Intra-Party Democracy Impact on Women's Representation in Politics

In societies there are almost as much women as men, but in top-politics there are few women compared to men. For example in Estonia public office there is just one female minister of 13 government members. In Parliament there are 22 women of 101 members. This raises the question why is female representation in top-politics so low? On one hand electoral behaviour affects women getting into politics, but it is also influenced by intra-party democracy (IPD) and internal processes. Parties are crucial actors in modern representative democracies and in democratic decision-making process (Kittilson, Scarrow 2003), fulfilling many functions and governing through electoral support, but to maintain internal legitimacy parties should include all members in decision making. Internally made decisions clearly affect the representation and participation ability of minorities (including women) in politics. IPD could be described based on Scarrow (2005:3): “IPD” is a very broad term describing a wide range of methods for including party members in intra-party deliberation and decision making”. Generally power in democratic parties should be distributed among the various levels and decision-making should take into account the opinions of members of different levels (Cular 2004). Party elite often have important positions and therefore impact to policy process. On the other hand the central office is the main influence and arranger of important processes. IPD evaluation and requirements for IPD which would for example be provided in the party statute or party law, would definitely promote women representation in politics. In evaluating IPD it is important to focus on centrally important processes for parties like candidate selection process, leader’s selection, policy formulation, election platform formulation, and important intra-party indicators inclusion, institutionalization, centralization, participation etc. Paper’s main goal is to show IPD impact for women´s representation and to give examples also from Estonian government-coalition parties internal processes.