Abstract
If we believe Francis Fukuyama, American political institutions have been in decay for a great while. I think that is true, but it also feels like the pace of deterioration has sped up lately. Americans’ trust in government appears to be at an all-time low, and partisan rancor (not to mention heartbreaking violence) is high. Dangerous populism, the kind that elects demagogues, is on the rise on both left and right.
My own research, and that of many others looking at young people, finds disillusionment with political institutions and widespread questioning of legitimacy. Young people (not just here, but across many countries) seem to doubt the ability of democracy, politics, and government to do the work they need to do—and it’s hard to say they’re wrong! But the turn toward radicalism and even a willingness to use violence for political ends is abhorrent.
Given the state of politics, then, both here and in many other postindustrial democracies, one could be forgiven for feeling that a concern with women as political leaders feels frivolous. Yet I want to make the opposite case—that the empirical study of inclusion, representation, and their effects is not only not marginal but is downright central to the task of saving democracy. It is in this light that I review the new work by David Campbell and Christina Wolbrecht, a longtime political science writing team. See Jane Run: How Women Politicians Matter for Young People is about how women candidates function as role models for young people. On the importance of their work, the authors state, with both precision and understatement: “Without the engagement of women, at every level, American democracy is less than complete” (p. 5).
Good empiricists both, Campbell and Wolbrecht do not go beyond the confines of their data—but I happily will. Allow me to paint their findings in view of some larger concerns.
Democracy is hard to build but easy to lose. To “keep the republic,” as per Ben Franklin, takes engagement, interest, and participation—and if we accept Aristotle’s understanding that a citizen is one who shares in offices, then it also takes ambition (or at least willingness) to run for and hold government positions. The willingness to “let it burn” among many of my students is palpable and in direct conflict with both the engagement and legitimacy that democratic institutions need to survive.
This new book, with the work it shows on role model effects, is a critically important piece of understanding if we are to change minds about what politics is and what governments are (and can do), especially in the minds of those who will inherit our governing institutions.
This book delves further and deeper than any other empirical work on the subject, providing a strong and useful definition of “political role models” and their effects. Political role models, in their terminology and in terms of sex groups, are women who run for political office; they need not even win, but they must be seen to run and have a shot at winning. And what do such role models do?
One welcome innovation of this work is the multiplicity of dependent variables it studies. As the authors note, the literature has some divisions and null findings in single-study outcomes on the topic of role model effects. Perhaps this is because such effects appear to work differently and more or less strongly for different people, for different outcome measures, and at different times. By casting a net that is both wider and deeper than usual, the authors are able to give us the most accurate and comprehensive picture to date of which role models matter, for whom, and when. Women as candidates, as these authors’ data show, can have multiple effects, not only because they affect some people differently than others, but also because the dependent variables (the things being changed) vary. Campbell and Wolbrecht specify three types of effects of interest to them, all measured through the perceptions, beliefs, and behaviors of individuals: people’s attitudes about women’s capacities, attitudes toward democracy, and potential increased political engagement.
The authors use a mixed methods approach, pairing survey data with longform interviews and, for the very young, interviews also with the young person’s parent(s). The survey data mostly comes from a series of surveys administered in 2020 to young people, including teenage respondents. One part of one survey includes an embedded experiment to get at whether political party affects the effects. Overall, the methods are well planned and well executed. The data analyses are nicely explained and sensible. The book is in many ways a breath of fresh air, methodologically, although in no way simplistic or easy. Only very good social science researchers and authors can make the collection and analysis of this much data clear and straightforward.
In answering these questions together in one work, the authors add important nuance to the existing literature—it is not enough that role models simply exist. They must be visible and novel. Visibility was in the literature before and makes perfect sense: to have an effect, something must be seen. Novelty is (forgive me) novel, and a useful contribution. Role model effects, as we perhaps knew, can wear off—or, at least, depend on the saliency of the identity in question in the mind of the represented.
Thus, the ever-present feminist paradox: the point of feminism is eventually to put itself out of business by succeeding. So Laura Liswood, who founded the Council of Women World Leaders, likes to tell the story of the little boy in Iceland in the mid-2000s who had only ever known a female president. Asked if he wanted to grow up to be president, he replied nah, that was women’s work.
The larger question is enormously interesting: to keep people, especially young people, engaged in democracy, do we have to keep up the novelty quotient? I suspect this goes beyond role model effects to policy innovations and the like, but I’ll leave that for others to hypothesize fully and test. (“Future research should. . .”)
Importantly, the authors also address the question of intersectionality, or we might call it particularism: will just any political role model do? Race is the obvious first test; like sex, it is (mostly) visible, carries a long history of oppression, and has previously been linked to state rules over who could or could not participate in politics. And thinking about race is essential to their focus on young people, as the current and forthcoming U.S. younger generations are increasingly nonwhite.
Campbell and Wolbrecht explain: “Just as masculinity has long been associated with political power in the United States, so has whiteness. Women of color are excluded from both of those categories, and thus we expect that their presence in politics challenges stereotypes, evinces broad representation, and inspires political engagement in unique ways” (p. 41). When they investigate race and role model effects empirically, they do indeed find effects, especially for Black girls from seeing nonwhite women role models. 1
But particularism of role models could apply beyond race, and especially these days to partisanship. Sex- or gender-based differences in public opinion pale in comparison to those based on ideology. This is very race-linked, at least in terms of Black versus white, though the connection is muddier in terms of other racial differences. Because of the relative partisan homogeneity among Black women, looking at this group in particular yields some of the clearest role effects—though it does make parsing race, gender, and partisanship nearly impossible—but then again, perhaps that is the point. In the lived experience of Black women as a group, these factors are not separable.
Beyond race, though, as much as possible, looking at partisanship as its own category yields new and fascinating findings from these authors. Given the state of the world (where most female candidates are Democrats), they necessarily had to use experimental methods to study Republican women as role models, embedding a short experiment in one of the surveys of teens (Chapter 7). The dependent variables of interest, as noted above, do indeed increase for some groups in the experimental condition of seeing more Republican women running—most notably, boys as well as girls in this condition were more likely to see the political system as responsive, and girls in the experimental condition were more likely than girls in the control group to increase their political engagement. Role models thus appear to matter both across parties and across sex, in this regard.
The tensions raised by the intersection of party and gender in terms of role models puts me in mind of a classic slogan: “Feminism is the radical notion that women are human.” I’ve always liked this message because it means two separate things. Most obviously, the oppressed class asserts its rights and equality by virtue of its humanity. And yet, there’s a second, more interesting claim: like men, women are human and therefore prone to failure, to corruption, to selfishness. One danger of the role model effect is thus brought into clear relief: in representing the oppressed class, the role model has a lot to live up to; elevation to a pedestal carries a greater risk of damage were one to fall.
Another nuance is related to yet another bumper sticker I had in the 1990s, reflecting an old feminist adage: “Women who seek to be equal to men lack ambition.” Again, two meanings: besides the obvious assumption of superiority, the deeper point is that feminism is not, and should not be, merely about creating equality. A “white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy,” as bell hooks would put it, is not much improved by elevating white-supremacist capitalist patriarchal women to leadership. Feminism takes as its raison d’être the creation of a better world.
This may in fact be at least part of the reason why women as role models are so powerful; their presence signals something important, something that helps define that better world (fairness, compassion, nurturing, power-sharing, legitimacy, and probably more). One of the strongest effects that Campbell and Wolbrecht find in their work is that seeing women run for office changes how both young women and young men think about politics and democracy.
Those who prefer patriarchy resisted the role model effects of women in this research, but they were not the majority. Campbell and Wolbrecht found that positive effects from seeing women run for office affected even Republican boys and young men in their datasets (provided it was clear the women were Republicans).
It is thus likely no accident that dictators (and those imitating them) regularly appoint women even if not compelled to do so; there can be a cynical, performative side to the role model effect as well. That aspect is not a topic of discussion for Campbell and Wolbrecht, but it is in the larger literature on this topic and should be more developed by future research, now that we have this book as a strong foundation about role models and their impact.
See Jane Run is both brilliant and accessible, making it a perfect addition to syllabi and able to be read by a wider interested public. The language is clear and engaging, and the methods discussion (of a considerable amount of original research!) is easy to understand. Only a great deal of thought, skill, and expertise can make this much theorizing, data collection, and data analysis look simple, even elegant. Overall, the book is a lovely mix of important questions, good methods planning, clear and interesting data, and well-written prose.