United Stats V.S India and the Different Electoral Systems
Despite a total number of forty democracies throughout the world, many countries, such as the United States, have more men employed in higher positions in the political sphere, especially in the legislature. Generally, in worldwide legislatures and democracies, there are not many women present in the legislature, if any at all. However, one democracy that is taking the initiative in empowering women and giving them equal and fair opportunities as men in the political sphere is India. This paper will explore the reason why more women have seats in the Parliament of India as opposed to the Congress of the United States. Also, this paper will establish the difference between a bi-party and a multiparty system of legislature of the United States and India, respectively, to see if this correlates to why there are more women in power in the Indian legislature. This is a significant topic to study because more women need to be politically active and involved in their respective legislature so that their views are expressed and known by the other parties and citizens. By comparing two types of democracies, the paper will be establishing which type of electoral system has more opportunities for women to be present in legislature. The main argument of the paper is that proportional representation, the type of electoral system in India, allows for more women to be in positions of power as compared to the single-member district in the United States that allows less representation of women in the legislature since it is an electoral district that is represented by a single member of a representative assembly. The independent variables are a list of factors that affect the dependent variable. The dependent variable in this paper is the number of women in positions of power in the legislatures of both the United States and India. The independent variables are: political culture/societal norms, the quota system found in India's government, and the two types of
Bibliography: Eldridge, Albert F., ed. Legislatures in Plural Societies: The Search for Cohesion in National Development. Durham: Duke University Press, 1977. Hain, Peter Hoag, Clarence Gilbert, and George Hervey Hallett. Proportional Representation. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1926. Inter-Parliamentary Union Loewenberg, Gerhard Peverill Squire and D. Roderick Kiewiet, eds. Legislatures: Comparative Perspectives on Representative Assemblies. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2002. Reding, Andrew World Policy Institute. 07 Dec. 2004 . Reeve, Andrew, and Alan Ware. Electoral Systems: A Comparative and Theoretical Introduction. New York: Routledge, 1992. Sodaro, Michael J Wheare, K.C. Legislatures. Second Edition. London: Oxford University Press, 1968.