This document contains all the readings for week 5 and 6 of Diversity Equality and Justice. For this course I scored an overall grade of 9.2 by using these notes to study for the quizzes. Study the notes and make sure you get the core of the readings, see if you can summarise the arguments yourself...
Table of contents
LECTURE 9 1
Paxton: Women’s suffrage in the measurement of democracy: Problems of
operationalisation 1
Waylen: Engendering the “crisis of democracy”: institutions, representation and
participation 7
Baldez: Women’s movements and democratic transition in Chile, Brazil, East Germany
and Poland 11
LECTURE 10 15
Smith, Chapter 1: Studying democratic innovations: an analytical framework 15
Smith, Chapter 2: Popular assemblies: from New England town meetings to participatory
budgeting 21
Afsahi: Gender differences in willingness and capacity for deliberation 31
LECTURE 11 37
Peters: Democratic representation and political inequality: how social differences
translate into differential representation 37
Mansbridge: Should blacks represent blacks and women represent women? A
contingent “Yes” 41
LECTURE 12 47
Burchardt: Capabilities and disability: The capabilities framework and the social model of
disability 47
Monforte and Dufour: Mobilizing in borderline citizenship regimes: A comparative
analysis of undocumented migrants’ collective actions 53
Anderson, Chapter 5: Democratic ideals and segregation 60
LECTURE 9
Paxton: Women’s suffrage in the measurement of democracy: Problems of
operationalisation
There is now an expectation of democracies to have universal suffrage; no ascribed
characteristics are valid grounds for exclusion in the vote. However, there are problems with
the operationalisation in research on democracy; measures of democracy often do not
include women as political participants. Male (not universal) suffrage is used as an indicator
of a country’s transition to democracy.
There are many consequences when omitting women from these measures; i.e. the notion
of waves of democracy is no longer supported.
Excluding women suffrage from measures of democracy can affect three areas of
democracy:
- scoring dates of democratic transitions
, - descriptions of the emergence of democracy
- research on understanding the causes of democratisation
Moreover, gender issues and other aspects of democracy can be incorporated more
naturally when democracy is measured on a graded scale.
1. Examples of the discrepancy between definition and measurement
Most scholars agree that democracy has at least three components: competition,
participation and civil liberties. Paxton focuses on participation (the source of greatest
operational mismatch).
Modern theoretical definitions stress numbers of people rather than types of people.
Democratic inclusion is conceived to be all native born adults, therefore including women.
However, in the process of moving from definition to measurement, women are often lost.
These operation problems occur frequently in studies that deal with transition dates and
stability; not so much when dealing with the level of democracy.
a. Muller, 1988
In his definition of democratic states he uses the words “all citizens” and “universal adult
suffrage”. But in his operationalisation, universal suffrage is substituted with “at least
approximately the majority of the adult population has the right to vote. As a result while
women were included in his definition, they were excluded in his measurement.
b. Lipset, 1959
Many of the countries that Lipset include in his definition of “uninterrupted continuation of
political democracy since WW1” did not have female suffrage to begin with => implicitly
excludes female participation.
c. Huntington, 1991
He defines democratic state (among other attributes) allow virtually all of the adult population
to vote. However, in his operational criteria “50% of the male population is eligible to vote”.
He says that this is reasonable measurement before 1900s but continues it (i.e. with
Switzerland well into the 1900s. Thus, his 20th century measurement decisions do not
correspond to either his theoretical or operational definitions.
d. Rueschmeyer, Stephens and Stephens, 1992
Including in their definition is universal and equal suffrage. However they use male suffrage
for their measurement because the introduction of female suffrage did not cause a lot of
bloodshed nor did it give rise to regime changes designed to re-exclude them.
e. Examples of the discrepancy in graded measures
Other measures consider the level of democracy in given years => These are less likely to
exclude women. Nonetheless there are examples of exclusion:
- Gurr, 1990: he has four variables to measure democracy but none of these are
suffrage (between 1950-70, Switzerland receives a high score); the same pitfall is
evident in Bollen’s 1965 index
,Examples of countries that include women:
- Vanhanen, 1997 (implicitly): he takes the percentage of electoral participation to be
an indicator; thus when excluding women => country is downgraded
- Arat, 1991: penalises countries without full inclusiveness
2. Consequences of excluding women from measures of democracy
A measurement decision that separates definition and measurement can affect three
aspects of research on democracy:
- scoring dates of democratic transitions
- descriptions of the emergence of democracy
- research on understanding the causes of democratisation
a. Consequences of measuring transition dates and stability
Omitting women can shift transition dates; the assessment of years of stability can change,
since the measurement of stability is tightly tied to transition dates.
b. Muller, 1988
Including women changes the date of transition for 12 countries (i.e. in US change is
substantial; 50-year difference).
, c. Lipset, 1959
69% of the countries he treated as democracies would be treated as non-democracies if he
had included women.
d. Huntington, 1991
He presents a number of waves when more transitions to democracy happened than
transitions to non-democracies (reverse waves).
=> Black = transition to democracy
=> Grey = transition to non-democracy (reverse waves)
Including women would have produced these revised waves:
=> Does not produce as much evidence for the occurence of democratic waves
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