To serve and protect. How political parties prevent and handle violence, and whether it matters

Paper proposal for ECPRJS23 Intersectionality and Violence in Politics, chaired by Liza Mügge & Vibeke Wang To serve and protect. How political parties prevent and handle violence, and whether it matters Political parties are central for political processes due to their role in candidate recruitment and parliamentary representation, and as a result, they provide a unique linkage between the electorate and the elected, not only in campaigns and elections but also as a channel of participation between elections. Drawing on the insights of feminist institutionalism’s focus on the gendered foundation of formal and informal political institutions, the aim of this paper is to study parties’ institutional context for preventing and handling violence and its interaction with violence experiences. In the first part of the paper, we study parties’ formal and informal rules and measures taken towards preventing violence, including codes of conduct, awareness-raising campaigns, and training, as well as procedures to handle violence experiences. The analytical framework includes all actors within the party from rank-and-file party members, over staff, to parliamentary representatives. It is structured around the distinctions between the three faces of party (party in public office, party on the ground and party in the central office), between targets and bystanders, and between various social groups with an emphasis on gender, age, ethnicity and handicap, and the intersections between these identities. In the second part of the paper, we study the interaction between institutional context and violence. We expect the experience and effect of violence to interact with the institutional context. Violence experiences are more common and negative effects of harassment are larger in parties without defined protocols, procedures, and cultures to prevent/limit and handle violence. However, more common violence experiences are also expected to result in parties' adoption of protocols and procedures, as well as other efforts to change the culture. The paper is based on interviews with and documents from the Danish parties represented in parliament, and surveys among candidates at national (2019, 2022) and local elections (2021), and elected municipal representatives (2020). Denmark provides a critical case, since it is widely considered to have achieved a decent level of egalitarianism, in an international comparison, in terms of the integration of women and other minorities in politics and public life.