Abstract
Women’s empowerment has increasingly become a central pillar of nation-branding strategies in the Arab Gulf, particularly in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While existing scholarship often frames authoritarian gender quotas as "genderwashing" designed to project liberal values, few studies have empirically tested their effectiveness as instruments of foreign influence. This chapter introduces the concept of Gender Diplomacy (GD)—defined as the strategic deployment of women’s leadership to enhance a state’s "reputational security" among foreign publics. Using a web-based survey experiment with over 800 U.S. respondents, we test the impact of the UAE’s 2019 decision to reserve 50 percent of seats in the Federal National Council (FNC) for women. Participants were randomly exposed to vignettes depicting either a mixed-gender council with quotas or an all-male council. The results provide strong evidence of a "GD effect": respondents exposed to the mixed-gender council perceived members as significantly more kind, honest, and effective. Crucially, these positive trait stereotypes transferred to the state itself, leading respondents to view the UAE as more respectful of human rights. This study contributes to the literature on authoritarianism and international relations by validating the strategic logic behind gender reforms.
The Hardness Dividend: Cabinet Promotions of Minority Women and the Velvet Ghetto in the UK Parliament
Abstract: Do political parties penalize legislators who focus on women’s issues when selecting candidates for high ministerial office? While existing literature suggests that female legislators who specialize in these areas face electoral penalties (Shim 2022, 2025), I ask whether this punishment extends to the internal promotion structures of the state. I argue that the “Velvet Ghetto”—the concentration of women in soft policy portfolios—acts as a career ceiling, and that for minority women specifically, adopting the hard rhetoric of statecraft (Economy, Defense) functions as a unique mechanism for advancement. To test this, I deploy a computational mixed-methods framework applied to the complete corpus of UK House of Commons speeches (2010–2022; N ~ 1,000,000). I leverage Large Language Models (LLMs) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to automate the extraction of rhetorical themes and quantify the semantic “hardness” of policy interventions at scale. My logistic regression analysis reveals a stark rhetorical divergence: while white women remain statistically concentrated in soft topics, successful minority women frequently pivot to the hard domains of the Treasury and the Home Office. The model identifies a massive “Hardness Dividend”: for minority women, discussing hard topics, such as economy and defense, is a uniquely powerful predictor of cabinet promotion, yielding an odds ratio that far exceeds that of white female or minority male counterparts. I conclude that this dividend exists because minority women who strategically pivot to hard statecraft solve a strategic trilemma for party elites: they allow the party to signal gender and racial diversity to the electorate while satisfying the internal demand for competence in the "masculine" domains of the state.
Mirroring vs. Molding: Divergent Strategies of Identity and Recruitment in Turkey’s Opposition
Abstract: How do opposition parties in competitive authoritarian regimes navigate the trade-off between electoral viability and ideological distinctiveness? While existing literature focuses on voter bias and electoral institutions, this article examines the informal gatekeeping mechanisms that shape candidate lists in Turkey. Drawing on original elite interviews with gatekeepers from the Republican People's Party (CHP) and the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP/DEM), I identify two diametrically opposed recruitment strategies developed in response to the incumbent’s authoritarian hegemony. I argue that the mainstream opposition (CHP) employs a strategy of "Defensive Mirroring," prioritizing "cultural hybrids"—candidates who signal secular values while performing conservative norms—to neutralize the incumbent's populist attacks. Conversely, the pro-Kurdish opposition (HDP) employs "Transformative Molding," utilizing autonomous women’s structures to knowingly nominate high-risk candidates to pedagogically disrupt local societal codes. These findings challenge the assumption that opposition parties uniformly converge on the median voter under competitive authoritarianism.
Keywords: Candidate Selection, Authoritarianism, Opposition Strategies, Electoral Competition, Turkey.
Does Symbolic Leverage Work? The Electoral Impact of (Non)Veiled Women Candidates on Party Vote Share in Turkey
Abstract: Do party elites’ strategic nominations of (non)veiled women actually yield electoral dividends? While recent scholarship establishes why elites employ "Symbolic Leverage" to signal moderation, we lack causal evidence on its effectiveness among voters. This study tests the electoral payoff of these strategies in Turkey's polarized context. I employ a forced-choice conjoint survey experiment (N=1,240) on a nationally representative sample to estimate the Average Marginal Component Effects (AMCE) of candidate gender and visible religious identity (veiled vs. nonveiled vs. male) conditioned by party endorsement (AKP vs. CHP). To isolate the effect of religious signaling from facial bias, the experiment utilizes standardized, AI-generated candidate imagery. Results indicate that the Islamist AKP increases its vote share by approximately 3 percentage points in secular opposition strongholds when fielding nonveiled women compared to traditional candidates. This suggests that symbolic inclusion effectively mitigates negative partisanship among secular voters by disrupting established heuristic cues. By contrast, in conservative strongholds, the analysis yields a null result for female representation strategies: voters penalize female candidates regardless of veil status, preferring male incumbents. These findings qualify the scope of symbolic politics, demonstrating that while authoritarian-leaning parties can weaponize secular women's identities to soften their image, the efficacy of such strategies is asymmetric and constrained by entrenched patriarchal barriers.
Beyond the Glass Ceiling: Co-Chairmanship as a Strategy of Coalitional Engineering, Survival, and Legitimacy in Turkey and Germany
Abstract: This study conceptualizes "co-chairmanship" (dual leadership) not merely as a normative project for gender parity, but as a strategic institutional innovation adopted by political parties to navigate specific electoral and authoritarian constraints. Moving beyond the "unitary actor" model of party leadership, I argue that parties utilize dual-leadership structures to engage in strategic institutional decoupling: projecting a "front-stage" image of radical inclusion to secure external legitimacy while utilizing the "back-stage" duo to manage conflicting internal factions and expanding into new electoral niches. Through a comparative analysis of the Turkish (HDP/DEM) and German (Greens, AfD, Die Linke) cases, I demonstrate how the function of this institution diverges based on the "cost of politics." In Germany, where the cost is low, co-leadership functions as Strategic Softening, allowing parties to balance ideological purity with governmental respectability (e.g., Realo vs. Fundi). In Turkey, under authoritarian pressure, the HDP/DEM utilizes the Eşbaşkanlık system as a "Hydra" Strategy—a regenerative mechanism where top-to-bottom duplication of leadership creates a "deep bench" of cadres to survive decapitation strikes (arrests/trustees). Furthermore, I posit that the HDP’s pairing mechanism acts as a Credible Commitment to the "Turkey-fication" (Türkiyelileşme) strategy, strictly alternating the "second seat" among non-Kurdish expansion groups (Socialists, Alevis, Feminists) to signal a "Coalition of the Marginalized." Finally, the study addresses the Supply-Side Constraint, showing how the party overcomes local patriarchal barriers by "parachuting" female co-chairs into traditional districts, thereby forcing modernization from the top down.
Removal of Elected Opposition Mayors: Evidence from Turkey’s Trusteeship Interventions
with Ozlem Tuncel
Abstract: This paper examines the practice of trusteeship (kayyum) in Turkey, where state-appointed trustees replace elected municipal officials, primarily in regions governed by opposition parties, particularly the pro-Kurdish party. The Turkish government, under the leadership of President Erdoğan, has used trusteeships as part of a broader effort to neutralize opposition and consolidate power. We argue that trusteeship practices serve as a dual strategy: dismantling local opposition power and consolidating regime dominance. This mechanism allows the regime to neutralize opposition-controlled municipalities, undermining political opponents while legitimizing the process through legal frameworks such as anti-terror laws and emergency decrees. This study is based on an original dataset of trustee appointments since the 2014 local elections, providing granular information on the timing and locations of trusteeship interventions. By integrating local election results, we examine the electoral impact of trusteeships, analyzing changes in vote shares, shifts in political power, and the consequences for local governance. We show that the removal of elected mayors increases support for the AKP while reducing support for the pro-Kurdish party. Moreover, trustee appointments function as a political and economic power grab. The AKP is significantly more likely to impose trusteeships in municipalities where it controls the majority of the council but the mayoralty is held by the pro-Kurdish party. Following trustee appointments, municipal contracting activity also rises, suggesting that trusteeships are used not only to consolidate political dominance but also to reallocate economic resources.
Trustee Appointments and the Politics of Local Governance in Turkey
with Ozlem Tuncel
Abstract: In the aftermath of the 2016 failed coup attempt, Turkey underwent a profound institutional transformation toward centralized authoritarianism. A defining feature of this shift has been the systematic appointment of government trustees (kayyum) to replace elected mayors in opposition-controlled municipalities. Despite the high legitimacy costs and potential electoral backlash, this practice has evolved from an emergency measure into a routine administrative tool. This paper investigates the institutional logic underpinning these interventions, asking why the incumbent persists in removing elected officials and how these actions are justified and contested. We argue that trustee appointments function not merely as security measures, but as a sophisticated form of ex ante electoral manipulation designed to engineer subnational political outcomes. We propose two mechanisms driving this strategy: first, a "legitimation mechanism" where the state instrumentalizes security and efficiency narratives to mask electoral motives, while the opposition frames the issue as a crisis of democratic representation; and second, a "cost-aversion mechanism" where appointments are strategically targeted at municipalities with narrow electoral margins to maximize future victory prospects while minimizing political risk. To test this, we employ a mixed-methods approach, utilizing an original dataset of all trustee appointments since 2014 and an AI-assisted quantitative content analysis of official state and opposition reports. Our findings suggest that official justifications show no significant correlation with objective security metrics, whereas electoral competitiveness strongly predicts appointment locations.
Is Gender Diplomacy Effective? Women’s Representation and Public Diplomacy in Authoritarian Regimes
with Lindsay Benstead
Abstract: Extant scholarship suggests that autocrats employ quotas to cultivate an image of democratic governance and attract foreign aid, yet the mechanisms underlying these effects are underexplored. We conceptualize Gender Diplomacy (GD) as the strategic deployment of women in public diplomacy to enhance foreign perceptions. We conducted a nationally representative survey experiment, randomly exposing 1,241 Americans to vignettes and photos depicting either an all-male or a gender-balanced Federal National Council in the UAE. Our findings reveal that GD significantly improves perceptions in domains associated with stereotypically female traits, including viewing the UAE positively or as democratic, but elicits weaker effects in domains associated with male competencies, such as support for US investment in or security cooperation with the UAE. We argue that these effects are due to the implicit association between female traits and the UAE, which is weaker in domains aligned with male competencies and among respondents who do not hold positive stereotypes of females. Our research underscores the role of implicit gender biases in public diplomacy and informs debates on the strategic use of women's inclusion in authoritarian regimes.