Electoral gender quotas systems and their implementation in Europe

party positions (Gruppenwahlen zu Parteiämtern) at least one-third of the candidates must be female.The Christian Social Union (CSU) decided on a non-binding guideline that ‘women must be takeninto account’ and has a kind of voluntary commitment that a woman should get the secondposition of every electoral list and that there should be at least four women in every ‘block of ten’.However, this commitment is not written into the party’s statutes. The FDP opposes any quotarules because they would not fit with its liberal tradition.In PR systems, quotas work through the party lists. This means that approximately equal numbersof men and women are represented on the party lists. To guarantee that half of the seats will go towomen regardless of how many seats a party wins, the Green Party and the PDS have adopted a‘zipper system’ alternating one woman and one man. The Green Party even demands that a womanmust occupy the first position on the list. The SPD in its statutes established a slightly differentkind of ‘zipper system’. Positions on the list must be given in turn to a man and a woman and everyfifth seat can be taken by a man or a woman. At the local and the state level (Landtag) theregulations on the listing system are less strict: they are just that 40 per cent of the candidates on thelist must be women.What do the monitoring and sanction mechanisms look like? In the statutes of the CSU and theCDU, neither monitoring mechanisms nor sanctions are stipulated. If women are ‘not considered’,no regulations will prevent the rule being violated (CSU statute, 2007).The CDU regulation provides a soft formulation – that the list can be rejected if women are notsufficiently taken into account. If not enough women are on the list, an internal election committeehas to receive an explanation as to why this is the case. If the quorum for internal positions is notfilled, a second election is necessary. However, if the lack of women persists in the second election,the outcome is considered valid (CDU statute, 2007).The SPD does not provide sanctions in its statute if the quota rules are not complied with forelections to legislative bodies. If in elections for internal party positions more than 60 per cent ofone sex is chosen, a second ballot is needed in which only people of the under-represented sex canbe elected. If there are not enough people of the under-represented sex available, exceptions arepossible (SPD statute on the organisation, 2007).The women’s statute of the Green Party (2007) established that the election meeting decides aboutthe procedure if no woman is interested to take a reserved position on the list. The femaleparticipants at the election meeting have a veto right.For The Left/PDS, if it is not possible to follow the zipper system because of a lack of femalecandidates, the positions for women remain open and are filled with a by-election. If the percentageof available women is below one-fourth, exceptions from this rule may be possible. For internalparty positions the mechanism is similar: in the first ballot the list must follow the zipper system,even if one position on the list is empty. If there are residual positions, a second ballot is held(statute of The Left/PDS).In elections for legislative bodies the zipper system may not be the final word. In more and moreBundesländer the electoral lists on the local level, and in a couple of cases (e.g. Hamburg) also on thestate level, are no longer predetermined by the parties: constituents can decide the order of theelected candidates by accumulating votes on one or several candidates and they can vote forcandidates of different parties. Case studies in Baden-Württemberg show inconsistent results on thegender balance. Some electoral districts have voted in favour of women, while in othercommunities the voters have ‘pushed men up the list’ (Wehling 2000: 205ff.).62