A Collarette on a Donkey: The Northern Ireland Women's Coalition and the Limitations of Contagion Theory
| Published date | 01 June 2011 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2011.00883.x |
| Date | 01 June 2011 |
| Author | Kimberly Cowell-Meyers |
| Subject Matter | Article |
P O L I T I C A L S T U D I E S : 2 0 1 1 VO L 5 9 , 4 1 1 – 4 3 1
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2011.00883.x
A Collarette on a Donkey: The Northern Ireland
Women’s Coalition and the Limitations of
Contagion Theorypost_883411..431
Kimberly Cowell-Meyers
American University,Washington DC
When ideas or tactics catch on across parties in a multiparty system the process is termed contagion. Scholars have
identified many examples of contagion, particularly dealing with gender quotas and the number of female candidates.
The theory of contagion has, however, suffered from both narrow application and underdevelopment historically,
particularly because the literature on contagion focuses exclusively on relations between parties. Yet the Northern
Ireland Women’s Coalition (NIWC), a tiny short-lived political party dedicated to ‘equitable and effective political
participation’ for women, indicates that structural, historical and even international circumstances can facilitate or limit
this process of transfer. Using the case study of the NIWC, which improved women’s representation in nearly all the
other political parties in the system, this article identifies six key variables that condition contagion. In addition, the
article traces the NIWC’s effects on multiple dimensions of women’s representation, descriptive and substantive, in
other parties. Considering the process of contagion more broadly enhances the theory but also may provide practical
guidelines for expanding policy ideas related to women’s representation, human or civil rights protections or
environmental initiatives across political parties and across political systems.
Keywords: parties; contagion; women’s representation; Northern Ireland
Put a collarette on a donkey and people will vote for it, put a collarette on a woman and they
won’t (Norma Coulter, Ulster Democratic party, quoted in Ward, 2002, p. 173).
Women’s political representation varies widely across nation states. Scholarship indicates
that these variations are primarily due to structural features of the political system such as
the type of electoral system in place and the presence of gender quotas. This literature also
shows that the action of political parties is central to explaining the variations in women’s
political representation (see Caul, 1999; Dahlerup and Freidenvall, 2005; Duverger, 1955;
Inglehart and Norris, 2000; Lijphart, 1994; Matland, 1998; Norris, 2000; Norris and
Lovenduski, 1995; Rule and Zimmerman, 1994). What is especially interesting about the
role of parties in explaining women’s political representation is that levels of female
representation begin to increase when one party in a system adopts gender quotas or
advances female candidates (Caul, 2001; Matland and Studlar, 1996). While many studies
point to the significance of gender quotas within parties and party behavior in general for
increasing women’s political representation (Krook, 2007), how or why the introduction of
quotas anywhere in a multiparty system would increase women’s representation across the
system is largely ignored.
© 2011 The Author. Political Studies © 2011 Political Studies Association
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K I M B E R LY C OW E L L - M E Y E R S
This process, however, seems critical. Parties compete with one another for the support
of voters (Downs, 1957) and they adapt their electoral platforms in response to shifts in
public opinion and to pressures from other parties in order to appeal to the broadest
possible constituency (see Kollman et al., 1992; Laver, 2005). Richard Matland and
Donley Studlar (1996) theorize that when a party nominates more female candidates,
other parties in the system will subsequently increase their proportion of female candi-
dates in order not to be defeated at the ballot box by the innovating party (see also
Davis, 1996). Increasing the political representation of women can thus be strategic, the
result of calculated decisions undertaken for political advantage. This aspect of party
behavior, also known as contagion, is poorly understood but it is clear that in some
instances, small, new and fringe parties may cause other parties in multiparty systems to
change their issue positions and electoral appeals, including their representation of
women.
The Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition was just such a party. Created in 1996 by a
small group of Catholic and Protestant women in Northern Ireland, the party was
committed to ‘equitable and effective political participation’ for women (Northern
Ireland Women’s European Platform, 1996). Born in the context of elections to the
multiparty negotiating body that would produce the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) in
1998, the party was an instant success, winning two seats in the Northern Ireland Forum
for Political Understanding and Dialogue and earning the opportunity to participate in
the negotiations only six weeks after its creation. The party went on to secure two seats
in the new Northern Ireland Assembly, created from the GFA, and one representative
became the Deputy Speaker of the chamber. The party was short-lived, however, and it
officially folded in 2006, having lost its last elected representative in 2005. Party leaders
claim that among its greatest achievements was the promotion of women and women’s
issues in the other parties of Northern Ireland (see, inter alia, claims made by May Blood
[Sharrock, 1997] and Kate Fearon [Fearon, 2002]).
This article argues that while the NIWC’s direct effects were narrow, the wider implications
of the party’s activism include improving women’s representation, both descriptive and
substantive, in nearly all the other political parties in the system. Like the women’s parties
in Iceland in the 1980s (see Dominelli and Jonsdottir, 1988) and Israel in the 1970s (see
Levin, 1999), the NIWC put ‘gender politics on the political map for the first time ... and
forced its competitors to address its platform’ (Levin, 1999, p. 48). In short, the NIWC
effectively illustrates this process of contagion.
In doing so, the NIWC’s experience provides a rich opportunity for developing the theory
of contagion more fully by theorizing about the conditions and context in which conta-
gion occurs.Whereas the literature on contagion focuses exclusively on relations between
parties, this article uses the case study of the NIWC to show that structural, historical and
even international circumstances can facilitate or limit this process of transfer. In addition,
though scholars have outlined the contagion of gender quotas and female candidates, this
article defines representation more broadly and traces the NIWC’s effects in the transmis-
sion of practices, attitudes and ideas across parties.
© 2011 The Author. Political Studies © 2011 Political Studies Association
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2011, 59(2)
T H E L I M I T S O F C O N TAG I O N T H E O RY
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Contagion Theory
Contagion theory was first articulated by Maurice Duverger (1954), who argued that the
introduction of mass suffrage would cause conservative and liberal parties, which functioned
as cadres of elite organizers and leaders, to adopt the mass membership basis of the socialist
left in order to compete effectively with the left at the ballot box. Leon Epstein (1967), Otto
Kirchheimer (1966) and Peter Mair (1997) each expanded this notion of ‘contagion of the
left’ to explain the adaptation of parties to new electoral techniques and patterns of
patronage, organization and competition.
Contagion theory reaches its fullest explication in the work of Matland and Studlar (1996),
who argue that the contagion of female candidates in multiparty systems works because
parties that must compete with others for electoral support will be forced to adopt the
strategies of successful political parties over time in order not to be defeated at the ballot box
in future elections. Contagion only works, according to Matland and Studlar (1996, p. 712),
when parties are aware of the successes of the other party and perceive them as such, when
they believe that they could mirror its success or gain from its strategy, when they are willing
to change/adopt the strategy and when they have the resources to do so. Contagion is most
likely to occur, according to Matland and Studlar, among parties with similar ideological
commitments which feel most pressure from each other because they compete for the same
vote pool.
Miki Caul (2001) finds evidence that this process of contagion is at work in explaining
party choice to adopt gender quotas. Her results across 71 parties in advanced industrialized
nations show that the adoption of gender quotas by any party in the system has a strong
effect on the likelihood of other parties in the system adopting them. Case studies support
these claims. Matland’s (1993) study of Norwegian party practices relating to women’s
representation demonstrates that when two tiny parties adopted gender quotas in the 1970s,
they spread to almost all the other parties in the system. Eva Kolinsky (1991) also follows
this process in Germany where the Greens adopted quotas in 1987 and their rival Social
Democrats followed in 1988. Donley Studlar and Gary Moncrief (1999) and Studlar and
Matland (1996) observe the contagion of female representatives and Cabinet ministers
across parties in Canada and Rebecca Davis (1996) notes the spread of affirmative action on
behalf of women across political parties in four Western European states.
Contagion hinges on two critical notions: that parties...
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