Women’s descriptive representation in Polish, Czech, Hungarian, and Slovak regional legislatures, 1994–2024: do electoral institutions matter?

This paper tests the effect of electoral institutions on descriptive representation of women in regional legislatures in four Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries (Poland, Czechia, Hungary, Slovakia) between 1994 and 2024. The results of our models are somewhat novel. Especially the cross-country analysis suggested that in CEE regional elections, the effect of institutional variables on women’s representation is mixed at best. The expected positive impact of legislature size on female success was very weak, and the effect of district magnitude was even negative. In contrast, women’s representation was associated with competitiveness, time and especially regional wealth and a gender quota. As our results show significant intercountry differences in the effects of institutional variables, a subsequent control of within-country variation suggests that pooled negative effect of district magnitude is rather a composite artefact, whilst the influence of other variables remained unchanged.