Women's Access to Political Power in Post-Communist Europe

This text considers women's access to formal positions of power in the newly formed democracies of post communist Europe. While acknowledging the relevance of recent history, this book takes an important step away from the communist legacy and explicitly argues for a framework based on causal variables identified in the existing literatures from industrialized democracies on women and politics and legislative recruitment. After a brief introduction, the second chapter sets forth a general theoretical framework, which posits that the level of female legislative representation in a given country is a function of the relative supply of and demand for female candidates. After a chapter considering a broad overview of public opinion on women and politics in Eastern Europe, 13 country chapters, spanning the spectrum of Eastern European democracies, address and test hypotheses about the key variables affecting the supply and demand sides of the equation in individual countries.