Work in Progress

A Feminist Conceptual Critique of Democratic Consolidation

Working Paper

Abstract

The ongoing discussion on the centrality of gender to democratic deconsolidation presents a conceptual question: if the weakening of women’s inclusion today constitutes a sign of democracy’s deconsolidation, why has it been possible to declare a democracy as consolidated despite women’s political exclusion? Examining three methods that have been broadly used to classify countries as consolidated democracies—Huntington’s two-turnover test, the detection of behavioural threats to democracy and attitudinal analyses of democratic support—this article argues that the dominant conception of democratic consolidation privileges male political domination. This male bias comes in three different forms: (1) the omission of women from the demos; (2) the deprioritisation of women’s inclusion in favour of institutional stability; and (3) the use of a limited conception of inclusion that normalises masculinist political norms and practices. These biases render the traditional concept of democratic consolidation inadequate for feminist democratic analysis and struggle. This article argues that, instead of discarding the concept, it is more beneficial to revise the concept. This conceptual revision would require reconsidering the meaning of democracy and the interpretation of consolidation. 

Ideas from this paper have been presented at:

• PSA Annual Conference, Oxford, 30 March - 1 April 2026

Protecting Institutions, Sidelining Inclusion? A Feminist Rethinking of Democratic Consolidation’s Behavioural Dimension 

Working Paper

Abstract

Despite inclusion being a key democratic component, the behavioural dimension of democratic consolidation—which analyses threats to democracy—has largely left women’s persistent exclusion unproblematised. Extending emergent feminist frameworks of democratic deconsolidation and backsliding, this essay sketches a feminist rethinking of democratic consolidation’s behavioural dimension. First, it critiques the dominant scholarship’s privileging of electoral and liberal democratic institutions in analysing threats to democracy. Defining threats to democracy strictly based on what may erode electoral and liberal democratic institutions implies that in the absence of threats to these institutions, democracy is secure and works equally for everyone. The essay then argues that feminist analyses of behavioural democratic consolidation can benefit more from centring democracy as practices that empower inclusion, which consists of formal and informal recognition, presence, articulation or voice, and authority. This practice-oriented understanding of democracy helps to recognise the various and dynamic ways in which women’s inclusion is resisted and undermined. Building on the concept of backlash, feminist institutionalist insights and the emergent feminist frameworks of democratic backsliding, this essay offers a preliminary typology that recognises the precarity of women’s democratic inclusion, formally and informally, and in and outside institutional spaces, for the purposes of analysing democratic consolidation. 

Presented at the "Dated Hardware? Rethinking Paradigms, Paradoxes, and Assumptions in Democracy Research" Workshop, Vienna, 22-24 October 2025

A Gendered Critique of the Two-Turnover Test as an Indicator of Democratic Consolidation

Working Paper

Abstract

This paper offers a gendered critique of Huntington’s influential “two-turnover test” for assessing democratic consolidation. Although the test has been widely cited and debated, its application has largely ignored women's political rights, candidacy, and victories, as well as incumbents’ reactions to women political challengers. As a result, it risks measuring democratic consolidation based on routinized electoral competition among, and won by, men. However, incorporating women’s political inclusion reveals both the test’s empirical shortcomings and the deeper limitations of simply “adding women” to existing analytical frameworks. A gender-inclusive lens may not only shift a country’s timeline of democratic consolidation but also challenge the two-turnover test’s own conceptual assumptions. Drawing on suffrage timelines and electoral turnovers in the UK and US, this study demonstrates how a gender-inclusive analysis can unsettle core assumptions in democratization research and calls for a broader rethinking of democratic consolidation’s indicators.

Presented at:

• ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops, Prague, 22-24 May 2025; nominated for the Rudolf Wildenmann Prize 

• PSA Annual Conference, Birmingham, 14-16 April 2025