The Effect of Women’s Representation in Government on Armed Party Violence

• In Event: Gender and Violence in South Asia

Abstract

Armed political parties undermine democratic processes in myriad contexts, but existing research says little about whether women’s representation in government affects these parties’ attacks against partisan rivals. I study this question with a regression discontinuity design and novel data on armed party violence in the Indian state of West Bengal. I find that although electing women to West Bengal’s state legislature does not affect post-election violence in the constituencies women represent, the results indicate an increase in armed parties’ attacks within these electoral constituencies during the subsequent pre-election period. Mechanism analyses suggest that women legislators improve socioeconomic conditions in their constituencies and that these improvements produce more economic resources available for capture by armed parties through violence. I discuss the implications of these findings for theory and policy.

Author

• Drew Stommes, Yale University