Section I Introduction.- Chapter 1 Why Expect a Link between Gender and Corruption?; Helena O. Stensöta and Lena Wängnerud.- Chapter 2 The Historic Roots of Quality of Government: The Role of Gender Equality; Amy C. Alexander.- Chapter 3 Corruption, Gender Equality and Meritocracy; Bo Rothstein.- Section II  Citizens and the Electoral Arena; Chapter 4 Gender and Citizen Responses to Corruption among Politicians: The U.S. and Brazil.- Leslie A. Schwindt-Bayer, Justin Esarey and Erika Schumacher.- Chapter 5 Why Do Some Voters Prefer Female Candidates? The Role of Perceived Incorruptibility in Arab Elections; Lindsay J. Benstead and Ellen Lust.- Chapter 6 Gender Quotas and the Re(pro)duction of Corruption; Elin Bjarnegård, Mi Yung Yoon and Pär Zetterberg.- Section III Engendering the Bureaucracy.- Chapter 7 Corruption and Female Representation in the Bureaucracy; Helena O. Stensöta.- Chapter 8 Is Women’s Political Representation Beneficial for Women’s Interests in Authoritarian Contexts? Theory and Evidence from Post-Soviet Russia; Marina Nistotskaya and Helena O. Stensöta.- Section IV Gender, Change, and Corruption.- Chapter 9 Does Gender Matter? Female Politicians’ Engagement in Anti-Corruption Efforts; Amy C. Alexander and Andreas Bågenholm.- Chapter 10 Gender and Corruption in Mexico. Building a Theory on Conditioned Causality; Marcia Grimes and Lena Wängnerud.- Chapter 11 Gender Aspects of Government Auditing; Mattias Agerberg, Maria Gustavson, Aksel Sundström, and Lena Wängnerud.- Section V New Avenues for Research.- Chapter 12 Corruption as Exploitation. Feminist Exchange Theories and the Link between Gender and Corruption; Helen Lindberg and Helena O. Stensöta.- Chapter 13 Focusing on Masculinity and Male-dominated Networks in Corruption; Elin Bjarnegård.- Chapter 14  Final Thoughts: Taking stock and reflections on ways forward; Helena O. Stensöta.

The link between gender and corruption has been studied since the late 1990s. Debates have been heated and scholars accused of bringing forward stereotypical beliefs about women as the “fair” sex. Policy proposals for bringing more women to office have been criticized for promoting unrealistic quick-fix solutions to deeply rooted problems. This edited volume advances the knowledge surrounding the link between gender and corruption by including studies where the historical roots of corruption are linked to gender and by contextualizing the exploration of relationships, for example by distinguishing between democracies versus authoritarian states and between the electoral arena versus the administrative branch of government—the bureaucracy. Taken together, the chapters display nuances and fine-grained understandings. The book highlights that gender equality processes, rather than the exclusionary categories of “women” and “men”, should be at the forefront of analysis, and that developments strengthening the position of women vis-à-vis men affect the quality of government.     

“Having more women in government is consistently associated with less corruption in government. Why? Learn more in this far-reaching causal analysis. The relationship is far stronger in democracies than autocracies, stronger in elected office than in the bureaucracy. It doesn’t come from voters punishing corrupt women more than corrupt men. Gender quotas drawn from existing corrupt networks can just reproduce corruption. A Scandinavian gender-equal culture built on low fertility helps create cultural trust and low corruption. Sometimes women leaders reduce corruption to increase goods for families and children. Sometimes women who want to be corrupt are excluded from tightly-knit corrupt male networks. Much more here pushes us intellectually forward. But perhaps, one author suggests, we don’t need to know the exact mechanism. In democracies, just put more women in office and watch corruption decline.” (Professor Jane Mansbridge, Harvard University, USA)

Offers a nuanced and complex understanding of how and when gender matters for corruption and good governance Theoretically challenging while rooted in rich empirical data Includes in-depth case studies, experiments and Large-N studies covering several regions of the world

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