Candidate selection procedures and women's representation in Italy

Political parties play the most prominent role in shaping the gender composition of parliaments. Through political recruitment, parties might act in such ways as to promote or hinder gender equality in terms of women’s chances of accessing parliamentary seats. While external factors, such as the electoral system and the presence of legislated gender quotas, have been widely studied as affecting parties’ attitudes towards gender equality, candidate selection procedures are one of the most important, although still understudied, features internal to party organisation that have an impact on women’s representation. By taking the Italian 2013 elections as a case study, our empirical analysis shows that inclusive selection methods, such as open primaries, increase female candidates’ chances of getting elected in comparison to other, more exclusive methods, such as selection by party leadership

The charismatic leadership of the ECB presidency:A language-based analysis

There is little doubt that the European Central Bank (ECB), and in particular its presidency, has taken the lead in tackling the euro crisis. But can this leadership be also characterised as charismatic? This article answers the question by focusing on language – a key component as well as a reliable indicator of charisma. By means of a software‐assisted content analysis of the entire corpus of ECB presidential speeches, it is found that the crisis has indeed led to the emergence of the Bank's presidency as a charismatic euro leader. This in turn confirms the recent politicisation of the ECB, but at the same time might be seen as mitigating the problems related to the Bank's democratic deficit, to the extent that charisma can be seen, from a Weberian standpoint, as an alternative source of political legitimacy