Women's Access to Political Power in Post-Communist Europe

This text considers women's access to formal positions of power in the newly formed democracies of post communist Europe. While acknowledging the relevance of recent history, this book takes an important step away from the communist legacy and explicitly argues for a framework based on causal variables identified in the existing literatures from industrialized democracies on women and politics and legislative recruitment. After a brief introduction, the second chapter sets forth a general theoretical framework, which posits that the level of female legislative representation in a given country is a function of the relative supply of and demand for female candidates. After a chapter considering a broad overview of public opinion on women and politics in Eastern Europe, 13 country chapters, spanning the spectrum of Eastern European democracies, address and test hypotheses about the key variables affecting the supply and demand sides of the equation in individual countries.Table of Content1. Introduction; 2. Recruting Women to National Legislatures: A General Framework with Applications to Post-Communist Democracies; 3. Popular Support for Electing Women in Eastern Europe; 4. Women's Representation in Germany: A Comparison of East and West; 5. Women in Lithuanian Politics: From Nomenklatura Selection to Representation; 6. Weak Mobilization, Hidden Majoritarianism, and Resurgence of the Right: A Recipe for Female Under-Representation in Hungary; 7. Women and Political Representation in Contemporary Ukraine; 8. Electoral Systems and Women's Representation: The Strange Case of Russia; 9. Women in Russian Regional Assemblies: Losing Ground; 10. Establishing a Machocracy: Women and Elections in Macedonia (1990-1998); 11. Women in the Polish Sejm: Political Culture and Party Politics versus Electoral Rules; 12. Czech Political Parties Prefer Male Candidates to Female Votes; 13. Factors Influencing Women's Presence in the Slovene Parliament; 14. Croatia's Leap toward Gender Equality in the Parliament: Rules and Players; 15. Women's Legislative Representation in Post-Communist Bulgaria; 16. Conclusion; Bibliography