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When Women Take All: Direct Election and Female Leadership

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  • Davide Cipullo

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Davide Cipullo, 2023. "When Women Take All: Direct Election and Female Leadership," CESifo Working Paper Series 10229, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10229
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    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp10229.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    political selection; voting systems; gender gaps; female representation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C24 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Truncated and Censored Models; Switching Regression Models; Threshold Regression Models
    • D02 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Institutions: Design, Formation, Operations, and Impact
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination

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