Gender and Party Loyalty under Electoral Authoritarianism: Evidence from Turkey

• In Event: Gender and Authoritarian States

Abstract

Why do gendered differences in party loyalty emerge in regimes where strong expectations of loyalty exist across politicians? Party loyalty carries a high premium in electoral autocracies, yet information to discern politicians' loyalty is scarce. Women present a distinct information problem due to their status as political outsiders. I argue that dominant parties have strong incentives and capacity to resolve this information gap and advance loyalist women. I test my theory using original Twitter data from over 800 members of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey from 2015 to 2023. Using supervised machine learning, I find that women are more likely than men to publicly signal their loyalty in the dominant party, but not in opposition parties. Further, dominant party women tend to prioritize less contentious women's interests that enhance the party's image without disrupting gender hierarchies. This research sheds light on the nature of women's participation in core political institutions amidst authoritarianism.

Author

• Lisa Fan, Columbia University