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Article
Interpersonal Resources and Insider/Outsider Dynamics in Party Office
Comparative Political Studies 2023, Vol. 56(1) 131-157 © The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1 177/00104140221089642
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Javier Martinez-Canto © and Tänia Verge
Abstract
While the multiple barriers women face to attain public office have been vastly documented, the operation of insider/outsider dynamics within political parties' top decision-making bodies remains largely under-researched. This article provides new theoretical and empirical insights on how interpersonal resources create ingroups and outgroups in parties' national executive committees—the body that manages the day-to-day functioning of the extra-parliamentary party organization. Our comparative analysis of Spanish political parties in the period 1975-2020 documents that interpersonal resources are unevenly distributed across gender. Most crucially, we show that these resources play out differently for women and men members, with embeddedness in party networks only helping the latter attain positional power and extend their tenure in party office. These heterogeneous effects suggest that top decision-making party bodies do not just reflect existing gender inequalities but reinforce them in significant ways, rendering women member outsiders on the inside.
Keywords
Party office, party networks, gender, insider/outsider dynamics, male homosocial capital
University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany 2Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
Corresponding Author:
Javier Martinez-Canto, Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Konstanz, Universitätsstrasse 10, Konstanz 78457, Germany. Email: javier.martinez-canto@uni-konstanz.de
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Introduction
Numerous works have certified that women face multiple barriers to attain public office, either in the legislative or the executive branch. A common finding in candidate selection studies is that women "play by a different - and often more demanding - set of rules" than men (O'Brien, 2015, 1036). Women are regarded as outgroup members, whilst men embody the "ideal" candidate (Bjarnegard & Kenny, 2016, p. 385; see also Niven, 1998; Tremblay & Pelletier, 2001). Men are also more frequently connected with the party leader and political mentors and have privileged access to party networks (Annesley et al., 2019; Bjarnegard, 2013; Kenny, 2013). Fundamentally, being "one of us" greatly overrides individuals' educational and professional qualifications (Norris & Lovenduski, 1995, p. 238), and even credentials such as party service are attributed a different value by party selectors when possessed by the ingroup or the outgroup (Verge & Claveria, 2018). Interpersonal resources thus set in motion insider/outsider dynamics that trump candidates' achievements within political parties. These resources create bonding ties through interpersonal relationships and, as such, they lead to the construction of homosocial capital among the ingroup—that is, men party members.
Hitherto, despite having wider normative implications for intra-party democracy and the representation of political minorities, the ways in which interpersonal resources may also shape gender inequality within political parties' decision-making bodies have received little scholarly attention. In order to address this gap, we investigate how interpersonal resources play out differently for ingroup and outgroup members' advancement in party office. In doing so, this article provides new theoretical and empirical insights. On the one hand, we take stock and contribute to the literature on political recruitment, candidate selection, and gender and politics by theorizing on the heterogeneous effects that interpersonal resources yield for selection processes configuring the party in central office. On the other hand, we develop an original set of quantitative, observational, measurements to trace the accumulation of interpersonal resources stemming from male homosocial capital that can be applied to large-N studies.
In assessing the intra-party effects of male homosocial capital, we study the largely under-researched, but critical, national executive committees (NECs).1 A NEC is the body that manages the day-to-day functioning of the organization and dictates the political strategy between party conferences (Katz & Mair, 1993, p. 607). It drafts and approves manifestoes, oversees candidate selection processes, distributes high-status political offices, and exercises ex post control of elected representatives (Van Biezen, 2000). Accordingly, NECs have been qualified as the "centre of power" of the extra-parliamentary party (Kittilson, 2006, p. 41). Their composition is then highly consequential
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for the degree of diversity of public officials and for party responsiveness to particular social groups (Kittilson, 2011).
Taking Spain as a representative case of parliamentary democracies, our empirical analysis builds on an original dataset that includes biographical information on over 1000 individuals having sat in the NECs of all major political parties between 1975 and 2020, encompassing political background and sociodemographic characteristics as well as embeddedness in party networks and connection to the party leader. Our empirical analysis documents an uneven distribution of interpersonal resources across the ingroup (men) and the outgroup (women). Most importantly, our results show that the returns to possessing interpersonal resources on the distribution of positional power and survival in party office are lower for the outgroup. Specifically, these factors only help men obtain a key post and extend their tenure in the NEC. These heterogeneous effects render women party officers outsiders on the inside, suggesting that top decision-making party bodies do not just reflect existing inequalities but reinforce them.
Insider/Outsider Dynamics in Party Office
Among the three faces of political parties, the composition of the party in central office is far less researched than the party on the ground or the party in public office. In a similar fashion to candidate selection processes, the composition of parties' top executive office, the NEC, is informed by a wide range of formal (i.e., codified) and informal (i.e., non-written) quotas or reserved positions based on multiple group representation criteria such as age, gender, race/ethnicity, geographical area or party factions. In spite of these provisions, selection processes are patterned through gender, with party members, leaders, delegates, factions, or territorial party branches not being disembodied actors (Kenny & Verge, 2016).
Rather than being a mere demographic attribute, gender is a socio-cultural construct that predicts similarity in values, personality, or attitudes, enhances interpersonal attraction, and eases communication and mutual understanding (for a review, see De Wardt et al., 2020; Niven, 1998). For one thing, male homosociality generates psychological heuristics that party selectors routinely rely on when making decisions, including those related to selection processes. The historical lack of diversity in political parties' ranks, and especially in decision-making bodies, has made outgroup bias and discrimination against women "both possible and acceptable" (Lovenduski, 2005, p. 81; see also Annesley et al., 2019, p. 212). Furthermore, it has rendered "male homosocial capital" a key asset for aspirants in any type of political recruitment. This socio-political capital is "predominantly accessible for other men as well as more valuable when built between men" (Bjarnegard, 2013, p. 24).
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Becoming the Ingroup and the Outgroup in Recruitment for Public Office
The question of how men are regarded as the ingroup and women as the outgroup in political recruitment processes for public office has been vastly addressed by gender and politics scholars. On the one hand, reliance on gendered heuristics leads party gatekeepers to "recruit and promote people like themselves" (Cheng & Tavits, 2011, p. 461). The expressive dimension of male homosocial capital explains why—predominantly men—party selectors see other men as more likeable, competent, trustworthy, and easier to get along with (Bjarnegard, 2013, p. 29), thereby perpetuating the male politician norm (Bjarnegard & Kenny, 2016). Drawing on gendered ideologies about behaviors and roles, party gatekeepers "make assumptions of positive similarity with ingroup members" and display "a consistent and significant preference" for them over outgroup members (Niven, 1998, p. 75; see also Kenny, 2013; Tremblay & Pelletier, 2001). As the criteria for proving merit are derived from the ingroup (Murray, 2014, p. 522), political competence is typically assumed for the former, whilst outgroup members are expected to be exceptional candidates and are subjected to enhanced levels of scrutiny in both the party organization and public office (Annesley et al., 2019, p. 221; Verge & de la Fuente, 2014, p. 73).
On the other hand, embeddedness in a wider network of social groups and background in grassroots or community organizing might make a person attractive as candidate for public office. Nonetheless, political recruitment typically relies on insular party networks, which disadvantages the outgroup (Crowder-Meyer, 2013, p. 407; Murray, 2014, p. 527). The psychological shortcuts that extend credit for potential to male candidates operate alongside an instrumental dimension based on privileged access for men to key political contacts, local party networks, political mentors and, more generally, patronage opportunities (Bjarnegard, 2013, p. 28; see also Annesley & Gains, 2010; Bochel & Bochel, 2000; Franceschet & Piscopo, 2014; Kenny, 2013).
Socially unrepresentative networks are already developed in parties' affiliated youth organizations, even though within these ancillary organizations men and women show similar levels of professional-minded behavior (Bruter & Harrison, 2009, p. 1273). This "career capital" is more commonly found among elected representatives that belong to the ingroup (Hooghe et al., 2004, p. 204; Ohmura et al., 2018, p. 173), indicating that men are more likely to be asked by the parent party to run as candidates. Similarly, gender-balanced outcomes in parliaments and governments are more likely when recruitment processes go beyond traditional party networks and affiliational relationships with the party leader (Annesley et al, 2019, p. 22; Crowder-Meyer, 2013, p. 391; Escobar-Lemmon & Taylor-Robinson, 2008, p. 362), as well as when party service is not a selection criterion (Bjarnegard & Zetterberg, 2019,
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p. 331). The fact that male homosocial capital is typically cultivated through informal gatherings in leisure spaces (e.g., bars, restaurants, saunas, or golf courses) during family-unfriendly hours—that is, late night or weekends— further excludes women, due to the prevailing sexual division of labor in larger society (Franceschet, 2005; Verge & de la Fuente, 2014).
Male homosocial capital does not only shape recruitment, but it also affects the allocation of positional power and length of tenure. The distribution of positions in political institutions reflects existing beliefs, roles, and expectations about the skills and capabilities of ingroup and outgroup members, establishing a (gendered) "logic of appropriateness" (Chappell, 2006). Even when public office feminizes in terms of presence, the gender norm that sustains a segregation of functions prevails (Jacob et al., 2014, p. 339). Ingroup candidates are also allocated the lion's share of competitive races, winnable seats and top positions in party lists, which increases their chances of being elected (Luhiste, 2015; Murray, 2010; Stambough & O'regan, 2007; Verge & Astudillo, 2019). Likewise, they occupy most of the seats and leadership positions in parliamentary party groups, in the more prestigious parliamentary committees (Heath et al., 2005), and in the "inner" cabinet portfolios that are found in every cabinet and are not usually combined with other ministerial areas—for example, treasury/economy (Borrelli, 2002; Cross et al., 2016; Krook & O'Brien, 2012) The lower numbers of women in these positions means that men are disproportionately advantaged in qualifying for other top political positions thanks to the affiliational relationships built with key party selectors while sharing their political trajectories (Annesley et al, 2019, p. 232).
Embeddedness in party networks and direct ties with the leader yield stronger insider/outsider dynamics the scarcest the positions are. For instance, party service, measured either in years accumulated as party officer or in number of monthly hours devoted to party work, matters almost exclusively for men when it comes to securing highly coveted positions like top positions in electoral lists (Verge & Claveria, 2018, 541-542). In a similar vein, men who partake the party "shadow cabinet" when being in the opposition are more likely to be appointed to the cabinet when their party wins the election than their female peers (Annesley et al., 2019, p. 217). In addition, being connected to the president increases men ministers' chances of obtaining a high-prestige cabinet portfolio but not women's (Escobar-Lemmon & Taylor-Robinson, 2016).
As for survival in public office, existing research has found that women experience higher party deselection rates and thus have a much shorter tenure than their male peers in parliament (De Wardt et al., 2020; Lawless & Theriault, 2005; Vanlangenakker et al., 2013). Similarly, studies examining survival in cabinets show that female ministers are much more likely to be let go than male ministers (Escobar-Lemmon & Taylor-Robinson, 2015), and
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women's tenure as party leaders is typically shorter than men's (O'Brien, 2015; O'Neill & Stewart, 2009). Furthermore, the different value accorded to political capital resources when possessed by either the ingroup or the out-group shapes length of tenure. For example, having held party office matters almost exclusively for men for extending their careers in the political field or in the private domain through the obtainment of attractive post-ministerial and post-legislative mandates (Claessen et al., 2020; Verge & Claveria, 2018), and being the party leader only protects men regional prime ministerial candidates from deselection (Verge & Astudillo, 2019, p. 733).
The Gendered Returns of Interpersonal Resources on Party Office
The dynamics of inclusion/exclusion found in political recruitment for public office are also expected to plague selection processes for party office. Indeed, disadvantages for the ingroup can be expected to be higher in the latter, due to the more reduced pool of aspirants (i.e., loyal party members), the tighter nature of insular party networks, and the much lower degree of public scrutiny of selection processes for party office. Furthermore, in spite of the increasing feminization of public office, the gender regime of political parties has been very resistant to change (Henig & Henig, 2001, p. 43; Kenny & Verge, 2016). Parties remain the "major distributors" of traditional masculinity (Lovenduski, 2005, p. 56), impeding women to "gai[n] power relative to where power lies" (Childs, 2013, p. 93).
A snapshot of existing descriptive data shows the extent to which gender still forges ingroups and outgroups within political parties. Women only make up about 10% of national party leaders selected since the 1960s (Wauters & Pilet, 2015, p. 82), and men constitute the majority of regional and local party leaders (Cross, 2019; Hinojosa, 2012). Furthermore, women have occupied just about 30% of NECs' seats since the late 1990s in European parties (Kittilson, 2006, p. 42; Poguntke et al, 2020), and in the early 2010s, they constituted about 20% members of this body in Latin American parties (Roza etal, 2011, p. 19).
Therefore, we argue that the barriers to the redistribution of intra-party power from the ingroup—men—to the outgroup—women—are deeply related to the ways interpersonal resources operate, which are both a source of power and a mechanism through which ingroup members leverage power in their favor in the party organization. These resources are built through interpersonal relationships that create bonding ties among (male) party members. Such ties provide a comparative advantage in several intra-party processes, including recruitment for party offices. In this vein, connection to the party leader and embeddedness in party networks are not just mere political capital resources an individual party member may accumulate over time, as is the case of seniority in public office. Rather, the gendered
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psychological and instrumental dimensions underpinning male homosocial capital facilitate or hinder one's capacity to obtain interpersonal resources and they also impact on the returns this type of resources produce—that is, benefitting from them to advance a political career in the party organization. Hence, wielding power continues being "a male prerogative" (Trimble & Arscott, 2003, p. 10) in political parties, a structural advantage of the ingroup that is exercised through the acquisition and deployment of interpersonal resources. Accordingly, we draw the following three hypotheses:
HI: Outgroup NEC members will possess fewer interpersonal resources. H2: The returns to possessing interpersonal resources on the distribution of positional power will be lower for outgroup NEC members. H3: The returns to possessing interpersonal resources on extending length of tenure will be lower for outgroup NEC members.
Data and Methods
Selection processes for NECs can be broken down into recruitment, distribution of key posts and length of tenure, with keeping the seat each time this party body is renewed counting as a new selection. Since obtaining detailed information for all party members—that is, the pool of aspirants or eligible candidates—is virtually impossible, we focus on positional power and survival. To disentangle the role that interpersonal factors play in NECs selection processes, we examine the main national Spanish political parties during the last four decades. Specifically, we study the three traditional major parties, namely, the social-democratic Spanish Socialist Workers' Party {Partido Socialista Obrero Espanol, PSOE), the conservative Popular Party {Partido Popular, PP), and the post-communist United Left {Izquierda Unida, IU). We also include the three parties that have emerged since 2014, including the liberal-conservative Citizens {Ciudadanos, Cs), the left-populist We Can (Podemos, Ps), and the radical-right Vox.
Focusing on parties from a single country has the advantage to keep institutional and contextual variables constant. Yet, by covering the period 1975-2020, we also account for the sociocultural and attitudinal changes that may have impacted on women's presence in politics as well as the gradual adoption of gender quotas by political parties. Furthermore, Spain is a representative case of parliamentary democracies wherein political parties are the key gatekeepers of all political arenas. The absence of a thick network of collateral organizations, which is increasingly common among Western political parties (Scarrow et al, 2017), and the use of closed and blocked electoral lists disincentivize cultivating a personal vote and reinforce party elites' role as gatekeepers.
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The formal rules for selecting NECs in Spain are widely used by parties in Western Europe (Katz & Mair, 1992). NEC members can either be elected, appointed or ex-officio. Spanish parties slightly differ in the proportion of each group, although elected members account for 89% of the total composition of their NECs. They are elected in each party conference, predominantly through closed lists voted by party delegates (62.5% of party conferences). Appointed members are those designated by party's ancillary organizations or by sub-national branches. Their presence is relatively rare, making up for just 2% of all NEC members. On their part, ex-officio members represent 9% of NECs. They become members of this party body by virtue of holding another position, such as being the leader of the national parliamentary group or the leader of the affiliated youth organization (Van Biezen, 2000, p. 402).
While, in practice, regional and factional criteria inform the composition of NECs, party leaders tightly control who accesses this party body (see Fabre, 2011) and are completely free to allocate portfolios among NEC members without need of approval from any other party body. Gender has also been instituted as a representational criterion for NECs in left-wing parties (PSOE, IU, and Podemos) through the adoption of gender quotas for both public office and party office.
We use a novel dataset that includes those individuals who have sat in NECs (as elected, appointed or ex-officio members) right after the celebration of each party conference—thus excluding in-term replacements. It contains longitudinal data since 1974 until 2020, encompassing 55 NECs and 1089 individuals, of whom almost 30% are women. We divide our empirical analysis into three parts. First, taking all individuals at their access point to NECs (n=1089), we compare how men and women differ in their socio-demographic and political background through a series of difference-of-means tests, which allows us to assess the uneven distribution of interpersonal resources.
Second, we run a series of logistic regressions to examine the role of interpersonal resources in facilitating access to key posts. We consider each NEC member at each party conference, when the positions are distributed (n=1826). We code as key posts those that constitute the backbone of party politics, such as party positions related to organizational matters, finances, political strategy, electoral campaigns, or oversight bodies (e.g., committees tasked with approving electoral tickets or sanctioning members who have breached the party by-laws).4 Key posts also include deputy party leaders and the positions in party shadow cabinets that correspond to the most prestigious, inner cabinet portfolios.
Third, we use event history analysis (Box-Steffensmeier & Zorn, 2001) to model duration in party office and explore whether interpersonal resources behave heterogeneously for ingroup and outgroup members' length of tenure.
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Our dependent variable in this case captures for how long a person has sat on a NEC (n=6048 yearly observations). We use a semi-parametric Cox proportional hazards model since there is no prior expectation about the hazards distribution (Cox, 1972). NEC members who remain in office at the end of 2020 are right-censored.
Measuring Interpersonal Resources
Both the distribution of key posts and varying length of tenure are crucial dimensions of how power differences among ingroups and outgroups are manifested in organizational or institutional settings such as parliaments or governments (see, among others, Annesley et al., 2019; Escobar-Lemmon & Taylor-Robinson, 2016). Simultaneously, through their performance, they convey distinct levels of organizational influence and power across groups. Therefore, the study of how interpersonal resources operate in biased ways regarding positional power and survival is of paramount importance to understand their mutually constitutive character. Yet, the empirical measurement of interpersonal resources is more complex than the coding of individual traits.
Existing research has assessed the expressive dimension of male homo-social capital both qualitatively through interviews—with party selectors, candidates, and elected or appointed officials—and quantitatively through either the administration of questionnaires (see Niven, 1998; Tremblay & Pelletier, 2001) or, more recently, through conjoint survey experiments (Rehmert, 2020). As regards the instrumental dimension of homosocial capital, it has also been captured through interviews (see Annesley et al., 2019; Annesley & Gains, 2010; Bjarnegárd, 2013; Kenny, 2013) and questionnaires (Crowder-Meyer, 2013; Niklasson, 2006; Norris & Lovenduski, 1995) that inquire about the relevance of candidate recruitment networks and contacts. However, there is a dearth of observational measures of male homosocial capital that could be used in large-N studies.
To address this deficit, in our analysis of interpersonal resources, we propose three independent variables that capture individuals' embeddedness in the party organization through the development of crucial interpersonal relationships: party seniority (number of years as party member), current or past affiliation to the party's youth organization (dummy variable), and contact with the leader. Contact with the leader refers to the number of years NEC members have coincided with the standing party leader in public office, including the legislative or executive arenas at the national or regional levels, as well as being mayors or local councillors in the same region.5 Unquestionably, being closely connected with the principal selector is a valuable asset in any type of recruitment process, and people who coincide at the same time in a political institution are more likely to develop political linkage and personal bonds. We are able to calculate this fine-grained measure thanks to
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the spell structure of our dataset, as we record all public offices held by each NEC member throughout their political career (see Supplemental Appendix B for a detailed explanation).
Control Variables
Our models factor in crucial sociodemographic variables, individual political resources and organizational features. Regarding sociodemographic characteristics, we include gender (women, value 1), age (in years), and educational background (dummy variable capturing university education). We also measure occupational status prior to entering politics by coding NEC members' pre-political profession using the International Socio-Economic Index (ISEI), which ranges from 0 to 100 (see Ganzeboom et al., 1992). Furthermore, we register family responsibilities for PP's and PSOE's NEC members (binary variable taking the value of 1 when being childless).6 Unfortunately, information on family responsibilities is not systematically available for the other four parties. As for individual political resources, our variables capture NEC members' seniority in public office (total number of years in any political position) and seniority in national politics (total number of years as MP, senator, or minister).7 Political offices, including those held simultaneously, are recorded as spell data and transformed into yearly panel data. We also include as control variables seniority as NEC member (in years) and key posts occupied in the outgoing NEC (dummy variable).
Concerning party organization variables, we collapsed the different selection methods into a selectorate size variable, as previous research has shown that more inclusive selectorates rely more on name recognition and have a lower coordination capacity, which hinders diversity in representation outcomes (Hazan & Rahat, 2010). It takes value 1 if the NEC is appointed by the party leader, 2 if selected in a closed list by party delegates, and 3 if elected in open lists by all party members. Moreover, we register whether NEC members occupy a seat ex-officio or are appointed by the party regional branches or ancillary organizations (dummy variable ex-officio/appointed). The party's egalitarian culture is captured by the share of women in the NEC (percentage) and the gender quota rules in use by the organization (measured as the minimum percentage of seats guaranteed to the under-represented sex).8 We also include NEC size, and a variable indicating how many years have passed since the last party conference was held. We refrain from studying organizational factors in greater detail given their high correlation with party labels and their stability over time. Furthermore, up to early 2020, all major Spanish political parties were led by men, which prevents us from studying the effect of leaders' gender. Party fixed effects and robust standard errors clustered on parties are also included in the models to account for idiosyncratic
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organizational factors and for the potential non-independence of observations, respectively.
Results
The aggregate percentage of women in the NECs of the major Spanish political parties has grown steadily in the last four decades, boosting from less than 10% right after the democratization of the country to 40% in 2020. Due to the adoption of voluntary gender quotas, left-wing parties have always had more feminized bodies. Although the gender gap has gradually narrowed across the six party organizations under examination, significant differences persist. In 2020, women held 51% of Podemos' NEC seats, 46% of IU's, 40% of PSOE's, 33% of Vox's, 32% of Cs', and 31% of PP's. Nonetheless, the gradual feminization of NECs has not eradicated the insider/outsider office-holding dynamics. In what follows, we explore the extent to which interpersonal resources are unevenly distributed across the ingroup (men) and the outgroup (women). Then, we turn to the analysis of whether these resources have a heterogeneous effect on the allocation of positional power and duration in this party office.
Uneven Distribution of Resources
As Table 1 shows, at the time of accessing this body, more women have obtained a university degree than men, while men have a slightly higher occupational status than women, although these differences are not statistically significant. Within NECs, men are slightly older (46 years vs. 43 years) and 8% of them do not have children, in contrast to 18% of women. In line with previous studies, women are harmed by social norms about domestic and care responsibilities as well as by political institutions' family-unfriendly orientation—that is, parental leaves for politicians are still scarce across the world. Consequently, men are more likely to build uninterrupted political careers and to accumulate more seniority as public officials (Campbell & Childs, 2014). The sexual division of labor is also reflected in ingroup/ outgroup differences regarding experience in public institutions. Men accumulate on average 7.7 years of such experience as compared to 5.9 in the case of women, an advantage also found in national politics (3 years vs. 2 years, respectively). Yet, it should be noted that the majority of NEC members have held a public office before accessing the NEC. This is the case of 69.5% men and 72.3% women, with 44.9% of the former and 39.8% of the latter having occupied a national political office.
Concerning interpersonal resources, while prior affiliation to the party's youth organization presents a similar prevalence across gender (24% for both men and women), women accumulate fewer party seniority (12.1
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Table I. Characteristics of NEC members at accession year.
	Total	Men	Women	Diff. M-W
Individual factors				
Age (in years)	45.71	46.55	43.76	2 79***
Educational background (tertiary education,	0.87	0.87	0.89	-0.02
prop.)				
Occupational status (ISEI index)	68.31	68.84	67.05	1.80
Childless (dummy, prop.)	0.10	0.079	0.18	-0.10**
Seniority in public office (in years)	7.17	7.74	5.88	1.86***
Seniority in national politics (in years)	2.75	3.07	2.02	1 04***
Interpersonal resources				
Youth organization (dummy, prop.)	0.24	0.24	0.24	0.00
Party seniority (in years)	14.09	14.95	12.09	2.86***
Contact with the leader (in years)	1.51	1.73	0.99	0 74***
N	1089	760	329	
Notes: The variable childless is only calculated for PP and PSOE observations (464 men and 169 women). Significance reports the Prob > F one-way analysis of variance or the probability associated to Chi2. *** p < 0.001; ** p < 0.01; * p < 0.05.
years as party members, as compared to 15 years in the case of men). Moreover, when accessing the NEC men have had on average 1.7 years of contact with the leader, a value that drops to only one year for women, which makes the former more likely to partake the inner circle of the party leader. Interestingly, the data also shows that 67% of NEC members (70% women and 65% men) have never been in contact with the standing party leaders in any political institution throughout their prior political life, and only 8.4% of all NEC members have coincided with them more than five years. Overall, we can conclude that the outgroup—that is, women— accumulates fewer interpersonal resources, which lends support to our first hypothesis.
To account for the fact that the observed gender differences are not contingent on party or time, we have run a series of OLS regressions using each of the factors as dependent variables with gender, year, and party dummies as independent variables (see Supplemental Appendix C). The results remain robust, although some differences emerge between traditional and newer parties. While the main recruitment pool for both types of parties are middle-aged liberal professionals, in the former—that is, PP and PSOE— NEC members have greater seniority in party and public office (including national-level experience) and present higher contact with the leader. Only 17.3% of PSOE NEC members and 12.5% of PP's have not held public office when accessing this body. Moreover, on average, they accumulate over two
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years of coincidence with the party leader, as compared to less than one year in the rest of parties.
Unequal Allocation of Positional Power
Within Spanish political parties, as already mentioned, party leaders are the ones who allocate NEC portfolios. In the 1975-2020 period, we identified 444 key posts out of 1826 NEC seats, 87% of which were occupied by men. Despite a handful of prominent exceptions, such as Dolores de Cospedal in PP or Elena Valenciano and Adriana Lastra in PSOE (who all served as deputy party leaders), women have hardly occupied the highly coveted key posts that have the capacity to define party strategies and platforms. Figure 1 plots the distribution of posts by gender across time. As can be seen, even the NECs selected in the most recent party conferences reproduce a remarkable gendered segregation.
In 2020, the presence of women in NECs' key posts was as follows: Vox, 14%; PSOE, 18%; PP, 21%, IU, 22%; C's, 27%; and Ps, 50%. Party newness seems to play a more relevant role than party ideology—except for the radical-right, anti-gender Vox. This is coherent with the fact that interpersonal resources demand time to be developed as well as coincidence of individuals in public institutions or the party organization, two factors that are not available in new political parties. In the case of non-key posts, gender balance has been gradually reached, with 45% of these positions being held by women in 2020,
Figure I. Positional power in Spanish parties' NECs over time (5-year periods).
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as compared to 10% during the 1980s. The current distribution of women in non-key posts is the following: Cs, 34%; Vox, 40%; PP, 45%; IU, 42%; Ps, 51%; and PSOE, 51%. These descriptive results align with previous studies, confirming that men hold the most influential positions in party NECs, including those related to organizational matters and political strategy (Roza et al., 2011, pp. 30-31; Verge & de la Fuente, 2014, p. 72), whereas women are more likely to be tasked with portfolios traditionally associated with femininity, such as education, welfare, or gender equality.
In order to explore how insider/outsider dynamics play out in the allocation of positional power, we observe each NEC member at each party conference, accounting for a total of 1826 observations. Figure 2 plots the results of a series of logistic regressions that examine the likelihood of holding a key post in the party's NECs as a function of the interpersonal resources possessed, while controlling for both seniority as NEC member (in years) and having held key posts in the preceding NEC. We also plot the main individual-level variables interacted with gender to account for the heterogeneous effects under examination. We show the results for the full sample and for the PP and PSOE sub-sample, for which we have information on NEC members' care responsibilities (see full models in Supplemental Appendix D). The baseline models indicate that women are less likely than men to hold key positions, thus reinforcing our descriptive analysis, while seniority in national office emerges as the variable most closely associated with holding a key portfolio. Interpersonal resources largely behave in the expected direction and reach the standard levels of statistical significance.
The interaction models provide more revealing results by looking into the heterogeneous effects across gender. Higher seniority in public office is associated with women being more likely to access key posts, whereas the same association is negative for men. This suggests that the expressive component of male homosocial capital leads party leaders to require more political credentials to outgroup members than to ingroup members. In contrast, experience in national politics is determinant for men but insignificant for women. Considering that these are the politicians who interact more frequently with central party bodies in order to define the policy positions of the party in public office, this result indicates that men are more likely to be advantaged by such interactions when it comes to accessing key posts in NECs.
Being childless is not significant for either men or women NEC members, but the opposite sign of the coefficient suggests that the male-oriented and family-unfriendly organizational dynamics of political parties may prevent women in their child-rearing years from occupying high political responsibilities (Campbell & Childs, 2014; Verge & de la Fuente, 2014). The negative coefficient of this variable for men is seemingly related to age, with childless
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(a)
Full sample:
(a,1) Baseline model
(b)      Sub-sample, PP & PSOE:
(b.1) Baseline model
Individual factors
Women Age
University degree Occupational status Public seniority (log.) National seniority (log.)
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-2 0 Coefficient
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Individual factors		I                                      Individual factors I				
Age		4 a			Age	• 1
University degree		•	♦		University degree -	I 1
Occupational status					Occupational status	t a. f i
Public seniority (log.)					Childless	-1-*-
					Public seniority (log.)	i
National seniority (log.)						
			*_		NaiionaF seniority (log.)	♦
						•a
Interpersonal resources					Interpersonal resources	i
Party seniority (log.)			—			I
		a			Party seniority (log.) A	,^
Youth organization			♦-A.		Youth organization	I* 1-A-
Contact with the leader (log.)			*-		Contact with the leader (log.) i	*-1 * 1
-2-10 1 CoeHicient
-2 0 Coefficient
♦ Men
Women
♦ Men
Women
Figure 2. Insider/outsider effects on the distribution of key posts. Bars indicate 95% confidence intervals (full sample, N = 1826; sub-sample N = 1234). Party-level controls and party fixed effects (not shown) included in the model. See Appendix D for full regression results.
men NEC members being much younger—over seven years younger—than those who are parents.
Concerning the instrumental component of male homosocial capital, interpersonal resources are much more relevant predictors of access to key posts for men than for women, with the exception of previous engagement in the parly's youth organization, which is positively associated with reaching such a position for both genders. More years of party service makes women less likely to access key posts, while the coefficient is positive for men. Likewise, having had further contact with the standing party leader throughout one's previous career in a public institution is negatively associated with women
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obtaining a key post, whereas the coefficient is positive—although statistically insignificant—for men.
As a robustness check, we have re-run the models with two alternative measures of connection to the party leader, namely, coming from the same region as the leader and sharing the same age cohort (+/—5 years), with age being a salient dimension that shapes homophilous preferences in selectors (Rehmert, 2020, p. 17). Both alternative variables behave in the expected direction, and belonging to the same generation as the leader is highly statistically significant (see Supplemental Appendix D, Tables 17-18). Overall, the fact that interpersonal resources reward men much more than women exposes who party selectors see as "one of us," pinpointing that the cultivation of male homosocial capital is highly relevant for the ingroup to obtain positional power. Hence, these results yield support for our second hypothesis.
As for control variables, having held a key post in the preceding NEC is only beneficial for men, while seniority within the NEC does not show a clear pattern across gender.9 Lastly, regarding party-level variables, the size of the selectorate does not present a clear trend—which is not surprising as party leaders enjoy a high degree of maneuver to assign NEC portfolios regardless of the NEC selection method. Whilst the share of women NEC members increases the likelihood of finding more women in key posts, gender quotas do not guarantee this result. Quotas have thus gradually made NECs' composition more gender-balanced, but this measure does not bring about on its own an equitable distribution of positional power.
Gendered Survival in Party Office
On average, each NEC member remains in office for six years, regardless of their gender. Considering that party conferences in Spain take place every two-and-a-half years, this corresponds to surviving two or three party conferences. Only a small number of individuals endure in party office for a long time. Most longstanding NEC members predominantly come from the conservative PR For instance, the former party leader and prime minister Mariano Rajoy or the former national MP and minister Celia Villalobos sat uninterruptedly in PP's NEC for about three decades. We have calculated a series of Cox proportional hazard models including both interpersonal resources and individual characteristics, along with several controls: being an ex-officio or appointed NEC member, NEC size, NEC selectorate size, share of women within the NEC, gender quota rules, and the years elapsed since the last party conference. As already explained, in this case, our unit of observation is each NEC member in every year of their tenure in party office. This yields a total of 6048 yearly observations for 1089 individuals (156 of them are right-censored as they remained in office in December 2020).
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The upper pane of Figure 3 shows the baseline model, and the lower panes present the results fully interacted by gender. The panes on the left report the results for the full sample, and the ones on the right do so for the PP and PSOE sub-sample for which we have information on caring responsibilities. Again, we only report here the main variables of interest (see full models in Supplemental Appendix E). Note that a positive coefficient indicates an increase on the likelihood of exiting the NEC when the respective covariate changes by one unit, whereas a negative coefficient indicates a decrease in the risk of leaving this party body. Although women do not seem to exit NECs more prematurely than men, the baseline model already highlights the crucial role of interpersonal resources. Particularly, contact with the leader and
(a)
Full sample:
(b)
Sub-sample, PP & PSOE:
(a.1) Baseline model
Individual factors
Women Age
University degree Occupational status Public seniority (log.) National seniority (log.)
Interpersonal resources
Party seniority (log) Youth organization Contact with the leader (log.)
Key post
Individual factors
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University degree Occupational status Childless Public seniority (log.) National seniority (log.)
Interpersonal resources
Party seniority (log.) Youth organizalion Contact with the leader (log.)
Key post
(b.1) Baseline model
•i
1
a    .5 1
Coefficient
1.5
r
0 .5 1 Coefficient
1.5
(a.2) Interaction model
Individual factors
Age	♦ J-i	
University degree		
Occupational status	t a	
Public seniority (log.)	19	
National seniority (log.)		
Interpersonal resources		
Party seniority (log.)	--	
Youth organizalion	L*.	
Contact with the leader (log.)	♦ l	
Key post	1 -t-*-	
-.5      0      .5      1 1.5 Coefficient
♦   Men    "* Women
(b.2) Interaction model
Individual factors
Age		f k	
University degree			
Occupational status		♦	
Childless		— 1	
Public seniority (log.)		—A-t-	
National seniority (log.)			
Interpersonal resources		i	
Party seniority (log.)	i* A 1		
Youth organization		' A	
Contact with the leader (tog.)		♦ 1 1 -n*-	
Key post		♦ ;	-A-
.   I -1-*i—i
,5     0      .5      1 1.5
Coefficient ♦   Men     A Women
Figure 3. Insider/outsider effects on survival. Bars indicate 95% confidence intervals (full sample, N = 6048; sub-sample N = 3938). Party-level controls and party fixed effects (not shown) included in the model. See Appendix E for full regression results.
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holding a key post are associated with a longer tenure in this party body. But, to what extent do these interpersonal resources produce insider/outsider effects?
Previous affiliation to the youth organization hinders women's tenure but it helps men endure in party office, although this variable is only statistically significant for the outgroup—women. Party seniority does not show a clear gendered pattern. Without reaching statistical significance, it seems to decrease length of tenure for both genders in the full sample, while in the sub-sample, it is associated with men's early exit and women's survival, but it is only statistically significant for the former. Yet, given that "being or not being 'one of us' is more relevant than for how long this has been the case" (Verge & Claveria, 2018, p. 542), we move to exploring the heterogeneous effect of contact with the leader, a critical variable in explaining duration in party office.
In both samples, such connection is instrumental for men's survival, as the coefficient is negative and highly significant in statistical terms, whereas it is positive—albeit not significant—for women. To test the robustness of this finding, we have re-run the same models with the two alternative measures of contact with the leader presented in the analysis of the distribution of positional power. Regardless of gender, in both samples members coming from the same region as the party leader are less likely to exit the NEC prematurely, although this variable is only statistically significant for men. Being from the same generation shows a significant impact on duration in party office too. The heterogeneous effect is strongly present again, with only men NEC members' survival benefitting from having a similar age to the party leader (see Supplemental Appendix E, Tables 25-26).
In order to further confirm that gendered dynamics associated with the transmission of interpersonal resources are behind the observed relationships, we have included a three-way interaction between gender, contact with the leader, and being of the same generation as the leader (see Supplemental Appendix F). We find that the average marginal effect of an additional log year of contact with the party leader is particularly beneficial for men who share generational cohort with the party leader, while it is not significant for women nor for men who do not belong to the leader's generational cohort. This reinforces the idea of homophily and the creation of bonding ties as a mechanism explaining the heterogeneous endurance in party office for in-group and outgroup members.
Having occupied a key post in the outgoing NEC also becomes an interpersonal resource by securing direct and frequent contact with the leader in-between party conferences and by providing its holder with reputation and name recognition within the party organization. In both samples, ingroup/ outgroup dynamics are also in place. Men having held such a position are more likely to remain in the party's NEC. By contrast, the opposite effect is found for women. It is hardly possible that this heterogeneous effect obeys to a
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significantly dissimilar performance by women and men in key posts, even if, as documented by various studies, when headed by women, party committees usually receive fewer resources (Shea & Harris, 2007, pp. 73-74; Verge & de la Fuente, 2014, p. 72), which may hinder their capacity to prove their value to the organization and to the party leader. Rather, it is likely to reflect who party leaders regard as "one of us" and, as such, worthy of enduring in party office. On balance, these results corroborate our third hypothesis. Being connected to the party leader and having occupied a key post only secure a longer tenure in the NEC to ingroup members.
As for the remaining variables, age or occupational status do not yield a heterogeneous impact across gender but having children does. Indeed, being childless is associated with a longer tenure for women, while it is irrelevant for men. Once again, we see that family responsibilities have a different impact on men's and women's political lives. Seniority in public office also behaves in opposite ways for both genders, increasing women's survival and decreasing men's. Although it fails to reach statistical significance for women in the sub-sample, the direction of the coefficient suggests that women may need to have more political credentials in order to endure in party office.
Regarding party-related controls, being an ex-officio or appointed NEC member is associated with an earlier termination for women but not for men. Women are also more likely to end their tenure when the number of women within the NEC grows, but they stay longer when NEC size increases and when parties implement higher gender quotas. Lastly, broader selectorates seem to increase turnover in the party's NEC for both men and women in the full sample, but the sub-sample of the largest two traditional parties shows that broader selectorates are disadvantageous for women, as pinpointed by existing research on candidate selection (Hazan & Rahat, 2010).
Discussion and Conclusion
This article has deepened the theoretical and empirical understanding of the highly relevant yet largely under-researched topic of selection processes for political parties' top decision-making bodies. Through the comparative and longitudinal examination of six Spanish political parties' national executive committees, we have unpacked how insider/outsider dynamics unfold at the core of the extra-parliamentary party organization. We have provided a refined quantitative measure of male homosocial capital that has enabled us to trace back how this socio-political capital facilitates men's connection to the party leader and their embeddedness in party networks, leading to an uneven distribution of interpersonal resources across ingroup and outgroup members in the first place. Our data also shows that, at accession point, men accumulate higher levels of seniority in public office. Furthermore, we confirm that family responsibilities entail a heavier burden for women's political careers in both
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public office and party office, whereas having children does not constrain men's political trajectories in either arena.
Male dominance in party NECs has been gradually broken in terms of presence, but equality of influence remains elusive. Gender balance has been achieved in the distribution on non-key posts, mainly thanks to the use of voluntary party quotas. However, men remain markedly over-represented in those positions that constitute the backbone of party politics. Most crucially, access to key posts within NECs seems to present a different pathway for ingroup and outgroup members. While political merits in public office are required for women, men can fundamentally rely on the interpersonal resources derived from male homosocial capital, particularly on their becoming "one of us" through embeddedness in the organization as longstanding party members and connection to the party leader.
Heterogeneous effects have also been identified in the variables that increase survival in this party body. Even if turnover rates are fairly similar for men and women, contact with the party leader is exclusively instrumental for men's survival in NECs. Moreover, the closer connection to the leader that comes with having held a key post in this party body only helps men extend their tenure. Therefore, not only are women's power bases within political parties weaker than men's but women are also afforded fewer chances to build their way into the inner party networks through service at the core of the extra-parliamentary organization.
Altogether, our analyses consistently show that selection processes for party bodies are patterned through gender, shutting women out from the inner circles of power and protecting men's homosocial networks. Top party decision-making bodies do not merely mirror existing gender inequalities but bring in additional inequalities. The fact that these results are found in a country that ranks high in gender equality societal attitudes, and whose party organizations are highly bureaucratized and centralized, leads us to expect the generalizability of our findings. Less formalized and more decentralized organizations have been found to be less able to coordinate responses that address gender balance, such as quotas (Bjarnegard & Kenny, 2016; Kittilson, 2011). Therefore, we call on scholars to keep examining the ways in which some party officers remain outsiders on the inside even when possessing similar resources than ingroup members. We reflect below on potential avenues for further research.
First, our data on NEC members from Spanish political parties capture significant sources of variance at both the individual level (age, education, occupational status, family responsibilities, and political experience) and the organizational level (gender quotas and selection methods in use), but other variables are worth exploring to confirm the heterogeneous effect across gender of interpersonal resources. Regarding party characteristics, on the one hand, the share of ex-officio NEC members may shape the accumulation of
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homosocial capital by the ingroup. For example, as has been mentioned, in Spain, it amounts to 9% while in other countries, ex-officio NEC members tend to make up most of this party body. On the other hand, larger samples including parties led by women would allow examining leaders' gender effect, particularly whether women party leaders are able to break up the deeply ingrained outgroup bias exposed in this article.
Second, while past research has shown that holding party office gives aspirants useful experience for propelling their political careers in public office, our data suggest that reverse causality may also apply, with seniority in public office facilitating the advancement of party careers. Future research could then disentangle whether access to party office facilitates women's representation in public office or whether women's first entry in public office opens up party structures for them.
Third, the gendered insider/outsider dynamics reported in this study provide valuable insights to the burgeoning literature on the political exclusion of other social groups. The enduring over-representation of white men in parties' top bodies, as is the case of Spanish political parties (Burchianti & Zapata-Barrero, 2017), has also activated outgroup bias against ethnic/racial minorities or migrants (Celis et al., 2014; Dancygier et al., 2015; Norris & Lovenduski, 1995), and some works have started to unveil the ways "white homosocial capital" affects access to political networks and distribution of party patronage (James, 2000; McPherson et al., 2001). Future studies should pay attention to how the intersection of gender and race/ethnicity produces specific forms of inclusion and exclusion in selection processes for party bodies.
Last but not least, our study pinpoints that "fixing-the-women" solutions such as training women on how to build their own networks or on how to use networks to climb the ladder are likely to fail, as they neglect the role of male homosocial capital in shaping selection processes. The inclusion/ exclusion dynamics revealed in this research cannot be addressed either with formal rules that simply tackle the distribution of offices, like gender quotas. Thus, scholars could investigate which other, more comprehensive, type of measures such as political party gender action plans can contribute to raising awareness among all party members about outgroup bias and its consequences and to making all party processes gender-sensitive.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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Authors' Note
Earlier versions of this article were presented at the 2020 ECPR General Conference and research seminars at the University of Konstanz and Universität Pompeu Fabra. We would like to thank Javier Astudillo, Christian Breunig, Abel Escribä, Aina Gallego, Diana Galos, Karina Kosiara-Pedersen, Ignacio Lago, Nathanael Sumaktoyo, Aksel Sundstrom, Toni Rodon, and three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and suggestions.
ORCID iD
Javier Martinez-Canto © https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6389-7079 Notes
1. The NEC is an intermediate body between the party council (also referred as full party executive), which includes all NEC members along with representatives of the sub-national party branches and, quite often, public officers, and the party's inner executive, a reduced, highly operative group of top party officials in charge of the promptest decisions (Katz & Mair, 1992).
2. Replication materials and code can be found at Martinez-Canto and Verge (2022). All analyses were performed using STATA MP/14.1.
3. Information about NECs' composition comes from parties' official sources and news stories. Individual-level information has been mainly obtained from the biographies published in national and regional parliaments' websites and news reports. Supplemental Appendix A describes the internal structure of Spanish political parties.
4. In the Spanish case, key posts also include those positions related to coordinating regional and local branches and ensuring cooperation among all party levels.
5. Party leaders may also select childhood friends, university classmates or other individuals from their personal circles who they trust, with this type of recruitment being strongly gendered (Annesley et al., 2019, pp. 227-228). However, this information is extremely hard to obtain for large-N comparative and longitudinal studies. Accordingly, we concentrate on the history of shared political work in public institutions. Supplemental Appendix B reports how we have coded interpersonal contact with the party leader.
6. It is virtually impossible to obtain precise data on children's age at the time party officers accessed the NEC, so the variable childless is a proxy for the extent to which being a parent imposes different burdens on men's and women's political careers.
7. All variables that register previous political experience or membership in the party in years are logged, in order to account for their high skewness.
8. In the absence of quotas, this variable takes the value 0.
9. Ex-officio members and those appointed by regional party branches are far less likely to obtain a key post. However, we refrain from including this variable in the model as no woman ex-officio member has ever obtained a key post. Eliminating
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ex-officio and appointed NEC members from the sample keeps the results virtually unchanged (see Supplemental Appendix D, Table 16).
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Author Biographies
Javier Martinez-Cantö is Postdoctoral Researcher at the Research Group on Comparative Politics, Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Konstanz (Germany). His research interest focuses on political parties, representation, legislative behavior, and federalism.
Tänia Verge is Full Professor at the Department of Political and Social Sciences, Universität Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain). Her research interests fall within the field of gender and politics, including gender gaps in political participation, political parties' gendered dynamics, and resistance to the implementation of gender equality policy.