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Women's Substantive Representation in Decline: The Case of Democratic Failure in Hungary

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2019

Gabriella Ilonszki  and
Adrienn Vajda Open the ORCID record for Adrienn Vajda [Opens in a new window]
Gabriella Ilonszki
Affiliation:
Corvinus University of Budapest
Adrienn Vajda
Affiliation:
Corvinus University of Budapest
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Abstract

The substantive representation of women has attracted limited attention in cases in which women are present in politics in small numbers over an extended period of time. This article aims to fill this gap by focusing on two policy episodes in a postcommunist state where female descriptive representation has remained low and static and the regime's democratic backlash can also be observed. The two analytical questions refer to the agency and regime aspects of women's substantive representation under unfavorable conditions. Who is representing women under these conditions, and where and how is their representation taking place? How do the regime's characteristics explain the evolving representation patterns? The article will first argue that the same descriptive representation levels can imply different substantive representation patterns in terms of both actors and space. Second, by reconnecting descriptive representation and substantive representation, the article demonstrates that the decline of a regime's democratic credentials is detrimental to female substantive representation.

Keywords

Women's representationsubstantive representationHungary
Type
Research Article
Information
Politics & Gender , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , June 2019 , pp. 240 - 261
Copyright
Copyright © The Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association 2019 

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Footnotes

This research was financed by the Hungarian National Research and Development Fund (NFKI/NRDI, K-128833).

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