Press response to women politicians

Spanish politicians discourse about the responses to violence against women.

OBJECTIVE This study analyzes the discourse of some members of the Spanish parliament (MPs) in the 2 years before the Gender Violence Act was passed in 2004 to examine how gender-based violence is construed when legal measures are proposed. METHODS Ten members of six different parties of the Spanish parliament were interviewed between November 2002 and March 2003. Each interview was recorded ...

Persistent Prejudice: Gendered Views of Women Politicians

Of Politicians and Technocrats, and Why Global Health Scholars Are Inevitably a Bit of Both: A Response to Recent Commentaries

Overprotected Politicians

This paper argues that politicians are overprotected. The costs of political assassination differ systematically depending on whether a private or a public point of view is taken. A politician attributes a very high (if not infinite) cost to his or her survival. The social cost of political assassination is much smaller as politicians are replaceable. Conversely, the private cost of the securit...

Bad Politicians

We present a simple theory of the quality (competence and honesty) of elected officials. Our theory offers three main insights. Low-quality citizens have a ‘comparative advantage’ in pursuing elective office, because their market wages are lower than those of high-quality citizens (competence), and/or because they reap higher returns from holding office (honesty). Hence, voters may find themsel...