The Impact of Early Party Consolidation on Female Representation and the Mixed Electoral System

Abstract

In 2006, after the fifth democratic election since 1990, the proportion of female MPs is 10.6 percent in the Hungarian parliament, which gives it the ninety-third position in the world. As a European Union (EU) member state with consolidated political institutions, this is astonishing, even if we acknowledge that postcommunist settings are unfavourable for gender representation due to patriarchal culture that was maintained in the communist period and also due to the general environment of systemic change (Funk and Mueller 1993). But other postcommunist countries tend to produce better results. Out of the EU member eight postcommunist countries, Hungary is placed last in terms of gender representation and the improvement from the first democratic election is the second lowest. Hungary and Lithuania among them apply a mixed electoral system—and they are at the two extremes of the representative continuum (see table 14.1).¹ Has the electoral system been a factor at all in the persistence of the low level?