Men from majority racial, ethnic, and religious groups are numerically overrepresented democratic legislatures around the world. Over the past two decades, legislatures have diversified: the numbers of women, minoritized groups, and minoritized women elected to national office have increased, sometimes dramatically. Yet these gains have rarely disrupted majority men’s disproportionate hold on political power. This paper introduces the concept of limited seatsharing to explain how majority men share legislative seats with other groups while maintaining overrepresentation relative to their share of the population. We identify five distinct patterns of seatsharing that reveal how inclusion and dominance coexist: majority men often concede some seats to others, but institutional and demographic conditions limit how far power is redistributed. Empirically, we draw on newly collected data identifying the gender and minoritized status of nearly 10,000 legislators elected in 68 democratic and semi-democratic countries between 2015 and 2020. Across all cases, majority men remain overrepresented, often substantially so. We examine how the size of minoritized populations and the configuration of inclusionary institutions shape the extent of majority men’s advantage and the groups with whom they share power. Our analysis reveals two main findings. First, majority men’s overrepresentation tends to increase as the minoritized population grows, suggesting that demographic pluralism can intensify the protection of dominant-group power. Second, institutional reforms aimed at promoting inclusion -- such as gender quotas, ethnic parties, and reserved ethnic seats -- curb majority men’s overrepresentation but do not eliminate it. These policies can redistribute representation across groups, but they also expose the limits of institutional powersharing when dominant groups retain control of candidate selection and party leadership. Together, these findings highlight the durability of majority men’s overrepresentation and the constrained nature of seatsharing. By theorizing limited seatsharing, we provide a new framework for understanding how institutions manage diversity while preserving dominance within democratic representation.
