Procedural Barriers to Political Candidacy: Gender, Discouragement, and Candidate Persistence

Abstract

A procedural rule in Indian elections requires candidates to pay a nominal deposit, which is forfeited on obtaining fewer than one-sixth of the votes. Forfeiture diminishes female re-contesting by 12.6 percentage points (pp) in the following election (relative effect size of 60%). We find no such effects for men. These effects are persistent and discourage female candidates in the long term as well. States with more regressive gender norms exhibit stronger findings, with female forfeiters also being 11 pp less likely to win the following election. We enhance our analysis by conducting a survey experiment with representative voters.

Keywords: Female under-representation, Failure, Discrimination, Election deposit, Forfeiture

JEL Classification: J16, D72