Gender Equality Reforms on an Uneven Playing Field : Candidate Selection and Quota Implementation in Electoral Authoritarian Tanzania

摘要

This article investigates the dynamics that gender quota reforms create withinand between government and opposition parties in electoral authoritariandominant-party states. A dominant-party state regularly holds relativelycompetitive elections, but the political playing field is skewed in favour of thegovernment party. We investigate the circumstances under which genderquotas’ goal of furthering political gender equality within political parties canbe reconciled with parties’ electoral concerns. We address these issues byanalysing the implementation of reserved seats by the three largest parties inthe dominant-party state of Tanzania. The empirical analysis suggests that theuneven playing field leaves an imprint on the specific priorities parties makewhen implementing candidate selection reforms. Because of large resource gapsbetween parties, the ruling party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi – (CCM), is able toreconcile gender equality concerns with power-maximizing partisan strategies toa greater extent than the opposition parties.