Do Gender Quotas Foster Democratic Accountability in Post-Authoritarian Regimes? Lessons from Council Meetings in Albania

Background and purpose:

Gender quotas are a widespread electoral reform aiming to tackle gender inequality in politics. A rich body of scholarly work focuses on the impact of gender quotas on the articulation of women’s interests in national legislatures. Yet we know little about the transformatory potential of gender quotas for local decision-making. Do gender quotas challenge practices of local decision-making and advance democratization in post-authoritarian regimes? In this study, we examine the impact of gender quotas on democratic accountability in the local councils of Albania. In 2015, the electoral code of Albania established that women must comprise 50% of local council candidates. Local elections resulted into a threefold increase of women’s proportion in local councils. We test the following hypotheses: (1) Women will be more likely to take the floor and demand accountability on first-order issues for local communities; (2) Women will be more likely to take the floor and demand accountability in councils that have experienced the greatest “quota shock” or change in the proportion of women.

Methods:

The study draws on 2 waves of data collected in 11 local councils. Seventy-five council meetings were attended and recorded during 2016 and 2018. We followed an inductive approach to discover the types of demands that councilors make when holding municipal officials to account. Then, we combined natural language processing with qualitative and quantitative analysis. Logistic regression predicted the likelihood that councilors took the floor to hold municipal officials to account from gender, year, and the magnitude of change promoted by gender quotas.

Results:

Thematic analysis revealed that councilors held municipal officials to account to demand greater community engagement in local decision-making, transparency, impartiality, and law enforcement. Over time, women’s contribution became more pronounced in the area of transparency. Women were more likely than men to take the floor and demand transparency on behalf of communities. The greatest impact was observed in councils experiencing the greatest “quota shock.”

Conclusions and implications:

Findings suggest that gender quotas can have a positive impact on local decision-making even when they are implemented in a post-authoritarian regime. In communities characterized by low levels of information literacy, gender quotas can increase opportunities to address the exclusion of community members from information that has a direct effect on their well-being. The study contributes to theories of democracy, representation and institutional change, and provides broader lessons for policy actors and development practitioners supporting gender quotas in post-authoritarian regimes.