Elections, War, and Gender: Self-Selection and the Pursuit of Victory

Stephen Chaudoin, Sarah Hummel and Yon Soo Park

International Organization, 2024, vol. 78, issue 4, 853-875

Abstract: Why might female leaders of democratic countries commit more money, equipment, soldiers, and other resources to interstate conflicts than male leaders? We argue that gender bias in the process of democratic election helps explain this behavior. Since running for office is generally more costly for women than for men, only women who place a higher value on winning competitions will choose to run. After election, they also devote more resources to pursuing victory in conflict situations. To provide microfoundational evidence for this claim, we analyze data from an online laboratory game featuring real-time group play in which participants chose to run for election, conducted a simple campaign, and represented their group in a contest game if elected. Women with a higher nonmonetary value to winning were more likely to self-select into candidacy, and when victorious, they spent more resources on intergroup contests than male elected leaders. The data suggest that electoral selection plays an important role in observed differences between male and female leaders in the real world.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:intorg:v:78:y:2024:i:4:p:853-875_8

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Organization from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().