Ethnic and women's representation under mixed election systems

This paper examines the effects of mixed election systems on group representation in post-Communist Europe. The central hypothesis, that compared to pure proportional and majoritarian rules, combined elections provide minorities and women with intermediate levels of representation is tested with data from 15 East European countries. I examine ethnic and female representation across mixed-system tiers and across systems, while controlling for the possible effects of the socio-economic and political context. The results of the multivariate regression analysis support the intermediate-level hypothesis, and also help to identify demographic characteristics and elements of the mixed systems which play an important role in providing groups with access to power.