Year: 2009
Type: dissertation
Abstract: In my thesis I discuss and investigate whether there is an effect of\npoliticians' gender on policy outcomes. The main part consists of an\nempirical investigation of this question, using a rich set of panel\ndata on Norwegian municipalities.\n\nIn my empirical analysis I employ data on municipal budget shares\nfor eight different service sectors and the share of women in the\nlocal council as well as various control variables. The data is from\nthe period 1972-1999. I argue that it is particularly suitable for\nthe subject of study because female representation in politics\nincreased rapidly in Norway during this period, partly due to\nwomen's activism within the party system. This implies that the\nchanges in female representation it the local councils can be at\nleast partly considered as driven by forces outside of each\nmunicipality.\n\nWomen in politics has been a popular subject of study in political\neconomics during recent years, and investigating gender differences\nin politics is of high interest in itself, both from a political and\nan academic point of view. However, my study is also related to a\ncentral question in the field of political economics, namely whether\n(or to what extent) politicians are able to pursue their own\ninterests when deciding on policies.\n\nTheoretical models differ in their predictions of the effects of\nparty representation and politicians' personal ideology on policy\noutcomes, and the evidence from empirical investigations is also\nmixed. The traditional median voter theorem states that who\neventually gets elected does not matter at all for policies. Several\nempirical studies lead to rejection of this 'full convergence'\nhypothesis. I offer a brief introduction to the theoretical\ndiscussion of this subject and a somewhat more detailed review of\nthe empirical literature, some of which focuses explicitly on female\npoliticians. I also review a few other studies which do not concern\nfemale politicians but gender differences in politics more\ngenerally.\n\nA popular model showing that personal ideology could matter for\npolitics is the citizen-candidate model, developed contemporaneously\nby Osborne and Slivinski and Besley and Case. Using a slightly\naltered version of this model, I show that if the barriers facing\nfemale candidates in the political system are lowered, this could\nmake it more likely that a women is elected. This could again lead\nto different policy outcomes than when gender barriers are high,\neven though voter preferences have not changed. At the same time,\nthe model shows that if voter preferences change towards a more\n'female' stand on policies, this could yield higher support for\nfemale candidates and ultimately affect the policy outcome. The\nmodel hence shows the importance of separating between these two\neffects.\n\nMy way of doing this in the panel data regression is to add a rich\nset of electoral, demographical and socio-economic variables which\nshould pick up effects related to voter preferences. In addition, I\nadd municipality- and time- fixed effects (FE) to account for\nunobservable characteristics of each municipality and factors which\nchange over time affecting the spending decisions in all\nmunicipalities.\n\nThe regressions are carried out using Stata 9. My results show a\npositive estimated effect of female representation in the local\ncouncil on the share of the budget devoted to childcare with a high\ndegree of statistical significance. This estimated effect does not\ndepend much on the choice of control variables, nor on the time\nperiod of study. I also find a positive effect on the share spent on\nculture and a negative effect on administrative spending, though\nespecially the latter is less robust. The estimated effects on other\npurposes like for instance education and elderly care are either\nstatistically insignificant or highly unstable across\nspecifications.\n\nThe estimated effects are very small in magnitude. More precisely,\nthe results imply that a ten percentage point increase in the number\nof women in the local council only leads to an increase in the\nbudget share spent on childcare of 0.08 percentage points. The\neffect on cultural spending is of similar magnitude.\n\nI argue that the robustness of the results to the inclusion of more\ncontrol variables could imply that there is not much of a problem\nwith omitted variables related to voter preferences. As argued\nabove, changes in female council representation are likely to be\ndriven by external factors and could hence be considered exogenous\nin this setting. In an attempt to investigate this further, I try\nestimating the model by two-stage least squares (2SLS) using the\nintroduction of gender quotation rules in the Norwegian Labour Party\nas an instrument for the share of women in the municipality council.\nInstrumental variables using gender quotation rules in other\npolitical parties seem to be irrelevant.\n\nUnfortunately, my instrument is to weak to give precise estimates of\nthe effects on local public spending, and the 2SLS results therefore\ntell us nothing about the validity of the results from the\nregression without instrumental variables.\n\nThe results from the ordinary fixed-effects regression hence stand\nuncontested: Increased female representation in Norwegian local\npolitics seems to have had a positive impact on the composition of\nlocal public spending. The most robust effect is found for spending\non childcare, which is a sector where we might expect there to be an\nconflict of interest between women and men. This and the other\neffects found are however very modest, possibly reflecting a large\ndegree of consensus rule in the Norwegian local democracy or heavy\nregulation of local public spending by the central government.
Author: Askill Harkjerr Halse
Language: English
Subfield: Gender Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2399468610