Quotas for crosscutting groups; reservations for coinciding ones

To understand the different uses of the two types of policies, we must first explore the distinct means they use to improve the representation of identity groups. Quotas intervene in party nomination procedures by requiring that a certain percentage of the candidates fielded by a party be of a certain group. For example, the quota may demand that around one-third of positions on party lists be occupied by women and that they alternate with men in the rank ordering of candidates, as is the case in Argentina, Costa Rica, Belgium, and Guyana.¹¹

Reservations take a different approach. They introduce group-specific avenues of representation that circumvent the existing party system and create new electoral incentives. These include the creation of: separate electoral rolls, special electoral districts that limit competition to group members, exceptions to counting rules, and provisions for direct appointment to the legislature.

Candidate quotas thus presume a different sort of problem from that addressed by reservations. The goal of quotas is to take a category of people who belong to, but suffer from discrimination in, mainstream parties and propel them to positions wherein they stand a chance of popular election. Quotas therefore provide a means of assimilation and integration into already existing political institutions. Reservations, by contrast, guarantee group members a share of power independently, if need be, of existing parties. Their objective is to facilitate autonomy of political communities and electoral success of group-specific parties.

Figure 1 depicts the location of crosscutting and coinciding groups in the party system. We see that members of a crosscutting group belong to all parties, whereas those of a coinciding group tend to belong to a single party, a set of political organizations, or no party. Figure 2 illustrates the “work” done by a well-designed candidate quota. The policy attacks the discrimination suffered by group members in the party but permits them to continue militating in it. Meanwhile, the party gains representation in legislatures through regular electoral procedures. The demographic characteristics of its delegations may change, but the rules of interparty competition remain the same.

Cross-cutting versus coinciding groups

What quotas do

Figure 1 helps us see why a candidate quota would make little sense for a coinciding group. What is gained by making space for group members within all parties when they tend to cluster at one end of the political spectrum? In fact, a candidate quota might undermine a minority group's political organizations as its partisan opponents snatch up group leaders in order to comply with the quota. Finally, figure 3 clarifies the mechanics of legislative reservations. They permit a group's party, organizations, or independent representatives to gain power on their own and may furnish additional incentives for formation of minority parties.

What reservations do

In theory, a proportional representation (PR) electoral system, particularly one with low thresholds, would facilitate the representation of group-specific parties and organizations. PR also avoids a situation in which the state is compelled to assign individuals to specific groups (as required by the maintenance of ethnic voter rolls or the reservation of certain districts for group members), a practice that contradicts the fluidity and contextual nature of many ethnic identities. In addition, PR is flexible, permitting the automatic adjustment of representational relationships to changing demographics and political interests. Divided legislatures and reserved seat ratios, by contrast, often contain no provision for periodic updating based on new census data.¹³

Crosscutting gender versus coinciding ethnicity

The next step is to examine variation in the extent to which gender and ethnic identities actually correspond to partisan cleavages. For much of world history, politics has been the exclusive domain of men. Women gained the right to vote and stand for office only in the twentieth century. Since the early days of gender integration in politics, however, political parties have counted on both men and women as supporters. There are few instances of parties defined by gender, and none have consistently won elections. To be sure, different parties send men and women to office to varying degrees: women comprise a larger portion of legislative delegations of the Left than those of the Right. One reason is that the former have been more likely to adopt voluntary candidate quotas than the latter.¹⁵

What about the gender gap? In advanced democracies, women tend to vote for leftist parties in greater numbers than men. A few decades ago (and in many parts of the developing world today) the opposite transpired: support for the Right was greater among women.¹⁷

The size of gender differences in party support contrasts vividly with the ethnically inflected political divisions characterizing many plural societies. In patronage democracies such as India, politics is driven by ethnic head counting.²⁰

Ethnic boundaries are not always politically loaded, however, and not everyone has a communal experience of ethnicity. Its coincidence with partisan and ideological cleavages and geographic concentration is the effect of historical construction as well as political manipulation. Ethnic groups in some countries, such as Afro-descendents in Brazil, have features usually associated with gender identity, such as low geographic segregation and little correlation with voting behavior or party affiliation. Consequently, the affirmative action bill under consideration in the Brazilian Congress calls for racial quotas in parties, not for reserved seats in the legislature.²⁷

For these reasons, there is an active debate among political scientists about which types of institutions can best mold ethnicity to promote democratic stability. Arend Lijphart has long advocated proportional representation and power sharing, policies that preserve group identity but encourage cooperation among ethnic elites. Donald Horowitz favors electoral rules that encourage politicians to make appeals across ethnic lines. And Kanchan Chandra has found that when state institutions create incentives for politicians to mobilize different dimensions of ethnic identity—by authorizing positive discrimination by caste, granting access to government jobs by language, or recognition of statehood by tribe—ethnic parties will compete to occupy the center, thus averting the centrifugal spiral that undermines democracy.²⁸

Women receive quotas; ethnic groups receive reserved seats

Finally, we must establish that gender-based demands center on quotas and that this is related to the fact that women are spread throughout the party system. We also need to show that the preference of ethnic groups for reserved seats flows from their tendency to cluster in a single party or organization.

Let us begin by analyzing candidate quotas. Their diffusion is a relatively recent phenomenon resulting from several trends. The first is the growth of the second-wave feminist movement, which identified male dominance in political life as a problem and questioned the legitimacy of polities that tolerate it. Feminist activism helped forge new international norms of gender equality. Major agreements, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Platform for Action adopted by governments at the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, endorse affirmative action. International and regional organizations, such as the United Nations, the European Union, the Southern African Development Community, the Summit of the Americas, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, have declared that growth in women's leadership contributes to democratic consolidation and economic and social progress.

Another factor was the development of normative arguments that identified the gender composition of legislatures as an indicator of justice and the quality of democracy. Quota advocates reconceptualized political equality to include not just the right to vote and stand for office, but to be present in office. A homogeneous legislature of men, they argued, violates this fundamental right. Meanwhile, partisans of deliberative democracy stressed the need for representatives to share experiences with their constituents in order to adequately communicate citizen views in open-ended political deliberation. Finally, feminists maintained that having more women in power would introduce additional perspectives to decision making and tailor policy outcomes to suit a broader variety of citizen interests. Ann Phillips sums up these various developments as a reorientation of democratic theory and practice from a “politics of ideas” to a “politics of presence.”²⁹

Argentina pioneered a candidate quota law in 1991. Influenced by the success of candidate quotas in the Spanish Socialist Party, Argentine female politicians from different parties united behind the proposal. Though it was initially ridiculed by men, last-minute persuasion by President Carlos Menem and his interior minister helped to overcome this resistance. Subsequently, the policy snowballed across the region. By the end of the decade, ten other Latin American countries had adopted legislative quotas, and an eleventh, Colombia, introduced them for senior executive appointments. Belgium introduced a law in 1994 that states that a maximum of two-thirds of all candidates could be of the same sex; in 1999 France modified its constitution to call for gender parity in political office and enacted legislation requiring parties to field an equal number of men and women candidates. Meanwhile, under the influence of the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and the Stability Pact for South-Central Europe, quota rules were inserted into the electoral laws of most countries of the former Yugoslavia, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, and Serbia, including Kosovo.³⁰

Three aspects of women's mobilization for gender quotas stand out. First, multipartisan and ideologically diverse coalitions have backed the new policies. Women from the Peronist and Radical parties in Argentina; the Party of the Democratic Revolution and National Action Party in Mexico; and the socialists, Rally for the Republic, and the Union for French Democracy in France joined together to defeat the arguments of male colleagues that quotas were undemocratic and unconstitutional. “Although all women may not agree on the substance of specific policy outcomes, they do have a common interest in being present when policy is being made.”³¹

Second, most politicians regard quotas as a temporary measure. As more women gain power, they will break down the obstacles holding others back. Over time, the quota will become obsolete.

Finally, women's activism around quotas has been episodic. After the adoption of quota laws, women's coalitions have disbanded as their members returned to their prior commitments and became reabsorbed into their parties. In some countries—notably Argentina, Costa Rica, Belgium, and Guyana—women's presence in power increased significantly as a result of the quota. Yet the feminization of legislative delegations has not produced major changes in what parties actually do. Though some women politicians have introduced fresh items to political agendas, their collective presence has thus far failed to produce major shifts in policy and practice.³²

Ethnic demands for reservations have followed a quite different political logic. Rather than improving the legitimacy of already existing democracies, the granting of reserved seats has tended to occur as part of a founding compromise in consociational or consensus polities. In these countries, split legislatures, the allocation of ministerial portfolios by ethnicity, or fixed ratios of parliamentary seats form part of the elite bargains necessary to make democracy possible. Each group has a constitutional share of power, giving it an incentive not to defect from the existing political regime and undermine the survival of the state. As opposed to quotas, which improve the leadership prospects of group members within existing parties, reservations presume the existence of group-specific parties or organizations. Groups demanding reservations do not want to be integrated into mainstream parties. They want access to political power in their own right.

In Belgium, the constitution requires that there be an equal number of French- and Dutch-speaking ministers in the federal government and in the government of the Brussels region, with the parliament divided between these two language communities and their respective party systems. In Switzerland, language group quotas are used not only in the federal council,³³

Elsewhere, the ethnic allocation of political power was codified in peace agreements following civil wars. International mediators, with an eye toward establishing pluralist polities, helped install forms of power sharing in virtually all of the new states formed after the breakup of Yugoslavia. Bosnia and Herzegovina has a three-member presidency comprised of a Bosniak, Serb, and Croat, as well as a bicameral legislative assembly divided between these three communities. In Serbia and Montenegro, the bicameral federal legislature is divided between Serbians and Montenegrans. In Kosovo, seats are reserved in parliament for Serbs, Roma, and other ethnic groups. (In less polarized Croatia and Slovenia, a smaller number of seats are reserved for minorities.)³⁶

Some reservations policies reflect attempts to compensate victims of slavery, colonialism, or a caste system for past oppression. India's reservations for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes are intended to ameliorate the historic discrimination suffered by those at the lowest rungs of the caste system. New Zealand's white rulers made a similar attempt to compensate oppressed minorities: the Maori Representation Act of 1867 installed four representatives in a legislature of over 70 members. The number of seats later increased to seven (representatives are elected by voters who voluntarily register for a separate Maori roll).³⁸

In the late twentieth century, some disadvantaged ethnic groups demanded rights during constitutional reforms. Responding to indigenous mobilization, the Colombian Constitution (1991) created a two-seat senatorial district for Indians and permitted the reservation of up to five seats in the lower house for ethnic groups and other political minorities. Venezuela had a similar experience: the 1999 constitutional reform established three reserved seats for “indigenous communities” in the national assembly and permitted social movement organizations to contest them, thus eliminating the party registration barrier. In both countries, these seats granted resources and visibility to indigenous parties and movements; as a result, they successfully contested general elections and gained power in local governance.³⁹

Parité in France

In June 2000 the French parliament approved a law requiring that parties field an equal number of male and female candidates in legislative elections. This turn of events is surprising in a country that has prided itself on a republican tradition of an indivisible body politic and has long forbidden official distinctions among citizens in terms of sex, race, ethnicity, and religion. In fact, these nondiscrimination principles were invoked by the Supreme Court in a 1982 decision that struck down a quota law passed by Congress (the law would have banned one sex from occupying more than 75 percent of the places on lists of candidates for municipal elections). The French court claimed that gender preferences contradicted republican principles of equality and unity, which dictate that citizens represent the nation as a whole, not discrete groups or categories.⁴⁰

Advocates of women's representation thus had to make a case that their preferred policies were compatible with republican universalism. This required demonstrating that the existing model was flawed for failing to incorporate sex differences and that gender parity would not legitimize representational rights for other social groups. Gender, they argued, is a unique form of social difference.

Unlike ethnicity, race, and religion, which are socially constructed and changeable categories, sex is universal and permanent:

Both traditional French “universalism,” which stresses the unity of men and women, and contemporary American “particularism,” which collapses sex into other forms of difference, are therefore misguided. Philosopher Sylvia Agacinski, wife of former Socialist Premier Lionel Jospin, argues that both political traditions have denied the real nature of sex:

The fact of sexual difference divides humanity in two. As a result, a republican polity that claims to include all citizens, but in which only men hold power, unjustly privileges one half over the other. Parity feminists did not want their arguments to be leveled against a legislature of white Catholics, however. Since sex is the only universal category, women are not like any other social group.

With this stance, parity advocates were able to anchor their movement within republican discourse and find allies from the mainstream of French politics. By denying that parity would or should lead to a cascade of demands for other representational rights, they made their case more palatable. What is more, they focused on the narrow objective of getting the parity bill passed, and not broader considerations, such as socioeconomic equality and policy change. By avoiding questions about the substantive representation of women's interests, French feminists of diverse political and ideological stripes were able to smooth over their differences and unite in a nonpartisan movement. This also helped defray fears that right-wing and conservative women would be attacked or disqualified, and by the mid-1990s, most politicians had jumped on the parity bandwagon. When it came to a vote in the national assembly, the parity proposals—both the constitutional amendment and the implementing legislation—were approved unanimously. Following promulgation of the law, however, the large and diverse movement began to disperse. What had held participants together was support for parity, not a more comprehensive policy agenda or a shared history of activism.⁴³

The parity law worked well in the 2001 municipal elections, since municipal councilors are elected under a semiproportional closed-list system and parties were required to include three women for every three men on the list. In cities of more than 3,500 inhabitants where the parity law was applied, women's presence on municipal councils rose to 48 percent. Yet at the national level, where deputies are elected by the first-past-the-post system in single-member districts, the results were disappointing. Preferring to suffer financial penalties rather than comply with the quota, the center Right UMP nominated women to less than 20 percent of the districts where it ran a candidate, and even the Socialist Party nominated women to only 36 percent of districts. Most of these were losing districts and the number of women in the assembly barely increased (from 62 to 71 out of 576, or to 12 percent of the total).⁴⁴

Reservations policy in India

Whereas the French state acknowledged social difference in the law only at the end of the twentieth century, in India such recognition has a long tradition. Legislative reservations for minorities were introduced during British rule. First Muslims (in 1909), then Christians and Sikhs (in 1919) were granted separate electorates; at the same time, nominated seats were granted to “untouchables” or dalits to offset inequities of the caste system. The British had originally proposed that these lower castes vote on separate rolls; a 21-day hunger strike by Mohandas Gandhi, however, led to compromise. The 1932 agreement, known as the Poona Pact, reserved seats for dalit candidates to be elected by everyone. The British also reserved a number for women within these communal seat allocations in provincial and national legislatures. Although favored by British feminist Eleanor Rathbone, such reservations were opposed by the largest national Indian women's associations as well as the Indian National Congress, which contested the introduction of any distinctions (whether by gender, religion, or caste) among Indians. Both groups viewed British policy as part of a divide-and-rule strategy against the nationalist movement.⁴⁵

The constitution promulgated in 1950 rejected communal quotas as an organizing principle in favor of formal equality and individual rights, with two exceptions. Recognizing that equal treatment would be insufficient to ameliorate historic discrimination suffered by the lowest social groups, the constitution upheld the British legacy of legislative reservations for untouchables (Scheduled Castes) and introduced them for indigenous groups (Scheduled Tribes). Similar consideration, however, was not extended to Muslims or women. Delimitation commissions in each state designated single-member constituencies in which only members of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes could stand for office, even though the electorate as a whole would vote for them (the number was proportional to their share of the population). The text authorized a range of other policies to advance “backward classes” of citizens, including: reserved posts in government service and university admissions; scholarships, meals, supplies, and special schools; and preference for economic development assistance.⁴⁶

The debate over women's representation died down for several decades, but it was revived in the 1970s when the government of India formed the Committee on the Status of Women to propose recommendations for improving their rights and opportunities. Its report was to be launched in time for International Women's Year in 1975. One of the thorniest issues considered by the committee was gender reservations. After weighing arguments for and against, it declined to recommend such policies at the national or state level, though it recognized women's political underrepresentation as a serious problem.

To justify its position, the committee drew a distinction between women, who are a “category,” and minority “communities,” including those based on caste and religion. “There can be no rational basis for reservations for women,” since “the minority argument cannot be applied to women. Women are not a community, they are a category. Though they have some real problems of their own, they share with men the problems of their groups, locality and community. Women are not concentrated in certain areas [or] confined to particular fields of activity.”⁴⁷

Anticipating arguments made by French feminists in the 1990s, Indian experts stressed the difference between women and ethnic minority communities, but as an argument against women's representation, not in favor of it. The Committee on the Status of Women did, however, borrow the institutional model the state had used for Scheduled Castes and Tribes and endorsed reserved seats for women in local governments. This appears to have been a compromise between those who rejected women's representation altogether and those who wanted to recommend reservations at all levels.⁴⁹

The debate was revived in 1996 when MP and former Minister for Women Margaret Alva proposed to amend the constitution to extend the women's reservations system to the national and state legislatures. A lottery system would determine the single-member districts in which only women could run, and these would rotate every two elections. The bill would also reserve one-third of the seats allocated to Scheduled Castes and Tribes for women of those communities. Though virtually every political party supported the bill in their 1996 electoral platforms, the parliamentary debates over it were ferocious, with some MPs almost coming to blows and others rushing to the podium to tear up copies of the text.⁵²

One of the main parliamentary concerns was the relationship between women's reservations and rights for members of “other backward classes” (OBCs, a group the 1950 constitution had recognized as entitled to special protections). In a 1990 decision that provoked massive controversy, the government had granted OBCs reservations in its central bureaucracy, but not in national and state legislatures. Entrepreneurial MPs from the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) demanded that the women's bill include subreservations for lower castes, a move that allowed them to appear as champions of the OBCs, but which mired the gender proposal in polemics surrounding caste rights. In addition, some legislators called for special provisions in the bill for Muslims. As Laura Dudley Jenkins notes, “by endorsing the bill in party platforms and then failing to pass it out of a sudden concern for backward citizens or Muslims, politicians court the women's vote, the backwards vote, and the Muslim vote and simultaneously protect their own hopes of reelection.”⁵³

Popular views of the elitist nature of the women's movement also did not help the cause of the bill. Middle-class women had assumed visible roles in protests against the decision to grant OBCs central government reservations and most feminist organizations had failed to build ties to lower caste groups. During the debate, a prominent OBC politician declared that the reservation bill was for “balkati auraten” or short-haired women, a reference to upper class urban feminists.⁵⁴

As in France, political actors in India highlighted the crosscutting nature of gender. Unlike ethnic groups, women transcend geographic, occupational, language, and religious categories. In France, this meant that, in theory, women's representation would not threaten the republican universalist tradition. In India, by contrast, women's crosscutting status made it less likely that they would represent the caste and socioeconomic interests the reservations system was supposed to advance.

Meanwhile, a group of dissidents argued that rather than reserved seats, the bill should introduce a candidate quota within political parties. The Forum for Democratic Reforms argued that the reservations proposal was seriously and inherently flawed. By mechanically providing for the entrance of women into one-third of the seats in the national and state legislatures, the bill failed to address the main problem impeding women's effective participation in politics: gender discrimination in political parties.⁵⁵

Furthermore, the Forum argued, a system of women's reservations would enable patriarchal leaders to solidify their positions. At the local level, political bosses regularly compel their wives, sisters, and daughters to contest reserved seats. National politicians would duplicate this strategy and the women entering politics would be mere fronts for male power.⁵⁷

Pointing out that those countries with the highest levels of women's representation use candidate quotas, not reserved seats, these critics proposed an alternative bill. It would require that one-third of candidates nominated by political parties for general elections be women, though each party would be free to choose the constituencies where these women would run. Rather than contesting women's seats, female candidates would compete against men and other women in general elections. To ensure their success, parties would need to nurture these candidates. Women might therefore become legitimate leaders and have a greater political base from which to advance women's interests in parliament.⁵⁸

Quotas in Peru

While some Indian authorities have sought to apply to women the same system they had used for Scheduled Castes and Tribes, Peruvian officials have employed a women's policy for indigenous peoples. In 1997 the Congress approved an electoral law requiring that female candidates make up no less than 25 percent of the slots on party lists contesting national legislative elections (the quota was later increased to 30 percent). Several years later, Peruvian leaders introduced the same remedy—party candidate quotas—for indigenous communities of the Amazon region. Though intended as a response to their demands for representation, the policy was criticized by indigenous leaders for undermining their political organizations. Like their ethnic counterparts elsewhere in the world, Peru's Amazonian and highland Indians wanted reserved seats in parliament, not quotas.

In a process of coalition building similar to what occurred in France, Peruvian women politicians—representing both the governing and opposition parties—initially joined forces in the mid-90s to lobby for a quota law. Five congresswomen had attended the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women, where they debated the policy with delegates from other countries. Upon their return, a special commission on women was installed in parliament and quotas were the first item on its agenda. Although the proposal initially met with overwhelming skepticism from other legislators, it eventually received a boost from an unexpected ally: the President. Alberto Fujimori, the only head of state to have attended the 1995 conference, declared his support for quotas and the majority in Congress immediately fell in line. As in France, the proposal was approved unanimously.⁵⁹

Meanwhile, the 1990s witnessed the growing ethnic politicization of indigenous peoples in various Andean countries, including Peru. Previously, a “peasant” or “poor” consciousness had tended to prevail over an indigenous one, and ethnic prejudice was perceived—and disguised—as class discrimination. The decreasing viability of class affiliations like peasant in the neoliberal era, combined with opportunities offered by global discourses of multiculturalism, helped spawn mobilization along ethnic lines.⁶⁰

After the 2001 election of President Alejandro Toledo, the state became increasingly receptive to indigenous claims. Though he frequently donned a poncho and espoused a populist discourse, former President Fujimori had undermined indigenous land rights, and his efforts to centralize power—he canceled regional elections—reduced Indian opportunities to participate in politics. Toledo pledged to expand the rights of indigenous peoples and created a high-level commission presided over by his wife, Belgian anthropologist Elaine Karp, to represent their interests in the state. Fulfilling a campaign promise, he also reinstated regional elections.⁶²

The law regulating these elections, approved by Congress in early 2002, declared that lists of candidates for regional and local councils comprise no less than 30 percent women and a minimum of 15 percent of representatives of “native communities” or “original peoples” in those regions where they lived. According to the national election tribunal, the indigenous quota would be applied in 11 (of a total of 25) regions.⁶³

Peru's ethnic quotas apply only to those Indians considered members of “native communities.” What is the origin of this term? In 1969 military ruler General Juan Velasco declared that, “as an act of liberation,” the words indigenous and Indian be purged from official discourse and all peoples incorporated into a “modern” class-based society.⁶⁴

Although it was designed to help them, several Amazonian Indian organizations criticized the way the 2002 electoral law channeled their representation through existing political parties. These indigenous movements preferred instead to form their own autonomous organizations and political platforms. Emulating the success of similar organizations in Bolivia and Ecuador, where ethnic parties had made major electoral gains in the 1990s, representatives of various Peruvian native communities formed the Indigenous Movement of the Peruvian Amazon (MIAP) and attempted to field candidates for several elections in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The quota posed a threat to this group, however, since its leaders were being recruited by mainstream parties seeking to comply with the law.⁶⁵

Indians from both the Amazon and the highlands want the Peruvian state to guarantee their representation through legislative reservations, not candidate quotas. The program for constitutional reform advanced by indigenous organizations in 2003 calls for the creation of special electoral districts, from which Indians would directly elect 30 percent of seats in the national congress and regional and municipal councils.⁶⁷

Reservations are but one element in the broader agenda advanced by indigenous peoples in Peru. Indians want collective property rights, territorial and cultural autonomy, deference to customary law, and bilingual education. These goals contradict the model of the homogeneous, mestizo nation and comprehensive legal order installed in the American republics after their independence from Spain in the early nineteenth century. They challenge the liberal state and its traditions of individual rights, since completing the indigenous agenda would require the state to recognize multiple, collective forms of citizenship as well as tolerate a plurality of legal regimes.⁶⁹

The Peruvian case helps show how legislative reservations advance group rights and reinforce differences in a way that candidate quotas do not. Quotas attack the discrimination suffered by individuals within parties to give them a better chance of getting elected. A regime of reserved seats more directly empowers the whole group. When legislators are chosen from separate electorates and specially created districts, the policy confers on group members the right to be represented not just by one of their kind, but by a candidate of their choice. This mechanism strengthens the links between representatives and their ethnic kin constituents while distancing them from others. Reservations thus bestow a distinctive status on the group as a political community. Quotas, by contrast, collapse the group into the rest of political society.