When Women Take All: Direct Election and Female Leadership

Davide Cipullo

No 10229, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: This paper investigates how direct election regimes (à la presidential democracy) affect the selection of women into political offices compared to indirect appointment (à la parliamentary). Exploiting the staggered phase-in across Italian municipalities of a reform to the local institutional regime, I find that the introduction of direct elections increased the fraction of female mayors substantially. The results are stronger in cities with a high pre-reform share of female politicians and driven by high-quality female officials replacing undereducated incumbents. Taken together, the results of this paper inform that direct election regimes ease the selection of competent politicians into office.

Keywords: political selection; voting systems; gender gaps; female representation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C24 D02 D72 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-gen, nep-lab and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10229

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