Can Personal Parties Facilitate Women's Political Seniority? A Study of Internal Rules of Conduct

Abstract

Leader-driven personal parties often campaign on a ticket promising elite renewal and novel ways of doing politics. One way of looking apart from the sitting political establishment is to recruit women into visible party positions. This study examines whether personal parties can improve women's access to reelection by institutionalizing performance-based rules of internal promotion, which are necessitated by the lack of organic party cohesion. A site-intensive study of the Slovak Freedom and Solidarity party identifies a number of gendered structural constraints that impede the party's female incumbents from excelling in those tasks that are deemed important by the party.