Feminist scholarship is warning of a backlash against gender equality and women’s political inclusion. But if anti-gender backlash constitutes democratic deconsolidation, why has it been possible to declare a democracy consolidated without women’s democratic inclusion? Fadhilah Primandari revisits our understanding of democratic consolidation and asks whether it is biased towards men’s political domination
The term 'democratic consolidation' was first popularised towards the end of what Samuel Huntington called the 'third wave' of democratisation. Convinced of democracy’s desirability, democracy scholars during this time began to discuss whether, and how to ascertain, when a new democracy is no longer vulnerable to breakdown. Since then, scholars have associated analyses of 'democratic consolidation' with this question. Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan claim a democracy has consolidated if it has become 'the only game in town'.
Democratic scholarship has produced various methods and thresholds to determine whether a democracy has consolidated. Huntington suggested the two-turnover test. Some scholars, such as Timothy Power and Mark Gasiorowski, and Milan Svolik, argued that time is a better predictor of democratic durability. Others have used democratic attitudes as indicators of citizens’ acceptance or rejection of democracy.
Another common method is to observe the presence of anti-democratic actors and behaviour. The availability of democratic indices such as Polity and V-Dem has increasingly enhanced efforts to assess democratic consolidation.
Measurements of democratic consolidation have rarely considered women’s political inclusion. This is deeply troubling given that inclusion is one of democracy’s core principles. Most democracy scholars would agree that democracy requires women.
Yet, when it comes to democracy’s consolidation, we seem to relegate questions around women and gender as secondary.
Empirical findings have shown that democratic transitions and post-transition politics guarantee neither women’s inclusion nor gender equality progress. However, if our criteria of democracy neglect women, it is unsurprising that processes we call 'democratic' may not lead to women’s inclusion.
Democratic transitions and post-transition politics guarantee neither women’s inclusion nor gender equality progress
The problem is not just empirical; it is also conceptual and methodological. This echoes a problem Pamela Paxton raised more than two decades ago: despite the recognition that women’s political inclusion is necessary for democracy, it has not always been included in the operationalisation of democracy-related concepts.
If democracy requires women’s inclusion, we cannot treat it as democracy’s possible outcome, which may or may not happen. It should be part of our definition of democracy. Paxton shows that simply considering women’s suffrage can alter timelines of democratic transition. Similarly, gender considerations may challenge our previous conclusions about a democracy’s consolidation.
As an illustration, let’s use Huntington’s two-turnover test, which has remained influential in studies of democratic transition and consolidation.
Huntington proposed the two-turnover test in the early 1990s. As its name suggests, the test requires two electoral turnovers, counted from the first election following a country’s transition to democracy. It demands that the winners of the first election lose to a rival and peacefully transfer their power.
Before this second alternation of power takes place, even if the first ruler was re-elected democratically, a democracy cannot be said to have passed the test. Huntington argues that this threshold is a 'tough test for democracy'.
Women’s (perceived) irrelevance was evident when Huntington claimed the US passed the two-turnover test in the 1840s. The lowering of property requirement for the vote during this period only applied to white men. Additionally, neither the enslavement of Black people nor the forced removal of Native Americans seems to negate the status of US democracy.
Huntington's two-turnover test omitted equal gender political inclusion from its precondition and its consideration of electoral victories. The test therefore risks presenting men’s political domination as proof of a democracy’s consolidation
Huntington did not just omit equal gender political inclusion from the test’s precondition, which is democracy. It was also absent from the test’s consideration of electoral victories. For the test, it does not matter if turnovers occurred only among men. If the test supposedly provides evidence of a polity’s acceptance of democracy, it risks presenting men’s political domination as proof of a democracy’s consolidation.
Considering women’s political inclusion in the two-turnover test may change our understanding of when a country passed the test. For example, requiring women’s suffrage (and not only men’s) in the test’s precondition will mean that we can only start counting turnovers in the US from 1920. Our timeline will shift further when we consider that racial voting discrimination was only outlawed in 1965. And when we require the turnover of a previously man-held presidential seat to a woman as a threshold, the US has not yet passed the test.
'Gendering' democratic consolidation may not only change our empirical conclusions; it may also unsettle our methods’ theoretical assumptions. For example, gender considerations may challenge the two-turnover test’s premise that it takes only two turnovers to ascertain widespread acceptance of both men and women leaders. The UK underwent nine government turnovers after 1928, the year women’s full suffrage was passed, before Margaret Thatcher became the first female prime minister. Even more 'gender-equal' countries such as Norway and Sweden took more than two turnovers before electing their first female executive leaders.
And when women do run and win in elections, it does not mean that political institutions work equally for men and women. Political parties, campaigns, and parliaments are gendered institutions, and often work to privilege masculinity. The 'thin' nature of the two-turnover test fails to capture this.
When women win in elections, it does not mean that political institutions work equally for men and women. Political parties and parliaments are gendered institutions, and often work to privilege masculinity
Assessments of democratic consolidation are, essentially, specific claims about democracy. They connote a level of sufficiency — and risk complacency. They treat certain events, spaces, and people as indicators — representations, symbols — of what a 'secure' democracy looks like. But whose democracy is made 'secure'?
The two-turnover test is just one example of how our understanding of democratic consolidation may be biased towards men. Does gender bias also exist in other methods of assessing democratic consolidation? It's highly possible.
No.117 in a Loop thread on the Science of Democracy. Look out for the 🦋 to read more
The "who" of democracy is wonderfully central in this essay. Too often we forget the people involved in concepts and tests in the work we do on and for democracy. Here, for instance, we see that the Two-Turnover Test really only works if we are happy for males to rule. If, as I had the benefit of seeing Fadhila explain at the ECPR joint sessions 2025, we were to add 50% women being elected: the test fails. Following this argument through to at least one of its ends does mean that many of our instruments aren't as fit for purpose as our forebears had thought them to be...this does make it more difficult to find successful cases of democracy but raising that bar is necessary.
This essay is an important reminder that it is not only important for political turnover to be peaceful as one criterium for the success of democracy, but that we need to examine who had a say in the turnover of power as well. If power is just exchanged amongst the hands of male groups, does that transition indeed consolidate democracy?
While the argument seems logical, it is surprising how little attention has been paid to it so far. For example, we acclaim Athenian democracy, but were slaves allowed to vote? Similarly, if women and ethnic minorities are excluded from the process, does the fact that power transits smoothly mean that their rights were protected?
This essay importantly highlights the obvious yet often ignored relationships between suffrage and democracy. In this light, such indices as V-Dem's women's civil liberties, women's civil society participation, and women's political participation (available here: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/women-political-empowerment-index) acquire new significance in understanding and measuring democratic consolidation.
This is a great contribution! It is clear that to have a full view of democracy we must not relegate gender concerns as secondary, but rather at the core of democracy and democratic thinking. For what it’s worth, democratic theory and the scientific study of democracy has also to consider all marginalized groups beyond gender—whether defined by race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, or ability—since the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion shape the very meaning and practice of democracy itself.
This essay makes an important and thought-provoking intervention into debates on democratization. Questioning whether a male bias shapes our prevailing understanding of democratic consolidation, the text not only reveals the conceptual blind spots of comparative politics but also shows the consequences of relying on categories that obscure structural inequalities. What I find especially valuable is the invitation to revisit canonical assumptions and to ask whether they adequately capture the lived experiences and political agency of groups historically excluded from dominant narratives. This line of inquiry has substantial implications for both theory and methodology, suggesting the need for more inclusive conceptual frameworks, as well as for empirical research designs that systematically integrate gendered perspectives into the study of democratic resilience and breakdown. In doing so, your argument resonates with broader calls for decolonizing and diversifying political science, making it highly relevant to ongoing scholarly debates. I encourage you to continue expanding this research, as it holds great potential to reshape how we assess democratization processes in different contexts and to inspire more reflective, methodologically pluralistic approaches in the field.
You make an important (and often neglected) point about the need to go beyond temporal considerations when considering whether or not a democracy has been 'consolidated'. The idea of consolidation is, of course, also questionable. International IDEA's conceptual framework includes gender equality as part of its definition of democracy. Weighting various aspects of this framework indeed provides alternative views of which countries can genuinely be thought of as democratic.
This post makes three excellent contributions. Firstly, the conflation of androcracy and democracy is problematic. Many regimes which are today labeled as democracy are not inclusive of a broad demos, only a restricted demos. An exclusive demos of only men (ancient Athenian model) is at odds with modern thinking about democracy based on an inclusive demos of the whole population (or most of it). Women’s inclusion should be part of our modern definition of democracy because everyone’s inclusion should be part of it - at the very least for all major population groups and women are one of these.
Secondly, measurements of democratic consolidation have rarely considered women’s political inclusion. This is most likely because men have been the ones doing the measurement and women have not been included or only a minority among those conducting large-scale democracy measurement. This tells us that democracy studies itself needs to be democratized to fully include women and other groups in society.
Thirdly, the gender turnover test among top leadership is one that could be fruitfully applied to international organizations like the United Nations Secretary General or World Bank President. The gender turnover test could also be a useful measure of sub-national democratic consolidation. We could study which electoral districts have become consolidated democratically along gender lines involving peaceful turnover between women and men or between male majorities and female majorities.
In this brilliant essay, the author argues that Huntington's "two-turnover test" for democratic consolidation has an unsettling implication: that the United States, the United Kingdom, and other long-established democracies have not truly passed the test if gender is used as a criterion. This argument not only raises methodological concerns about the adequacy of the two-turnover test but also challenges our normative understanding of democratic inclusion.