IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v116y2022i1p249-264_17.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Curious Case of Theresa May and the Public That Did Not Rally: Gendered Reactions to Terrorist Attacks Can Cause Slumps Not Bumps

Author

Listed:
  • HOLMAN, MIRYA R.
  • MEROLLA, JENNIFER L.
  • ZECHMEISTER, ELIZABETH J.

Abstract

Terrorist attacks routinely produce rallies for incumbent men in the executive office. With scarce cases, there has been little consideration of terrorism’s consequences for evaluations of sitting women executives. Fusing research on rallies with scholarship on women in politics, we derive a gender-revised framework wherein the public will be less inclined to rally around women when terrorists attack. A critical case is UK Prime Minister Theresa May, a right-leaning incumbent with security experience. Employing a natural experiment, we demonstrate that the public fails to rally after the 2017 Manchester Arena attack. Instead, evaluations of May decrease, with sharp declines among those holding negatives views about women. We further show May’s party loses votes in areas closer to the attack. We then find support for the argument in a multinational test. We conclude that conventional theory on rally events requires revision: women leaders cannot count on rallies following major terrorist attacks.

Suggested Citation

  • Holman, Mirya R. & Merolla, Jennifer L. & Zechmeister, Elizabeth J., 2022. "The Curious Case of Theresa May and the Public That Did Not Rally: Gendered Reactions to Terrorist Attacks Can Cause Slumps Not Bumps," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 116(1), pages 249-264, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:116:y:2022:i:1:p:249-264_17
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055421000861/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Holman, Mirya R. & Merolla, Jennifer L. & Zechmeister, Elizabeth J., 2023. "Response to "On the Empirical Validity of 'Gendered Reactions to Terrorist Attacks Can Cause Slumps not Bumps'"," I4R Discussion Paper Series 44, The Institute for Replication (I4R), revised 2023.
    2. Ignacio Lago & André Blais, 2022. "Floods, terrorist attacks and the covid-19 pandemic: How the (de)centralization of power affects the rally around the flag," Working Papers. Collection A: Public economics, governance and decentralization 2208, Universidade de Vigo, GEN - Governance and Economics research Network.
    3. Jetter, Michael & Stockley, Kieran, 2023. "On the Empirical Validity of "Gendered Reactions to Terrorist Attacks Can Cause Slumps not Bumps" (Holman et al., 2022)," I4R Discussion Paper Series 41, The Institute for Replication (I4R).
    4. TaeJun Seo & Yusaku Horiuchi, 2024. "Natural Experiments of the Rally 'Round the Flag Effects Using Worldwide Surveys," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 68(2-3), pages 269-293, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:116:y:2022:i:1:p:249-264_17. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.