The Institutional Approach

Abstract

The second of the three approaches to party behaviour explored in this book is the institutional approach. This approach uses political institutions and the political environment to explain party choices. In the context of compulsory quotas such as parity, this approach can be used to explore how the quota legislation itself, along with other aspects of the political system, can influence and define the choices available to parties. In so doing, it is possible to illustrate the choice set available to parties. Some parties may find themselves with a range of options, in which case the institutional approach will need to be used in conjunction with other approaches to explain how parties prioritise between the available choices. But in certain circumstances, institutional constraints may be so great that parties may find themselves with no choice at all when it comes to quota implementation. In these cases, it can be argued that the external political environment is of greater significance than other predictors of party behaviour such as electoral or ideological motivations, as the choice of which course of action to take is effectively taken out of a party’s hands. This chapter will explore the institutional approach before looking at various institutions to illustrate how each will affect the choice set available to parties when deciding whether or not to implement parity.