The introduction of gender quotas has transformed the political landscape for women. Since the mid-1990s, women’s representation in national politics has exponentially increased in both democracies and autocracies. The incremental increase in women’s descriptive representation over the past decades in autocracies raises two important puzzles. The first puzzle relates to whether the increased number of women in authoritarian legislatures has given them more power and influence. The second puzzle relates to the role of political parties in conditioning women’s legislative behavior and political power.
Varieties of Power aims to address these puzzles by relying on a decade of fieldwork and original data collection across the MENA region. Shalaby focuses on three Arab monarchies, Morocco, Jordan, and Kuwait, which have varying levels of party institutionalization and quota implementation. I argue and show empirical evidence that the degree of institutionalization of individual parties plays a significant role in conditioning women’s political power under authoritarianism.
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The analysis reveals significant variations across the three cases regarding women’s political influence and legislative behavior. While the introduction of quota systems has contributed to promoting women's numerical presence in politics, the absence of institutionalized parties has limited women's ability to gain access and power in autocratic legislatures.
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Varieties of Power makes valuable contributions to the study of gender and authoritarian politics, representation, comparative political parties, autocratic legislatures, and Middle East politics. It integrates diverse strands from many literatures to make a coherent case for the role of political parties in shaping women’s political representation in non-democracies.