Consolidating Democracy or Male Rule: A Feminist Discursive Institutionalist Approach to Democratic Consolidation

The exclusion of women from politics in consolidated democracies today proves that the
consolidation of democracy does not guarantee equal political opportunities for women. Most
existing studies of gender and democracy have explained this problem by focusing on gender
quotas and electoral systems. However, they have the tendency to gloss over the bearing that
historical contexts and legacies may have on present-day gendered democratic practices. Path
dependence studies have showed that patterned political rules and practices over time shape
future political realities. Therefore, an examination of the gendered political processes during
democratic consolidation may help to explain the persisting political inequalities for women in
consolidated democracies. Unfortunately, the gendered aspects of democratic consolidation
have been understudied. This project takes on the task to analyse the gendered aspects of
democratic consolidation by deconstructing the mainstream consolidation frameworks and
reformulating an alternative gendered framework using a poststructuralist and feminist
discursive institutionalist approach. This study argues that the consolidation of democracy is
embedded with gendered norms, practices and power relations that are perceived to be
democratic despite the possibility of them being exclusionary towards women. The habituation
of these gendered norms, practices and power relations shape long-term socio-political
conditions for women. More specifically, this study posits that masculine conceptions and
habituation of democratic ideas and practices restricts the realisation of feminist changes in
the long-term, while more egalitarian conceptions and habituation better enable such
progress. This theory will be demonstrated through an interpretive process tracing (IPT) of the
gendered democratic trajectories in Ireland and Sweden. This project has the potential to not
only offer a new understanding of democratic consolidation, but also contribute to the ongoing
efforts to strengthen women's political representation by specifying how exclusionary political
habits can hinder political opportunities for women and how we may undo them.