The effect of office holding on women’s political participation

A bourgeoning literature in political science seeks to explain women’s political participation after enfranchisement. A key argument in this literature is that socialist parties were more successful in mobilizing women. Yet, it is unclear why this association emerges, with high political competition, partisan mobilization, and women’s formal political representation often highlighted as key mechanisms. We make two contributions to this literature. First, we use historical lotteries between socialist and conservative mayoral candidates in Norwegian municipalities (1920-1950) to isolate the effect of socialist mayoral officeholding on women’s subsequent turnout. In several hundred municipalities during this period, tied mayoral elections were solved through actual lotteries. We merge these data with municipal-level data on both women’s and men’s actual turnout. Second, we seek to distinguish between different mechanisms underlying this effect by analyzing whether the effect of having a socialist mayor was conditional on having an active women’s network or organizations in the municipalities, or on having women represented in the municipal council. The paper thus furthers our understanding of how office-holding affects women’s early political participation.