legislatures. PhD thesis, Universität zu Köln.

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Abstract

One of the most salient political issues today is women’s under-representation in state authority bodies. Many factors varying across the world affect how many women get elected. In this dissertation, I look at women’s legislative representation (WLR) in East-European post-communist and post-Soviet countries, which so far been understudied, from different angles. The radical political and socio-economic changes experienced by post-communist countries make them interesting to analyse. In Chapter 2, I address 2 literature gaps by focusing on how democracy and corruption influence WLR in post-communist countries. On the regional level, I am interested in the effect of the rise of multilevel politics on WLR. Thus, in Chapter 3 we develop an argument that the impact of decentralisation reforms on WLR is dependent on regions’ political power. Finally, to overcome the US-centred bias in the studies of personal characteristics of female and male MPs, Chapter 4 focuses on post-communist political elites. A shared legacy of “state feminism” but different trajectories of countries’ post-communist political development create a perfect laboratory for analysing whether the combination of these factors contribute to the eradication of the differences between female and male MPs or to their consolidation. My dissertation contributes to the literature by closing several gaps in research on WLR. The conducted analyses improve our knowledge of post-communist countries and factors facilitating regional variation in WLR. This thesis tests new theoretical arguments and broadens existing ones. The results challenge some of the previous findings based on the studies of developed countries and show that we cannot generalise them to other world regions. A more practical contribution is the collection of 3 original databases which provides an opportunity for a further research of WLR in the post-communist region. Finally, the findings contribute to the debate on women’s substantive representation.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD thesis)
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID ORCID Put Code Gushchina, Kristina guschinakristina@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8575-7659 UNSPECIFIED
URN:	urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-116482
Date:	5 August 2020
Language:	English
Faculty:	Faculty of Management, Economy and Social Sciences
Divisions:	Faculty of Management, Economics and Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Political Science > Cologne Center for Comparative Politics
Subjects:	Political science
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Keywords Language Women's political representation English Post-communist countries English Political elite English Democracy English Corruption English Decentralisation English
Date of oral exam:	14 July 2020
Referee:	Name Academic Title Kaiser, André Prof. Dr. Rohlfing, Ingo Prof. PhD
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/11648