Varieties of Power

Women’s Political Representation in Arab Parliaments

Marwa Shalaby (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

320 Seiten

2025
Columbia University Press (Verlag)
978-0-231-21865-8 (ISBN)

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The introduction of gender quotas has significantly increased women’s representation in national legislatures—not only in democracies but also in many autocracies. To what extent has the growing number of women in authoritarian legislatures granted them more power and influence? What conditions help or hinder women’s political participation under autocratic regimes? And what does the role of women tell us about the politics of authoritarianism today?

Drawing on a decade of fieldwork and a vast data set collected across the Middle East and North Africa, Marwa Shalaby develops a new theory of women’s political representation in authoritarian regimes. She examines the dynamics of women’s political inclusion in three Arab monarchies, Morocco, Jordan, and Kuwait, with varying levels of quota implementation and where the strength and capacity of political parties differ widely. Shalaby demonstrates that the degree to which individual parties have been institutionalized plays a significant role in women’s legislative behavior and political power. Parties play integral roles in recruiting, cultivating, supporting, and elevating female candidates in contexts where women have been excluded from existing networks of power, in nondemocratic systems as well as democracies. Although the introduction of quota systems has expanded women’s numerical presence, the absence of institutionalized parties has limited their ability to gain influence. Nuanced and incisive, Varieties of Power offers grounded, comparative insights into the study of gender and politics, political representation, and authoritarianism in the Middle East and North Africa.

Marwa Shalaby is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is the coeditor of Empowering Women After the Arab Spring (2016).

List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Accessing Political Power
2. Party Institutionalization and Women’s Representation
3. Navigating Power: Playing on an Uneven Field
4. Coming to Power: Women’s Committee Membership and Leadership
5. Discerning the Link Between Descriptive and Substantive Representation: Posing Parliamentary Questions
Conclusion
Appendix A
Appendix B. Comparative Agenda Project (CAP) Coding Scheme and Governance and Elections in the Middle East Project (GEMEP) Added Categories
Appendix C. Legislators’ Interviews Questionnaire
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	24.05.2025
Reihe/Serie	Columbia Studies in Middle East Politics
Zusatzinfo	43 b&w figures (19 graphs and 24 tables)
Verlagsort	New York
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Themenwelt	Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Vergleichende Politikwissenschaften
Themenwelt	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Gender Studies
ISBN-10	0-231-21865-6 / 0231218656
ISBN-13	978-0-231-21865-8 / 9780231218658
Zustand	Neuware