Stuart Bramwell, DPhil
Stuart Bramwell, DPhil
Published Works
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Though governments historically have been a men’s club, women are increasingly gaining access. We argue that democratic institutions are important drivers of women’s inclusion in government. This stems from the rationales of autocratic versus democratic leaders when selecting ministers. Autocrats fear a coup by inner-circle elites, who are mostly men, incentivizing them to assign ministerial positions as co-optation. In contrast, democratic leaders are accountable to the citizenry through elections and must satisfy increasing demands for gender equality. Furthermore, we argue that it is historical experience with democracy that matters, rather than the level, as it takes time to create an even playing field, change attitudes, and generate trust in democracy. To support this, we contribute with the first study using the most comprehensive dataset, WhoGov, on women’s access to cabinets. Overall, we show that democracy is a process that gradually enables women to enter the highest echelons of power.
Co-Authors: Jacob Nyrup and Hikaru Yamagishi
Outlet: American Political Science Review
Who governs? This is one of the most fundamental questions in political science. Despite its importance, there is currently no global dataset on governing elites over a long period. This article presents a novel dataset, WhoGov, which contains yearly data on members of cabinets in 177 countries during the period 1966–2016, making it the largest of its kind. We first present how the dataset was created and validate it by matching this data against existing data. We then demonstrate how the data can be used to gain new insights into diverse fields such as the study of autocracies, gender studies, the study of regime types, and government formation. We expect that this dataset will be an invaluable resource for both comparativists and country experts.
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Co-Author: Jacob Nyrup
Outlet: American Political Science Review
