Replication Data for: Descriptive Representation and Party Building: Evidence from Municipal Governments in Brazil

This paper highlights a new way in which descriptive representation enhances democracy through inclusive party building. We theorize that parties retain and promote incumbents based on gendered criteria, disproportionately incentivizing women to recruit party members. However, gendered resource inequalities lower women’s access to the patronage required for recruitment. Women respond by recruiting more women members, as it lowers recruitment costs, is role-congruent, and eases credit claiming. Using rich administrative data on party membership from 2004–2020 and a regression discontinuity design in Brazil, we find that, despite resource disparities, women mayors recruit new members at similar rates as men but reduce the gender gap in party membership. As expected, women are more likely to be promoted in constituencies where they lower the gender gap in party membership. We also find that women’s increased membership improves party resilience. Our findings suggest that descriptive representation promotes party building by including underrepresented citizens.

本研究揭示了描述性代表（descriptive representation）通过包容性政党建设强化民主的全新路径。我们提出理论假说：政党依据性别化标准留任与提拔现任公职人员，这会不成比例地激励女性群体开展党员招募工作。然而，性别化资源不平等会削弱女性获取招募所需政治庇护资源的能力。对此，女性的应对策略是招募更多女性党员——该做法既能降低招募成本、符合角色期待，还能简化功劳归因流程。我们借助巴西2004至2020年的丰富政党党员登记行政数据，并采用断点回归设计（Regression Discontinuity Design）开展实证分析，结果发现：尽管存在资源差距，女性市长的党员招募速率与男性市长并无显著差异，但她们能够有效缩小政党内部的性别成员差距。正如预期所言，在那些女性市长成功缩小政党成员性别差距的选区，女性公职人员更有可能获得提拔。我们还发现，女性党员占比的提升能够显著增强政党韧性。本研究结果表明，描述性代表可通过吸纳代表性不足的公民群体，推动政党建设发展。