Whose bread I eat, their song I sing? How the gender of MPs influences the use of oversight mechanisms in government and opposition

Autor(en)

Corinna Kroeber, Svenja Krauss

Abstrakt

This article is the first to show that gender shapes the degree to which legislators use formal mechanisms to oversee government activities. Extensive scholarly work has analysed the use of oversight instruments, especially regarding who monitors whom. Whether, how, and why the conformity of men and women with institutional roles differs, has not yet received scholarly attention. We hypothesise that women become more active than men in overseeing the executive when in opposition while reducing their monitoring activities even more strongly than men when in government because of different social roles ascribed to men and women as well as differences in risk aversity between sexes. We analyse panel data for three oversight tools from the German Bundestag between 1949 and 2013 to test this proposition. Our findings imply that characteristics of political actors influence even a strongly institutionalised process as oversight and further clarify the gender bias in political representation.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Staatswissenschaft

Externe Organisation(en)

Ernst Moritz Arndt Universität Greifswald

Journal

European Political Science Review

Band

15

Seiten

600-616

Anzahl der Seiten

17

ISSN

1755-7739

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1017/S1755773923000061

Publikationsdatum

11-2023

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

506014 Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Political Science and International Relations, Sociology and Political Science

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/f5d39a97-d1f1-47dc-8205-7e9676cf8fd9