Gendered Perceptions and Political Candidacies: A Central Barrier to Women's Equality in Electoral Politics

Based on the second wave of the Citizen Political Ambition Panel Study, we provide the first thorough analysis of how gender affects women and men's efficacy to run for office. Our findings reveal that, despite comparable credentials, backgrounds, and experiences, accomplished women are substantially less likely than similarly situated men to perceive themselves as qualified to seek office. Importantly, women and men rely on the same factors when evaluating themselves as candidates, but women are less likely than men to believe they meet these criteria. Not only are women more likely than men to doubt that they have skills and traits necessary for electoral politics, but they are also more likely to doubt their abilities to engage in campaign mechanics. These findings are critical because the perceptual differences we uncover account for much of the gender gap in potential candidates’ self‐efficacy and ultimately hinder women's prospects for political equality.     

Book reviews: The Islamic World

The Palestine Problem in International Law and World Order. W Thomas Mallison and Sally V Mallison London: Longman. 1986. 564pp. £36.00hb

Prisoners of God: The Modern‐Day Conflict of Arab and Jew. David Smith. London: Quartet. 1987. 243pp. £12.95hb

Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land. David K Shipler. London: Bloomsbury. 1987. 562pp. £17.95hb

Tunisia: Crossroads of the Islamic and European Worlds. Kenneth J Perkins. Boulder, Colorado: Westview/London: Croom Helm. 1986. 192pp. n/p.

Habib Bourguiba, Islam and the Creation of Tunisia. Norma Salem. London: Croom Helm. 1986. 270pp. £19.95hb

Iraqi Politics 1921–41: The Interaction between Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy. Ahmad Abdul Razzaq Shikara London: LAAM. 1987. 227pp. £11.95pb

Iraq since 1958: From Revolution to Dictatorship. Marion Farouk‐Sluglett and Peter Sluglett. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 1987. 332pp. £29.95hb

Iraq, the Gulf States and the War: A Changing Relationship 1980–1986 and Beyond. Gerd Nonneman. London: Ithaca Press. 1986. 224pp. £17.00hb/£9.00pb

Western Strategic Interests in Saudi Arabia. Anthony H Cordesman. London: Croom Helm. 1987. 308pp. n/p

Saudi Arabia, the West and the Security of the Gulf. Mazher A Hameed. London: Croom Helm. 1986. 189pp. £19.95hb

The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran. Roy Mottahedeh. London: Chatto and Windus. 1986. 416pp. £12.95hb

Egypt: The Stalled Society. Hamied Ansari. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. 1986. 308pp. S44.50hb/$16.95pb

Islam and the Third Universal Theory. Mahmoud Mustafa Ayoub. London: Kegan Paul International. 1987. 175pp. n/p

Qaddafi's World Design: Libyan Foreign Policy, 1969–1987. Ronald Bruce St John. London: Al Saqi. 1987. 184pp. £14.95hb

Class and Client in Beirut: The Sunni Muslim Community and the Lebanese State 1840–1985. Michael Johnson. London: Ithaca Press. 1986. 243pp. £18.00hb

Israel into Palestine. Gwyn Rowley. London: Mansell. 1983. 208pp. £18.50hb

Classand Power in the Sudan: The Dynamics of Sudanese Politics, 1898–1985. Tim Niblock. London: Macmillan. 1987. 370pp. £35.00hb

Sudan: State, Capital and Transformation. Edited by Tony Barnett and Abbas Abdelkarim London: Croom Helm. 1987. 224pp. £25.00hb

The Sudan: Unity and Diversity in a Multicultural State John Obert Voll and Sarah Potts Voll London: Croom Helm. 1985. 178pp. £18.95hb

The Sudan: Ethnicity and National Cohesion. Mohamed Omer Beshir, Mohamed A R Mohammed‐Salih and Musa Adam Abdul‐Jalil Bayreuth, West Germany: Bayreuth University (African Studies Season). 1984. 85pp. n/p

The Return to Democracy in Sudan. Adib Halasa, John D Cooke and Ustinia Dolgopol. Geneva: International Commission of Jurists. 1986. 103pp. n/p

Sudan Since Independence. Edited by Muddathir Abd al‐Rahim, Raphael Badal, Adlan Hardallo and Peter. Woodward. Aldershot, England: Gower. 1987. 181pp. £19.50hb

Fueling the Fire: US Policy and The Western Sahara. Leo Kamil. Trenton, New Jersey: Red Sea Press. 1987. 104pp. $12.95hb/$4.95pb

The Arab Radicals. Edited by Adeed Dawisha. New York: Council on Foreign Relations. 1986. 171pp. $17.50hb/$8.95pb

Social Legislation in the Contemporary Middle East. Edited by Jeswald W Salacuse and Laurence O Michalak. Berkeley, California: Institute of International Studies, University of California. 1986. 376pp. $14.95hb

The Dilemma of Development in the Arabian Peninsula. Abdul Rahman Osama. London: Croom Helm. 1987. 203pp. £25.00hb

The Economic Development of the Yemen Arab Republic. Ragaei el Mallakh. London: Croom Helm. 1986. 196pp. £22.50hb

Arabia and the Gulf: From Traditional Society to Modern States. Edited by Ian Richard Netton. London: Croom Helm. 1986. 259pp. £29.95hb

Islamic Technology: An Illustrated History.. Ahmad Y al‐Hassan and Donald R Hill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press/Paris: Unesco. 1986. 304pp. £25.00hb     

B. Reviews and notes of recent bibliographies

i. Arab Islamic Bibliography: The Middle East Library Committee Guide. Edited by Diana Grimwood‐Jones, Derek Hopwood and J.D.Pearson (with the assistance of J.P.C. Auchterlonie, J.D.Latham, Yasin Safadi.), London, Mansell, 1977. pp. xvii, 292. £28.50.

ii. Annuaire de l'Afrique du Nord, XIII (1974), XIV (1975). By Le Centre de Recherches et d'Etudes sur les Societes Mediterraneennes (C.R.S.M.) Paris, Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (C.N.R.S.) 1975, 1976. pp.1219, 1397 respectively. (Orders and inquiries: C.N.R.S., Service des Publications, 15 quai Anatole France, 757 Paris — Tel.:555–92–25.)     

To Run or Not to Run for Office: Explaining Nascent Political Ambition

In this article, we develop the concept of nascent political ambition and offer the first empirical assessment of potential candidates' initial interest in seeking elective office. Our analysis is based on the Citizen Political Ambition Study—our national survey of nearly 3,800 individuals in the four professions that most frequently precede a career in politics. We find that a general sense of efficacy as a candidate, as well as a politicized upbringing, motivate well-situated potential candidates' inclinations to run for office. Alternatively, status as a member of a group historically excluded from politics depresses the likelihood of considering a candidacy. These findings shed light not only on the prospects for political representation and democratic legitimacy in the United States, but also the means by which to study candidate emergence and conceptualize political ambition.     

The parable of the poisoned pork: Network governance and the 2008 Irish pork dioxin contamination

The 2008 contamination of Irish pork with dioxins was one of the most significant recent food safety incidents in the European Union (EU). While the contamination posed no real risk to public health, it tested the efficacy of EU food safety regulation and governance which has been considerably overhauled in the past decade. The exchange of risk information through networks of regulators is an important element of the EU food safety risk management framework. Networks are a much‐lauded form of new governance, though they are not without their problems. In this paper, we address the question of why governance networks can fail. We examine this issues using the case study of the 2008 Irish dioxin contamination and explore the reason for the failure to make more substantial use of networks in the governance of that incident. We hypothesize that the reason for such failure may be found in three inherent tensions which exist in the design and management of networks, namely flexibility/stability, inclusiveness/efficiency, and internal/external legitimacy. The paper concludes that by ensuring the external legitimacy of the EU's Rapid Alert System for Feed and Food (RASFF) through increased transparency of communications, the design of RASFF has stifled its internal legitimacy with regard to certain types of important information exchanges.     

Entering the Arena? Gender and the Decision to Run for Office

A critical void in the research on women's underrepresentation in elective office is an analysis of the initial decision to run for office. Based on data from our Citizen Political Ambition Study, the first large-scale national survey of potential candidates, we examine the process by which women and men emerge as candidates for public office. We find that women who share the same personal characteristics and professional credentials as men express significantly lower levels of political ambition to hold elective office. Two factors explain this gender gap: first, women are far less likely than men to be encouraged to run for office; second, women are significantly less likely than men to view themselves as qualified to run. Our findings call into question the leading theoretical explanations for women's numeric underrepresentation and indicate that, because of vestiges of traditional sex-role socialization, prospects for gender parity in U.S. political institutions are less promising than conventional explanations suggest .