Question: I was wondering if you would mind explaining the stats terms below briefly (as the online sources I have found on this topic resort to rather convoluted language in their explanations) in the context of the Przeworski and Limongi (1993) paper (‘Political Regimes and Economic Growth’)?

• Simultaneity: the causal relationship between democracy and economic development is unclear because it could go both ways, which makes researchers’ jobs very difficult?
• Attrition bias: there are existing differences between the original state of treatment and control groups that are impossible to avoid in selecting case studies?
• Selection bias: the selection criteria of choosing regimes based on their growth level, dependent on survival (why specifically was this criteria chosen?) is problematic, and it’s relevant to exogenous factors (ones that are taken as a given and not explained in a model) and endogenous factors (ones that are explained by variables in a model)?

Answer: Thanks a lot for the question, which is a good one and particularly useful because I think a number of students found these terms slightly unclear.
Simultaneity: your definition here is correct. We observe a correlation in which economic development is related to regime type (i.e. democracy or dictatorship) but it could be that that the former leads to the latter, or the latter leads to the former. Or, indeed, it may be that reaching a certain level of economic development prompts transition to democracy and also affects subsequent growth rates (that are then attributed to democracy, but actually stem (at least to a degree) from passing a threshold of economic development). As you say, these competing plausible explanations for the correlation are not easy to distinguish between empirically.

Attrition bias: this is different from the definition that you suggest. Let’s start with an observed correlation between regime type and economic growth. It is easy to assume that such a correlation is because the regime type affects the growth. However, it may actually be the case that different regimes have a greater or lesser propensity to survive when confronted with positive or negative circumstances. So, (drawing on the article) let’s imagine a scenario in which dictatorships are more likely than democracies to collapse when faced with poor economic growth. If we measured growth and regime type in this scenario it would look like democracies lead to worse growth than dictatorships. In fact, what is happening is that dictatorships with bad economic growth collapse, and the democracies that emerge from them inherit poor growth. At the same time, democracies continue through periods of poor growth and have those figures included in their averages whilst, of course, dictatorships only have good growth figures in their averages (because they collapse when they have poor growth). Thus, overall it looks like dictatorships promote higher average growth but, in fact, they have higher attrition rates (hence attrition bias) when faced with poor growth.

Selection bias: I interpret this to be the overarching problem (encompassing the above two problems) that Przeworski and Limongi are concerned with, based on the following quote:

• ‘If democratic regimes are more likely to occur at a higher level of development or if democracies and dictatorships have a different chance of survival under various economic conditions, then regimes are endogenously selected [hence selection bias].’ p. 62.

The point here is that we cannot select an unbiased set of cases (i.e. one that is not beset by problems such as simultaneity or attrition bias). We cannot observe each country as it would be if it was the same but with a different regime type, and if we try to find an equivalent country we see that the similarity between the two countries means that they share regime type and economic growth as well. So we cannot observe the impact of changing regime type in otherwise identical circumstances. Another way of thinking about this is that the factors affecting regime type and economic growth are not distributed randomly across the world so every time we look at countries with a particular regime type we automatically look at countries with other shared characteristics that undermine our attempts to investigate the effect of regime type on economic growth.

In one of the classes this week, I was asked whether there has been any research on the impact of polling on public opinion and behaviour. The answer is a resounding yes! I asked my former polling colleagues and current academic colleagues, and they suggested the following:

• Bursztyn, Cantoni, Funk, and Yuchtman (2019), ‘Polls, the Press, and Political Participation: The Effects of Anticipated Election Closeness on Voter Turnout’: https://home.uchicago.edu/bursztyn/Bursztyn_Cantoni_Funk_Yuchtman_20190208.pdf
• Utych and Cam (2014), ‘Viability, Information Seeking, and Vote Choice’: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1017/S0022381613001126?mobileUi=0&journalCode=jop
• Morton, Muller, Page, and Torgler (2015), ‘Exit polls, turnout, and bandwagon voting: Evidence from a natural experiment’: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014292115000483

I also undertook a quick search myself and turned up these articles:

• McAllister and Studlar (1991), ‘Bandwagon, Underdog, or Projection? Opinion Polls and Electoral Choice in Britain, 1979-1987’: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.2307/2131577
• Irwin and van Holsteyn (2002), ‘According to the Polls: The Influence of Opinion Polls on Expectations’: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3078698?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
• Restrepo, Rael, and Hyman (2009), ‘Modeling the influence of polls on elections: a population dynamics approach’: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11127-009-9427-x

Hopefully that’s enough to sate your interest, at least for the time being!

Question: If, historically at least, left-wing parties are likely to have a higher proportion of their elected representatives being women, why is it the case that O’Brien (2015) finds no influence of party family (other than Green (positive) and Communist (negative)) on the likelihood of parties selecting female leaders? In other words, if left-wing parties have more elected representatives who are women, why are they not more likely to select leaders who are women?

Answer: The first thing to say is that, based on a quick (and I really do mean quick) search via the LSE Library, this question does appear to expose a gap in the literature. In other words, this might be an opportunity for someone who is interested in the topic to write a research paper; it’s always good to start such a project with an interesting conundrum, which I think this constitutes. However, given what we do already know, I would suggest two possible answers to the question:

1. On a relatively mundane, technical front, we should remember that O’Brien specifically measures the situation in 11 OECD countries from 1965 to 2013. So, it could simply be case selection (i.e. the countries she focuses on) and the particular analytical approach adopted by O’Brien that points towards left-wing parties not being more likely to elect leaders who are women. So, perhaps the observation that left-wing parties have higher proportions of their elected representatives who are women was based on observations relating to more, fewer, or different countries, or a wider, narrower, or different time period. It would be interesting to get hold of O’Brien’s data, code an additional variable focusing on the proportion of elected representatives who are women, and see whether left-wing parties are different in this regard within the countries and time period that she focused on. That said, it should be pointed out that Tripp and Kang observe that ‘strength of Left-leaning parties is statistically significant [in relation to the proportion of elected representatives who are women] only when we omit quotas and regional controls,’ and argue that this suggests left-wing parties become less important in promoting women’s political representation as a wider array of parties adopt quotas. So, perhaps there’s no conundrum after all.
2. If there is, indeed, still a conundrum here then a possible answer may lie in the blog that I cited as a contemporary example in the classes, which highlights that there are barriers facing women at each step of their political careers: recruitment to parties, selection as candidates, election as representatives, and then fulfilling their roles as elected representatives. The blog also highlights the importance of gatekeepers (i.e. important local or national decision-makers) in political parties, who have the power to implement programmes (be they focused on training, quotas, or other support) that remove some of the barriers faced by women (and indeed, may have the power to promote women themselves). If we apply this explanation to our conundrum then it seems eminently plausible that, within the context of left-wing parties, even if women overcome the barriers to becoming elected representatives (which may be lower in said left-wing parties, at least historically) they may still face other barriers to becoming party leaders. There may be different gatekeepers (perhaps in the form of party selectorates) who have different priorities for leader selection than the gatekeepers who they faced when becoming elected representatives. Perhaps, adequate training, opportunities to gain relevant experiences, or support structures (e.g. mentoring) are not available. So, in short, it is possible that left-wing parties have been good at increasing the proportion of their elected representatives who are women whilst also failing to alter institutional and cultural barriers to those women moving up to leadership positions.

In line with the second of the above explanations, and for those who are interested in this topic, I have found a few articles on the topic:

• Cheng and Tavits (2011). ‘Informal Influence in Selecting Female Political Candidates.’ This focuses on the importance of informal gatekeepers in selecting women into party positions.
• Verge and de la Fuente (2014). ‘Playing with different cards: Party politics, gender quotas, and women’s empowerment.’ This focuses on whether increased representation of women leads to greater power for women within parties.
• Jalalzai and Krook (2010). ‘Beyond Hillary and Benazir: Women’s Political Leadership Worldwide.’ Giving a helpful overview of the topic.
• Jalalzai (2008). ‘Women political Leaders.’ Similar to the above.