The selection of Candidates in Closed Lists Systems: Gender and Political experience in Turkish Elections

Women’s political representation has been consistently low in Turkey, despite using a closed-list proportional representation system which has been associated with higher representation of women. Turkish parliament lags behind the world average and European average in women’s descriptive representation, notwithstanding an increasing trend in recent elections. To explain women's under-representation, this paper shifts the focus from electoral institutions to candidate selection. We study the impact of gender in addition to various candidate qualifications on the rank position of candidates in their party lists, using an original dataset of candidates in 6 elections (from 2002 to 2018) and approximately 21000 candidates. In particular, we examine whether the impact of candidate qualifications on rank position of candidates differ for women and men. Preliminary findings show that women are less likely to get promising ranks in the party lists, controlling for their occupation and education as well as their experience in elections, parliament and local politics and party magnitude in previous elections. Having electoral experience increases the likelihood of getting promising ranks and its positive effect is higher for women candidates.