Rethinking Political Recruitment

Abstract

The overarching aim of this book is to explore and understand the gendered dynamics of institutional innovation and change in the political recruitment process. It develops a critique of the dominant framework used in studies of gender and political recruitment — the supply and demand model — and contends that a feminist institutionalist approach offers a way to take the model forward, building on key themes already present, but often underdeveloped, in the literature. It evaluates the utility of this approach in the context of a micro-level case study of candidate recruitment and selection in the Scottish Labour Party. It argues that the success of institutional innovation in post-devolution Scotland is a complex and contingent question, pointing to changes in the institutions of political recruitment, while also drawing attention to underlying continuities. As such, the Scottish case points to the need to rethink conventional models of political recruitment, highlighting the complex and gendered dynamics of institutional continuity and change within political institutions, and illustrating the difficulties of reforming and redesigning recruitment in the face of powerful gendered legacies. This chapter revisits these conclusions in more depth and summarizes the main findings of the book.