Unexpected Winners: The
Significance of an Open-List
System on Women’s Representation
in Poland
Sheri Kunovich
Southern Methodist University
Scholars have debated the impact of open-list systems on women’s representation. While some
argue that open lists provide a unique opportunity for voters to overcome parties’ bias against
women, others argue that they create additional barriers. I examine several mechanisms that
impact women’s representation within Poland’s open-list system. Results suggest that 1) voters
shift women’s original list placements positively across all parties over three elections; 2)
these shifts are more pronounced when women’s overall presence on the list and list
placement are lower, regardless of party; and 3) positive shifts often result in the election of
substantially more women than would have been expected. These findings add to our
understanding of open-list systems by documenting variability in the effects of preferential
voting across time and party in a postcommunist context. In addition, the unexpected
positive effects of preferential voting in Poland add to a growing body of evidence that voters
and parties on the center and right support female candidates at rates approaching or similar
to parties on the left.
INTRODUCTION
Several characteristics of electoral systems affect the inclusion of
women. With the possible exception of quotas, the positive effect of
I would like to thank Robert M. Kunovich, Goldie Shabad, Kazimierz M. Slomczynski, Joshua
Dubrow, and Anne Lincoln for helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. This research
was supported by a Ford Research Fellowship through Southern Methodist University.
Published by Cambridge University Press 1743-923X/12 $30.00 for The Women and Politics Research Section of the
American Political Science Association.
# The Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association, 2012
doi:10.1017/S1743923X12000141
153
Politics & Gender, 8 (2012), 153–177.
a proportional representation (PR) system is probably the most widely
accepted and understood (e.g., Matland 2005; Tremblay 2008). Recent
cross-national studies, however, have called this conventional wisdom
into question because they find that not all PR systems help women
equally. Increasingly, researchers conclude that there are important
differences in women’s outcomes among closed, flexible, and open-list
formats (Salmond 2006; Schmidt 2009). To date, most of the countryspecific
studies have focused on explaining how closed-list PR formats
benefit women (see Matland 2005 for a full discussion). Less attention
has been paid to the ways in which the operation of open and flexible
formats affect women in comparison to men within single countries (for
recent exceptions, see Meier 2008; Schmidt 2008). In addition, there
have been recent calls for research that examines women’s representation
in contexts outside of traditional liberal democracies (Viterna, Fallon,
and Beckfield 2008) as well as over time (Paxton, Hughes, and Painter
2010).
I examine the Polish open-list system over three elections (2001, 2005,
and 2007) to shed light on how an open-list system affects women’s
descriptive representation in a relatively new democracy. Poland has been
described as a consolidating democracy with substantial voter volatility
(Markowski 2008) and frequent party switching among political leaders
(Shabad and Slomczynski 2004). While public support for female
politicians has increased over time (Siemienska 2009), women’s level of
representation in the national legislature has remained stable since 2001.
Women’s representation did surge from 13% to 20% after the success of
the Left in the 2001 elections and has remained at 20%. Acknowledging
the positive role that a dominant left party should have on women’s
representation, several researchers still noted that the increase in 2001
was more than expected. Both Siemienska (2003) and Matland (2005)
concluded that the number of women elected in 2001 was positively
influenced by preferential voting. Since 2001, however, economic and
socially conservative parties on the center and right have dominated the
Polish political scene. According to traditional expectations, the
emergence of these parties should have resulted in a decline in women’s
overall representation. In fact, women maintained the gains made in the
2001 election. This study examines the extent to which preferential
voting in the Polish open-list system led to the maintenance of levels of
women’s representation despite an ideological turn to the right.
This study informs our previous understanding of open-list systems in
three ways. First, I review differences across open-list systems to identify
154 SHERI KUNOVICH
some of the factors that affect the inclusion of women in open-list systems.
Second, rather than assuming that an open-list system operates in a
consistent fashion within a country, I examine variation over time and
across parties in the list construction and voters’ use of preferential
voting. Finally, I am able to document the extent to which women in
Poland were elected as a result of parties’ original list placements or
through preferential votes.
ELECTORAL SYSTEMS AND WOMEN’S DESCRIPTIVE
REPRESENTATION
In new democracies, electoral design decisions may reflect a country’s
historical experiences with the previous governments and the stature the
country hopes to attain in global politics. In the postcommunist context,
decisions about electoral design generally reflected the efforts of the
communist parties or the recently democratically elected parties to
maintain their own power, rather than the descriptive representation of
social groups within parties and the legislatures (Birch et al. 2002;
Nalewajko and Wesolowski 2008). As a result, women’s overall
representation in the new democracies of Eastern Europe was often
much lower than under the previous communist system, where quotas
ensured a minimum level of descriptive representation (Matland and
Montgomery 2003; Rueschemeyer 2008; Saxonberg 2000). With
subsequent elections, women’s levels have risen in several
postcommunist countries while they have stagnated or failed to increase
in other countries. These patterns are attributed to a number of countryspecific
factors (see Dubrow 2006; Irvine 2007; Rueschemeyer and
Wolchik 2009), as well as factors common to all postcommunist nations,
such as the presence of a PR system and/or national quotas (Gaber 2005;
Kostadinova 2002, 2007; Matland and Montgomery 2003; Moser 2001;
Saxonberg 2000).
Increasingly, researchers conclude that there are important differences
in women’s outcomes when nations are compared with closed, flexible,
and open-list PR systems (Salmond 2006; Schmidt 2008). A closed-list
PR format presents the voter with a choice of party-ranked candidates on
electoral lists. Voters select which party they prefer and seats are assigned
to parties on the basis of their share of the vote. Candidates gain access
to seats based on their position on the party list. In an open-list PR
format, voters select a candidate from a ranked or unranked party list of
UNEXPECTED WINNERS 155
candidates. Seats assigned to parties reflect the candidates’ share of the vote.
Candidates also gain access to seats based solely on their share of the vote.
Flexible formats assign seats to candidates by a combination of vote share
and original party list placement.
OPEN-LIST PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION SYSTEMS
AND WOMEN’S DESCRIPTIVE REPRESENTATION
While an abundance of research has focused on documenting the positive
effect of closed-list PR systems on women’s electoral outcomes, a more
limited amount of research has focused on understanding the effects of
an open-list system on women’s representation. What is particularly
distinct about the open-list system is the fact that voters must choose
among candidates within the same party, thus engaging in what has
been called preferential voting (Karvonen 2004), personal voting
(Shugart 1994), or intraparty choice (Katz 1986). The fact that voters can
and often must engage in preferential voting in open-list systems is
expected to affect both the construction of the original list and the voters’
response to the original list.
Scholars disagree on the probable effect of the open-list system on
women’s electoral outcomes. For example, Taagepera (1994) argues that
the open-list format could theoretically help women, while Htun and
Jones (2002) argue that women would be harmed because of their lower
levels of resources. Country-specific studies in Finland (Holli and Waas
2010; Villodres 2003), Belgium (Meier 2008), and Peru (Schmidt 2008)
offer mixed empirical evidence with respect to women’s inclusion on
open lists and electoral outcomes. Looking across these country-specific
studies and building on broader theoretical ideas put forward on the
effects of electoral systems on women’s representation (Grofman and
Lijphart 1986; Rule and Zimmerman 1994; Tremblay 2008), I focus on
three critical factors that may explain why women can do well in some
open-list systems but may not do as well in other open-list systems:
intraparty competition for list positions, the necessity for and utility of
candidate campaigns, and voter’s behaviors toward the electoral lists.
These same factors can also be used to understand differences in the
effects of open-list systems across parties in the same election or over
time in a single country. For example, does the average position of
women within the party move up or down when intraparty competition
increases? Are supporters of one party more or less likely to shift the
156 SHERI KUNOVICH
original list positions than are supporters of another party? In the following
sections, I review existing evidence on the effects of parties, candidates, and
voters in open-list systems on women’s electoral outcomes.
The Role of the Party in Open-List Systems
The importance and function of the party vary across different types of
open-list systems. An important difference in the role of parties is that
some countries require parties to present a ranked list of candidates (e.g.,
Poland), while others do not (e.g., Finland). Ranked lists provide voters
with important cues as to the order in which parties prefer candidates to
be elected. Prior research has demonstrated that candidates at the top of
lists have a distinct advantage over those at the bottom (Lutz 2010;
Villodres 2003). As a result, intraparty competition for list positions will
occur in systems with ranked lists, such as those found in Poland
(Rauino 2007; Schmidt 2008).
Research on candidate selection within parties has shown that women
often have more limited resources (Htun and Jones 2002) and that male
party leaders are reluctant to support female candidates (Cheng and
Tavits 2011; Tremblay and Pelletier 2001). In fact, Matland (2005, 105)
concludes in the context of Poland that “party leaders undervalue
women candidates, either because of sexism among members of the
selection committees or, possibly, because members of selection
committees have a misplaced fear of sexism on the part of the voter.”
Evidence of parties’ reluctance to support female candidates in Poland
was found in an examination of party lists between 1989 and 1997,
where equally qualified women were placed lower on most party lists
than their male counterparts (Kunovich 2003).
Thus, women are at a disadvantage in systems that cultivate intraparty
competition, and women are particularly disadvantaged in parties where
the competition is most intense. The negative effect of intraparty
competition on women’s selection and list placement can be overcome
or reduced in two ways. First, national laws, such as quotas, can be
established to force parties to provide greater opportunities for women’s
meaningful inclusion on electoral lists (Krook 2009). Prior to November
2010, there was no national quota law in Poland. Second, the negative
effect of intraparty competition might also be reduced if parties make a
clear commitment to the inclusion of women. Kittilson (2006)
demonstrates that parties on the left are generally more likely to do this
UNEXPECTED WINNERS 157
than parties on the right. However, Siemienska (2005) found that only a
few parties in Poland had made a commitment to women’s inclusion by
means of sex-specific goals on electoral lists. Through a process of
contagion, additional parties may adopt a more inclusive policy toward
female candidates over time (Cowell-Meyers 2011; Matland 2005).
There is evidence that during the elections under consideration, several
of the Polish parties changed their position on female candidates.
The data presented here will examine the extent to which parties support
female candidates in Poland, whether variation in support falls along the
traditional left/right ideological spectrum, and whether variation over
time is a function of intraparty competition and/or a process of contagion.
The Role of the Candidate in the Open-List System
Carey and Shugart (1995) previously hypothesized that there is an
incentive in open-list systems for candidates to cultivate a personal
reputation and, when possible, to have direct contact with constituents.
Incumbents might do this by providing direct constituent-services “pork”
and patronage (Shugart 1994), and well-known local residents might do
this through personal and professional networks. The necessity for and
utility of individual campaigning, therefore, may be important for
understanding how open-list systems affect women’s representation.
Some open-list systems require that voters choose a candidate (e.g.,
Poland), whereas other systems permit but do not require voters to
choose a candidate (e.g., Belgium). Scholars generally find that when
the system does not require voters to choose a candidate, voters maintain
the existing list order (Meier 2008) or only a subset of well-informed and
higher-status voters engage in optional preferential voting (Schmidt
2008). On the other hand, when the system requires voters to choose
among candidates within a party, there is evidence to suggest that
preferential voting matters because voters respond to particular
candidates (Marsh 2007). As a result, individual campaigns matter most
in open-list systems, which require voters to select candidates.
Within these types of open-list systems, the necessity for campaigning
and the effectiveness of campaigns will vary across parties and
candidates. Due to the focus on party campaigns, there has been only
limited research on candidate campaigns in Poland. Two pieces of
evidence, however, suggest that Polish parties and politicians believe that
individual campaigns are necessary and important. First, research on
158 SHERI KUNOVICH
campaign funding and finances concludes that the importance of
individual candidate expenditures has increased over time and varies
across parties (Walecki 2005). Second, incumbents and candidates often
engage in party switching. As a feature of this switch, the new party will
place incumbents from other parties on its electoral lists in competitive
positions (Shabad and Slomczynski 2004; Zielinski, Slomczynski, and
Shabad 2005). Parties do this because they expect that these candidates
have their own supporters and that their votes will help the party gain
additional seats within that district.
Candidates placed lower on the list have the greatest incentive to
campaign on their own behalf. Since women with more comparable
qualifications are more likely to be placed farther down a list than a male
candidate, the female candidate has the most incentive to campaign.
One way to determine objectively if candidate campaigns are effective is
to examine the extent to which candidates move up or down the
electoral list after preferential voting has occurred. The data presented
here will examine the extent to which female candidates experience
positive mobility across parties and over time.
The Role of the Voter in Open-List Systems
The role of voters in electing female candidates varies across open-list systems
based on the number of candidates a voter can select and the extent to which
enough voters choose the same candidate and breach the original list order. In
open-list systems that allow voters to choose more than one candidate, voters
can be persuaded to help women by splitting their votes for a male and a
female candidate, whereas systems that permit only one vote require voters
to choose between male and female candidates. For example, feminist
nongovernmental organizations in Peru put forward the slogan “Of your
two preferential votes, cast one for a woman” (Schmidt 2008, 166). On the
other hand, research in Finland, where only one vote is allowed, finds that
women are often negatively affected by gender-based voting in the open
format because men are less likely to vote for women (Holli and Wass 2010).
Voters in Poland may choose only one candidate, and several factors
suggest that voters would prefer men over women. While positive attitudes
toward women in politics have increased over time, many in Poland
continue to believe that politics is not a suitable profession for women
(Siemienska 2009). In addition, socially conservative parties in Poland
advocate for women to return or stay in the home to care for their families.
UNEXPECTED WINNERS 159
Finally, the views of the Catholic Church and religious-based media support
traditional gender roles within the family. The combined effect of individual
attitudes, political parties, and cultural and religious institutions advocating for
traditional gender roles within the family suggests that some Polish voters
would be reluctant to vote for female candidates.
Even though a one-vote system may generally harm women, a one-vote
system whereby seats are allocated solely on the basis of votes and not on a
combination of votes and original list position may actually help coordinate
and motivate interested voters. A unique aspect of this type of open-list
system is that candidates may secure seats with only a small percentage of
the votes in their particular districts. For example, if all 10 seats in a
district went to a single party and 90% of votes went to the candidate in
position 1, then the remaining 10% of the district votes would determine
the other 9 candidates. As a result, a candidate at the bottom of the list
who is able to secure enough votes can easily outrank a candidate at the
top of the list who did not campaign for his or her own votes.
Two pieces of research on Poland suggest that a small number of voters may
in fact be responsible for shifting women positively up electoral lists after
casting their votes. First, research on Polish voters finds that many identify
with parties rather than candidates (Norris 2004, 239). As a result, most
voters accept the party’s preference for leadership and select the top
candidate. A small number of voters are then able to overcome the party’s
preferences by voting farther down the list. In fact, having examined the
data from 2001, Matland (2005,105) concludes “that women do better with
voters than they do with the party committees putting together party lists, that
is, the preferential vote leads to greater representation of women.” The data
presented here will examine the extent to which preferential voting, rather
than the original positions on electoral lists, resulted in women’s elections.
Furthermore, I examine variations across parties and over time.
Summary
Having reviewed theoretical and empirical work on the characteristics of
open-list systems and how they affect women’s representation in a variety
of contexts, I focus my analysis of Poland on three fundamental
questions: To what extent do Polish parties construct electoral lists that
place women in positions with a greater likelihood of being elected? Do
voters respond to women’s original list placements by moving them up or
down the electoral list? Finally, did preferential voting actually increase
160 SHERI KUNOVICH
or decrease the number of women elected to the Polish national legislature
(Sejm) in 2001, 2005, and 2007?
POLCAN: DATA AND METHODS
Prior to the 2001 election, substantial changes to electoral laws were made
that included removing the use of a national list, reducing the number of
electoral districts, and increasing the district magnitude of most districts.
The three elections included in this analysis (2001, 2005, 2007) were
conducted under almost the exact same system, with the only difference
being the vote-seat formula, which shifted back from the Sainte Lague,
used in 2001, to the d’Hondt system for 2005 and 2007 (Millard 2006).
Original data for each election were obtained from the Polish National
Electoral Commission. The data were then combined into a single file,
POLCAN, which follows all candidates who competed in elections
between 1989 and 2007 for the Sejm.
Over time, the number of parties competing for seats has declined, the
number of candidates has declined, and the number and specific parties
gaining seats in the Sejm has become somewhat stable. Given this
outcome, I restrict my presentation of findings to only those parties that
were elected in either 2001, 2005, or 2007. Throughout this article, I use
the Polish party abbreviations. I provide the standard English translations
and a brief description of each party in Table 1. For ease of interpretation,
parties are arranged from top to bottom in the remaining tables in order to
indicate their relative position on an ideological continuum, ranging from
secular to religious fundamentalist (Markowski 2006).
Based on the characteristics of lists and candidates’ positions on lists, four
concepts were created to measure women’s inclusion in parties’ and voters’
response to female candidates. For every list, I calculate the percentage of
female candidates, whether the list contained a woman in the top three
positions, and the average movement among female candidates. Movement
among candidates is measured by subtracting their original list position
from their final list position according to voters’ preferences. For example, if
a party placed a candidate in position 3 on the original list but the
candidate only received enough votes to secure position 7, this candidate
would be identified as having experienced a 4-point negative shift in list
position. An example of positive movement would occur when a candidate
originally in position 10 received enough votes to qualify for position 3,
UNEXPECTED WINNERS 161
Table 1. Party abbreviations, English names, brief overview
Abbreviation English Name Brief History, Core Electorate, and
Ideological Position
SLD-UP Alliance of the Democratic
Left and Labor Union
Emerged in 2001 as a coalition of two
traditional left parties with ties to the former
Communist Party. The coalition platform
changed regularly and party leaders were
largely discredited before the 2005 election.
LID Left and Democrats (SLD,
SDPL, PD, UP)
Emerged in 2006 as a center left coalition.
The goal was to provide voters with an
alternative to the two dominant parties, PiS
and PO. The coalition represented
traditional left party program appeals and was
headed by the former Polish president,
Aleksander Kwasniewski.
Samoobrona Self-Defense of the
Republic of Poland
Emerged in 1993 as a left populist party. The
platform generally appeals for protecting the
economic fate of ordinary people and
religious conservative social policies. The
party strongly advocates for agrarian and trade
union issues. Andrzej Lepper is the most
well-known leader.
PSL Polish Peasant Party Party existed during the communist regime
and has participated in all subsequent
elections. Advocated historically for rural
interests and agricultural profession and
industry. By 2007 shifted to focus more
broadly on inequities between rural and
urban districts and promoting interests of
small entrepreneurs.
PO Civic Platform Emerged in 2001 as a liberal conservative
party with roots in former Solidarity parties.
The platform generally appeals to young,
well-educated, urban dwellers and strongly
advocates for privatization of remaining
public sectors of economy. The most wellknown
leader is Donald Tusk.
PiS Law and Justice Emerged in 2001 as a conservative Catholic
party that promotes policies to develop a
national community with shared values, the
Fourth Republic. The platform generally
appeals to those who live in rural areas, did
not benefit from economic transformations,
and generally have lower levels of education.
Kaczynski twins are the most well-known
leaders.
Continued
162 SHERI KUNOVICH
thus experiencing a 7-point positive shift in list position. After calculating the
three indicators foreach list, I aggregate the findings foreach party. This results
in party-level measures of the percentage of female candidates, the percentage
of lists with women in the top three positions, and the average movement of
women after preferential voting occurred.
For all candidates, I determine if they were elected under their original list
position or if they were elected due to preferential voting. I created this
measure in a two-step process. On the basis of their share of the vote, I first
identified how many seats a party won on any given list. All the candidates
on that list were then identified as having been above or below the number
of seats won. All candidates at or above the number of seats won were
identified as having had the possibility of being elected on the basis of their
original list positions, while candidates below the number were identified as
having the possibility of being elected as a result of preferential voting. This
measure was then interacted with a measure of having been elected. Using
this measure, I document the percentage of members of the legislature/
parliament (MPs) who were elected as a result of their original list positions
versus the percentage of MPs who were elected as a result of preferential
voting on each list. I then calculate for each party the percentage of women
elected due to their original list positions versus preferential voting.
FINDINGS
The following findings are organized in order to consider the role of
the party, the candidate, and the voter. With the data currently available,
I am able to examine descriptive patterns, but not formally test the causal
Table 1. Continued
Abbreviation English Name Brief History, Core Electorate, and
Ideological Position
LPR League of Polish Families Emerged in 2001 as a strongly conservative
populist party on the right. The platform
generally appeals the most to those with
strong ties to the Catholic Church and who
favor the central role of family to Polish
national identity. The party is strongly
supported by Radio Maryja and Roman
Giertych is the most well-known leader.
Note: See Jasiewicz 2008, Markowski 2006, and Markowski 2008 for a basic overview of Polish parties
and voter support between 2001 and 2007.
UNEXPECTED WINNERS 163
mechanisms identified in this article. Therefore, I present the descriptive
findings in this section and discuss probable explanations for the patterns
in the discussion section. Additional data from future elections will be
needed in order to test these ideas formally.
The Role of Parties and Intraparty Competition
Parties can support women in ranked open-list systems through the number
of women selected as candidates and in their original list position. As a
result of prior research, I expected to find that parties on the left would
be more supportive of female candidates, that intraparty competition
would negatively affect women’s inclusion and placement, and that over
time, additional parties would include more women and place women
higher on their electoral lists.
Findings presented in Table 2 show that between 2001 and 2007,
women comprised between 23% and 25% of candidates on average. In
both 2001 and 2005, parties on the left clearly had more women in their
ranks than parties in the center or on the right. In fact, the highest
percentage of candidacies held by women in Poland was in the Alliance
of the Democratic Left (SLD) in 2001. Variation across parties declined
over time, with the Left substantially decreasing its support for female
candidates and the center and right parties modestly increasing their
support. By 2007, the left alliance, now called LID, had 22% female
candidates while the centrist right PO had 21%.
As in most PR systems, the percentage of female candidates is generally
not the best indicator of party support. Many parties in Poland put forward
more candidates than can be elected, and with no national laws governing
Table 2. Support of female candidates by party in Poland, 2001, 2005, 2007
% Women
on Electoral Lists
% Women
in Top Three Positions
2001 2005 2007 2001 2005 2007
Average 23.16 24.51 22.95 41.44 51.52 53.72
SLD/LID 36.16 27.63 21.93 51.22 53.66 36.59
Samoobrona 20.48 22.82 23.86 36.59 57.50 63.41
PSL 19.61 19.65 18.15 19.51 36.59 34.15
PO 17.08 20.96 20.99 39.02 56.10 80.49
PiS 17.73 21.05 19.17 34.15 56.10 58.54
LPR 24.90 19.45 20.38 62.50 34.15 41.46
164 SHERI KUNOVICH
women’s access to winnable positions, parties can have the appearance of
supporting women in numbers of candidates while women actually have a
low likelihood of success. Looking at women’s access to the top three
positions on electoral lists provides additional insight into a party’s level
of support for female candidates.
Findings presented in Table 2 show that in 2001, 41% of all party lists
contained at least one woman in a top-three position, and by 2007, 54% of
all party lists contained at least one woman in a top position. In 2001,
only two parties — the left alliance, SLD, and the socially conservative,
LPR — put forward lists with more than 50% of their top positions held by
women. By 2007, significantly more parties across the political spectrum
had put forward lists with women in top positions. The most dramatic
changes in top positions occurred with the decline of support for women in
the left alliance, LID, and the dramatic increase in support in PO.
The Role of Candidates and Candidate Campaigning
In an open-list system, candidates have a unique opportunity to campaign on
their own behalf in an attempt to improve their list position. If they secure
enough votes, the list can be breached and the order of election can be
changed. On an aggregate level, voters can respond to women’s presence
on the lists either by moving them down the list, thus penalizing them, or
by moving them up the list and increasing their likelihood of election. To
assess the extent to which voters penalize or support female candidates, I
measured the average movement of women across party lists.
Findings in Table 3 show that women in all three elections experienced
positive movement, on average moving up slightly more than 1 position.
Furthermore, across parties and over time, there are only two examples
Table 3. Average movement of female candidates on electoral lists by voters
2001 2005 2007
Average Movement Average Movement Average Movement
Average 1.15 1.06 1.16
SLD/LID 2.37 .78 1.47
Samoobrona 2.01 1.32 1.29
PSL .04 2.35 .16
PO 1.45 1.47 1.15
PiS 2.08 .64 1.03
LPR 2.55 2.05 2.03
UNEXPECTED WINNERS 165
of voters responding negatively to female candidates, in the left alliance
SLD in 2001 and the socially conservative PSL in 2005. In 2001, the
greatest average increase in women’s list positions occurred among the
supporters of the two most conservative parties, PiS and LPR. In fact,
women within LPR consistently experienced the most positive
movement across all three elections. While the average movement of
women in LPR remained the same over time, women in other parties
generally saw declines in the amount of average movement. For
example, women in PO were moved up 1.45 positions in 2001 and by
2007 were moved up 1.15. This trend was reversed in two parties, SLD/
LID and PSL, where voters increased support for women over time.
These findings clearly show that across parties and over time, female
candidates were not penalized on average by voters.
The Role of Voters and the Effect of Preferential Voting
Knowing that women experienced positive movement on electoral lists is
an important first step in establishing that preferential voting does not
appear to harm women’s electoral outcomes. This finding, however,
does not demonstrate to what extent this movement matters for women’s
electoral outcomes. In order to assess if preferential voting affects
women’s electoral outcomes positively, I measured the proportion of
women elected from within a party that was the result of their original
list position versus the proportion elected because voters moved women
up the list. Findings presented in Table 4 provide the number of seats
won by women in the three elections. The number of women elected
based on their original position is then provided separately from the
number of women elected as result of preferential voting.
Women’s overall representation in the national legislature has remained
at 20% after the last three elections. The manner in which women were
elected and the parties they represent have varied considerably during
this time period. On average, preferential voting resulted in an increase
in women’s representation by 47% in 2001, 22% in 2005, and 25% in
2007. This average increase is particularly remarkable considering that
women’ representation as candidates had increased over time as well.
The findings presented in Table 4 also show important variation across
parties in the role of preferential voting in electing women. In 2001, six
parties were elected to the Sejm, and the left alliance, SLD, controlled
almost half the seats. While more than half of all women elected were
166 SHERI KUNOVICH
from SLD (55 out of 93), women comprised only 25% of SLD members in
the legislature. The remaining women were distributed across four other
parties, and PSL had no female representatives in 2001. Even with
SLD’s strong support of female candidates, 32% of the women were
elected after voters breached the original list order. In addition to
increasing women’s representation on the left, preferential voting played
an even more important role in electing women to socially and
economically conservative parties. For example, 50% of female
representatives from PiS were elected by voters and 38% of female
representatives from PO. As previously noted by other scholars,
preferential voting played a critical role in the election of women across
all parties during the 2001 election.
Table 4. Women’s presence in the Sejm, 2001–2007, and method of election
Election
Outcomes
Seats Held by Women Due to Preferential
Voting
Election Seats
Won
%
Female
MP
Total Elected
by Party
List
Elected
by PV
% of
Women
Elected
%
Increase
in Seats
2001 20.22 93.00 63.00 30.00 32.00 47.00
SLD-UP 216.00 25.46 55.00 37.00 18.00 32.73
Samoobrona 53.00 16.98 9.00 8.00 1.00 11.11
PSL 42.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
PO 65.00 20.00 13.00 8.00 5.00 38.46
PiS 44.00 13.64 6.00 3.00 3.00 50.00
LPR 38.00 26.32 10.00 7.00 3.00 30.00
2005 20.43 94.00 77.00 17.00 18.00 22.00
SLD 55.00 18.71 11.00 10.00 1.00 9.09
Samoobrona 56.00 26.79 15.00 10.00 5.00 33.33
PSL 25.00 4.00 1.00 1.00 0.00 0.00
PO 133.00 24.81 33.00 27.00 6.00 18.18
PiS 155.00 18.71 29.00 24.00 5.00 17.24
LPR 34.00 14.71 5.00 5.00 0.00 0.00
2007 20.43 94.00 75.00 19.00 20.00 25.00
LID 53.00 20.75 11.00 8.00 3.00 27.27
Samoobrona 0.00
PSL 31.00 3.23 1.00 1.00 0.00 0.00
PO 209.00 22.97 48.00 38.00 10.00 20.83
PiS 166.00 20.48 34.00 28.00 6.00 17.65
LPR 0.00
UNEXPECTED WINNERS 167
After 2001, the proportion of women elected from preferential votes does
decline from 47% to 22% in 2005. In 2005, all elected parties had at least
one female member and women were distributed more evenly across
parties, with a heavier concentration in the two dominant parties, PO
and PiS. The importance of preferential voting varied across parties,
again with SLD voters responsible for electing only 1 of the 11 women,
while Samoobrona voters were responsible for electing 5 out of their 15
female representatives.
After the 2007 elections, there was a modest increase in the role of
preferential voting, with 25% of female members having been elected by
the voters. Women comprised 20% of the party delegates for three of the
four parties elected, and only one woman was elected from PSL. Voters
for both parties in the left alliance, LID and the center PO, increased
the presence of women by more than 20%. In comparison to 2005,
voters on the left found it necessary to shift more women up the lists to a
positive position. These findings clearly show that voters play a critical
role in the election of women by voting for female candidates farther
down the list across almost all parties in Poland.
DISCUSSION
Women’s representation in the Polish Sejm increased greatly between
1997 and 2001. This increase was attributed to a number of factors,
including the positive effect of preferential voting (Matland 2005;
Siemienska 2003). The electoral success of center and right parties in
2005 and 2007 should have negatively affected women’s levels of
representation, but it did not. The research presented here provides
evidence that preferential voting once again played an important role in
explaining women’s political outcomes in Poland. In fact, preferential
voting increased the percentage of women elected to the Sejm by 20%
to 30%. These findings document that all parties consistently
underestimate support for female candidates and that voters regularly
shift women far enough up the list that an unexpected number of female
candidates are elected.
I previously identified several ways that parties, candidates, and voters
have been found to influence women’s election outcomes in open-list
systems. The descriptive data presented for Poland provides rich
documentation of women’s inclusion on lists, voters’ average response to
168 SHERI KUNOVICH
women on lists, and whether preferential voting actually matters.
Unfortunately, these data do not allow me to examine the specific
processes and causal mechanisms that would explain the observed
patterns. Therefore, I offer a discussion of how these mechanisms might
have operated in Poland at that time. Scholars will need to collect
additional data to test these ideas.
How do the dynamics within parties and between parties affect women’s
positions on electoral lists and their ultimate outcomes in open-list systems?
I expected to find support for female candidates to vary over time and across
parties as a result of changes in intraparty competition for list positions and
a process of contagion. The data presented in Figure 1 partially support
these expectations. Figure 1 documents support for female candidates in
three distinctive parties over the last three elections, the far right LPR,
the center right PO, and the left SLD/LID. The first three sets of bars
display the average percentage of women on the electoral lists, and the
second three sets of bars display women’s average percentage in the top
three positions. The success of the Left in 2001 should have shown other
parties that having a significant number of women on electoral lists does
not negatively affect voter support and should have produced an average
increase in women’s presence on lists over time. This does not occur.
While the center right party PO increases women’s average presence
slightly, both SLD/LID and LPR actually reduce their average levels of
inclusion of women on lists over time.
While the process of contagion clearly did not convince other parties to
include more women on their lists in general, it may have influenced PO’s
FIGURE 1. Inclusion of women on party lists (percentages).
UNEXPECTED WINNERS 169
strategic and distinctive decision to include more women in top positions.
PO recognized that the SLD policy to set a minimum threshold for women
appealed to voters on the left and, in fact, adopted a similar policy to attract
SLD voters during the 2005 election. A look at the positive list movement of
their own female candidates in 2001 would have also convinced PO leaders
that there was little risk to such a strategy with their core constituents. By
2007, PO further increased their support of female candidates by
including women in one of the top three positions on 80% of their lists.
This strategy was used again to clearly distinguish itself further from
another party on the right, PiS, and to shift support among female voters
from PiS to PO. This strategy worked again, as the gap in women’s vote
increased between PO and PiS (Markowski 2008).
While women’s average presence on lists remains basically the same or
experiences declines over time, women’s average presence in top positions
changes in party-specific ways that may be a function of intraparty
competition. The center right party with the fewest women in top
positions in 2001, PO, has the most women in top positions by 2007,
and support from the left alliance, SLD/LID, actually declines over
time. Intraparty competition is clearly a function of many factors, and
two of these, expected voter support and party fragmentation, seem to
explain some of the patterns presented in Figure 1. The decline in
support for female candidates on the left and the increasing support
in the center right, mirrors the parties’ predicted levels of voter support
in 2005 and 2007. The data also suggest that women’s representation
within a party may decline during those elections when there is
fragmentation of leadership or a divided party platform. The League of
Polish Families, LPR, emerged in 2001 with a clear and narrowly
defined party identity that focused on traditional roles for women in
society. Despite this traditional orientation toward gender roles, women’s
position within the party was strongest during the 2001 election, but over
time, as intraparty competition for leadership heightened and debates
over party platform increased, women’s presence on the lists declined.
On the other hand, Civic Platform (PO), which also emerged in 2001,
was at first a party combined of various leaders from other parties and
had a much less clear platform with regards to women. As PO developed
a cohesive party platform and strong party leadership emerged, women’s
original position on the lists improved.
Scholars should gather data on the construction of electoral lists in
Poland — that is, identifying factors that influence the construction of
the list within parties and across parties, such as party rules for list
170 SHERI KUNOVICH
construction at the national and regional level, as well as the sex
composition of party leadership. In addition, future research might also
consider identifying and measuring the extent to which parties
strategically use female candidates in particular districts to increase their
vote share.
How do the behaviors of candidates and voters affect female candidates’
movement on electoral lists and their ultimate outcomes in open-list
systems? Their overall positive movement across almost all parties in the
three elections suggests that female candidates can campaign for
themselves and that voters respond to the campaigns (see data in
Table 3). There is also evidence, however, that the presence of women
in top positions influences the average movement of women on electoral
lists and ultimately the percentage of women elected through
preferential voting. In Figure 2, I present line graphs for women’s
presence in top positions, their average movement on lists, and the
relationship between presence in top positions and percentage elected by
voters for the SLD/LID alliances and PO. Panel A and Panel B of
Figure 2 show that as the presence of women in top positions in PO
increases, there is a decline in average list movement in PO. The
opposite pattern is observed in the left alliance; as women’s presence in
top positions declines, the average movement of women increases.
The graphs in Panel C document a similar pattern in the relationship
between women’s presence in top positions and the percentage of
women elected through preferential voting. As more women were placed
in top positions on electoral lists in PO, a smaller percentage of PO
women were elected by breaching the original lists; the opposite pattern
is observed in SLD/LID. Across the parties, the overall trend is for a
smaller proportion of women to be elected as a result of preferential
voting over time (see data in Table 4). That said, preferential voting
continues to make significant contributions in particular parties and in
particular regions in Poland. For example, in 2007 SLD voters were
responsible for electing 27% of the female MPs (3 out of 11), and PO
voters were responsible for electing 21% of the female MPs (10 out of 48).
Future research needs to focus on explaining how candidates in the
Polish open-list system campaign on their own behalf and how women
in particular appeal to voters. It would also be beneficial to understand
the extent to which having a woman in a top list position affects voters’
decisions to breach the original list in order to vote for alternative women
farther down the list. Opportunities to examine individual candidate
outcomes in Poland have been constrained by data availability. To my
UNEXPECTED WINNERS 171
knowledge, very little data exist that ask voters to identify which candidates
they supported, rather than which parties they supported. The vibrant body
of research in Poland on party support needs to be complemented by
research on candidate support. Understanding which candidates are
chosen by voters might offer greater insight into why women are moving
up the list in certain parties. For example, Holli and Waas (2010) found
that gender-based voting occurs in the context of the Finnish open
FIGURE 2. Voters’s response to women’s presence in top positions
172 SHERI KUNOVICH
system. This provides a reasonable explanation in Poland as well, where
parties with stronger female voter support might also be the parties with
the greatest proportion of female candidates elected by breaching the list.
Finally, the experiences of women in PO and SLD add additional
support to a growing body of research that finds women’s political
presence increasing in parties other than the traditional Left (e.g.,
Childs, Webb, and Marthaler 2009; Hinojosa 2009). This pattern is the
result of both the voters and the parties in the Polish case. If it were not
for Polish voters on the center and right, women’s levels of
representation in the Sejm would have declined once again in 2005 and
2007. Future research needs to explain the basis on which center parties
recruit and support female candidates and how women make inroads
with voters in parties that profess a commitment to traditional roles for
women. The most extreme example in Poland is the LPR, League of
Polish Families, which has the highest average movement by women in
all three elections.
Overall, the data presented here clearly show the dynamic nature of an
open-list system, with parties constructing the original lists, candidates
campaigning in order to improve their list positions, and voters often
responding by breaching the original list positions. The experience of
women in Poland documents a pattern whereby a lack of party support
for female politicians results in an increased role of preferential voting in
the election of women. When parties increase the proportion of women
in top positions, women experience less positive mobility on average, and
ultimately fewer are elected as a result of preferential voting. That said,
the substantial numbers of women that are still elected through
preferential voting indicates that Polish parties continue to underestimate
voters’ support of women and place women too low on electoral lists.
CONCLUSION
We often treat the effects of electoral systems on women’s representation as
being consistent over time and across parties in a single context. These data
show that this is not always the case. While preferential voting explained
more than 30% of women elected in some years, it explained only 20%
in others. Within a single election, preferential voting explained 11% of
female candidates within a party, while it explained 50% in another
party. Similar to conclusions drawn about Peru (Schmidt 2008) and
UNEXPECTED WINNERS 173
somewhat in contrast to those in Belgium (Meier 2008), I did not find
systematic evidence that having an open-list system was an obstacle to
women’s election in Poland. In fact, I found that voters across the
political spectrum positively shifted female candidates up the electoral
list. Many parties often responded to positive shifts in the previous
election by increasing the percentage of women in top positions on their
subsequent lists. Nonetheless voters continued to shift women positively,
albeit at a lower rate.
Not only do these data provide general insight into open-list systems,
but they also help us understand women’s electoral outcomes in
postcommunist countries and in consolidating democracies. Despite an
increase in the percentage of women in top positions on electoral lists,
positive change in women’s overall representation in Poland has
stagnated over the last three elections. These data document that even
though several parties have increased their commitment to women’s
inclusion, voters still find it necessary to select female candidates further
down electoral lists. A recent change in Polish electoral laws will force
and challenge parties to be more inclusive of women on their electoral
lists. In November 2010, the Polish legislature passed a 35% national
quota law for all parties. This change will provide another unique
opportunity to consider how parties and voters will respond to the
increased presence of female candidates in the 2011 election. Although
parties drive women’s representation in PR fixed-list systems and voters
drive women’s representation in majority-rule systems, many open-list
systems allow both the party and the voter to play important roles. As a
result, open-list systems should be viewed as a unique opportunity to
simultaneously consider the roles of voters and parties in the election of
female candidates.
Sheri Kunovich is Associate Professor of Sociology at Southern Methodist
University, Dallas, TX: kunovich@smu.edu
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