Laws on Political Violence! Critical Actors, Multilevel Legislative Harmonization and Women’s Political-Electoral Rights in Mexico

Abstract

The increase in women’s political representation in Latin America has made visible the violence that they experience when participating in politics, simply for being women. This article evaluates the legislation addressing this theme in Mexico, both at the federal level and within the country’s 32 states. To this end, it proposes an index to measure the Level of Regulatory Strength (LRS) of a regulation addressing gender-based political violence. The results show that the level of regulatory strength varies in multilevel terms and between states. It also shows that a gender-parity in congresses is not a determining factor in the legislative stringency. This work contributes to the literature by developing a proposal of methodology and with multilevel empirical data so far absent in comparative research.