Previous cross-national research on electoral-system effects on women’s legislative representation suggests that candidate-centered systems – including list PR preference systems – are disadvantageous for women candidates precisely because they allow citizens to have some direct say in the election of individual members of parliament. The arguments that are used to explain this finding underline the importance of quota systems combined with closed list arrangements for promoting a stronger political representation of women and other politically underrepresented groups. We show, however, that the most important comparative findings in the extant literature that support the above proposition have some flaws in their classifications and this raises legitimate doubts about the validity of their inferences regarding preference voting systems. Moreover, the evidence from previous single case studies rather suggests quite variable effects. We develop a dynamic theoretical model of agent-mediated electoral-system effects on women’s representation that shows why preference voting systems may benefit women, especially over multiple elections, though they may be disadvantageous for further increasing women’s representation where women are most active in politics. Our model also specifies interactions between preference voting and quota arrangements. We test and support these propositions with a new dataset covering over 80,000 candidates in Central Europe, where our theory predicts different effects than previous scholarship. We quantify the effects of preference voting systems in a novel way and conclude with a positive assessment of the benefits of PR preference systems. However, the effects, whether positive or negative on women’s representation, are very small and suggests that other devices like mandate placement and quota systems may have far bigger and quicker effects. Importantly though, preference voting systems do not seem to undermine these effects, but rather show a potential for providing electoral legitimation to a stronger presence of women candidates higher up on party lists.
