Jessica Fortin-Rittberger
Biographic Data
| ID | 1535194 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jessica Fortin-Rittberger |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jessica |
| FAMILY NAME | Fortin-Rittberger |
| SIGNATURE | FORTIN-RITTBERGER J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Salzburg |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0628-7113 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 336 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 27 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Measuring sexism and gender attitudes in Round 11 of the European Social Survey
This article introduces the new module Gender in Contemporary Europe: Rethinking Equality and the Backlash developed for Round 11 of the European Social Survey (ESS). The module represents the first large-scale, cross-national effort to comprehensively map contemporary gender attitudes using both established and innovative measures. It captures five interrelated contemporary concepts that have rarely been included in prior cross-national surveys …
Disentangling different types of sexist attitudes and vote choice in Germany
With a woman as head of German government for 16 years, many hoped (or feared) for significant progress in the areas of gender equality. Rather than progress, however, contributors have noticed a rising backlash against norms of gender equality worldwide, but also in Germany. These developments have sparked a renewed interest in sexism as an explanation for (political) attitudes and behaviours. The context of the 2021 Bundestag election offers a …
Élections européennes de 2024 en Allemagne
European Election in Germany
What is special about women in EU institutions
This essay takes stock of the current state of scholarship on gendered careers in the European Union. Examining the careers of women in the political system of the European Union raises several theoretical and analytical issues, especially considering the long-held reputation of European Union institutions as particularly favorable to the representation of women. First, it will ask whether scholarship has produced convincing evidence substantiati…
Masculinity, sexism and populist radical right support
Introduction The gender gap in populist radical right voting—with women being less likely to support populist radical right parties than men—is well-established. Much less is known about the interplay between gender, masculinity and populist radical right voting. This study investigates the extent to which masculinity affects women and men's likelihood of supporting populist radical right parties. Focusing on sexism as a link between masculinity …
A welcome from our new editors
Unpacking Gender, Age, and Education Knowledge Inequalities
Objective Scrutinize how the three main sources of knowledge inequalities, namely, gender, age, and education, relate to the content, format, and object of the survey items used to measure knowledge Methods Using a pooled data set encompassing 106 postelection surveys in 47 countries from the CSES, we perform analyses by stacking the data at the question level. Results Questions probing familiarity with electoral and partisan politics provide kno…
Political Knowledge
This article investigates gender gaps in political knowledge by exploiting a pooled dataset containing the four modules of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, thereby allowing the comparison of seven different measurements of political knowledge, the most comprehensive comparison to date. The paper’s findings are threefold. First, the two conventional types of political knowledge—factual or placement knowledge—belong to different latent c…
Do parliaments underrepresent women’s policy preferences? Exploring gender equality in policy congruence in 21 European democracies
Although there are considerably more men than women in most parliaments around the world, we know little about whether male-dominated legislatures neglect women's policy preferences. Our article addresses this gap by analysing the congruence of policy preferences between women, men and their elected representatives. We endeavour to answer two questions. Are women's policy preferences underrepresented in modern democracies? If so, which factors ex…
How Party Systems Shape Local–National Gender Gaps
Women’s representation is highest in local assemblies in some countries, while others display the largest share of female office-holders at the national level. Drawing on a new data set mapping the representation of women at all four levels of government in Germany during the 2000s, we argue that differences in party system configurations across echelons explain these distinct patterns and provide evidence for this claim. We show that left-wing p…
How Party Systems Shape Local–National Gender Gaps– Erratum
Still a glass ceiling? Tracing the limits to women’s representation in elected office
This time it’s different? Effects of the Eurovision Debate on young citizens and its consequence for EU democracy – evidence from a quasi-experiment in 24 countries
This paper was co-authored by Jurgen Maier, Thorsten Faas, Berthold Rittberger, Jessica Fortin-Rittberger, Kalliope Agapiou Josifides, Susan Banducci, Paolo Bellucci, Magnus Blomgren, Inta Brikse, Karol Chwedczuk-Szulc, Marina Costa Lobo, Mikolaj Czesnik, Anastasia Deligiaouri, Tomaz Dezelan, Wouter deNooy, Aldo Di Virgilio, Florin Fesnic, Danica Fink-Hafner, Marijana Grbesa, Carmen Greab, Andrija Henjak, David Nicolas Hopmann, David Johann, Gabo…
Elusive indeed - The mechanical versus psychological effects of electoral rules at the district level
While electoral research has become one of political science’s most fertile areas, to date no empirical contribution has addressed the three mechanisms of the electoral chain – strategic entry, strategic voting, and the electoral system’s mechanical effect – in a unified analytical framework. This paper addresses this shortcoming by analysing the effect of electoral systems on party system size, accounting for all three mechanisms. Our study yiel…
Cross-National Gender Gaps in Political Knowledge
Although the majority of studies on political knowledge document lingering gender-based differences in advanced industrial democracies, most contributors have drawn such conclusions from a single or a handful of countries, using limited batteries of political information items. Exploiting a pooled data set of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems encompassing 106 post-election surveys in forty-seven countries between 1996 and 2011, this arti…
The Higher the Fewer? Patterns of Female Representation Across Levels of Government in Germany
Women's representation in elected assemblies across varying levels of government is often theorised to be shaped as a pyramid, with the highest proportion of women at the local level, where barriers to entry are minimal. Mapping women's representation in Germany, however, we find contradictory evidence, since the pyramid is spun on its head. Looking at the representation of women in legislatures across three levels of government reveals relativel…
Nominating women for E urope
Drawing on an original dataset covering more than 100 political parties in over 20 E uropean U nion M ember S tates, this article analyses how political recruitment procedures affect the proportion of women nominated on party lists in the context of the 2009 E uropean P arliament elections. The findings show that the inclusiveness of the selectorates in the early stage of candidate selection processes is a key determinant of the representativenes…
Do electoral rules matter? Explaining national differences in women's representation in the European Parliament
The European Parliament (EP) has one of the highest proportions of women in its ranks, with over a third in 2009. Although previous research has pointed to the use of proportional representation (PR) in European elections as ‘friendlier’ to women, few have looked at differences in the types of PR rules in use in each country. In this article, we argue that the conventional wisdom according to which institutional design—the choice of electoral rul…
Exploring the relationship between infrastructural and coercive state capacity
State power is usually defined as a concept encompassing two components: one is the infrastructural and administrative aspect of power; the other is the despotic or coercive power of the state. Hence, states can be strong in two different ways. Several scholars have emphasized the importance of infrastructural state capacity for democratization, and some even go so far as to suggest that infrastructural state capacity is a necessary condition for…
The role of infrastructural and coercive state capacity in explaining different types of electoral fraud
While effective state capacity can reasonably be considered a necessary condition for democratization, strong states do not automatically produce democratic regimes, nor do they guarantee their survival. Far from being sufficient conditions for democracy, strong or capable states are also thought to be indispensable for the maintenance of autocratic rule. The present article puts to the test the hypothesis that a certain level of state capacity i…
Towards a Gender-Equal Bundestag? The Impact of Electoral Rules on Women’s Representation
Cross-sectional research designs show that proportional representation (PR) tends to produce more equitable outcomes in terms of gender representation. While existing research provides valuable insights into the covariates of gender representation, such cross-sectional designs fail to provide a definitive test of the influence of electoral rules both over time and in the case of mixed systems. Addressing this gap, this article proposes a longitud…
Measuring presidential powers
The purpose of this article is to address the issues of validity and reliability in existing additive indices measuring the strength of executives. Many data efforts, such as Frye et al. (2000) as well as Armingeon and Careja (2007), propose indices of presidential power based on a simple accumulation of a set of individual constitutional prerogatives allotted to the head of state according to the design proposed by Shugart and Carey (1992). Thes…
Explaining Post-Communist Founding Elections Results through Initial State Capacity
While a consensus is emerging about the importance of state building and state capacity for democratization in both post-communist and developing countries, comparatively few explicit attempts have been made to provide empirical support for the relationship between the two concepts. Even more problematic is to find an explicit causal mechanism linking high state capacity with democracy. State capacity can be understood as the capability of the st…
Is There a Necessary Condition for Democracy? The Role of State Capacity in Postcommunist Countries
Although postcommunist countries share a common past, the variability of outcomes in both democracy and economic reform is very large in the region. Only a few countries have become Western-type democracies in Central and Eastern Europe and the Baltic. By contrast, the norm is clearly not democracy for other Soviet successor states. In this article, the author attributes this variation to differences in the infrastructural capacity of the state. …
Nominating women for E urope
Drawing on an original dataset covering more than 100 political parties in over 20 E uropean U nion M ember S tates, this article analyses how political recruitment procedures affect the proportion of women nominated on party lists in the context of the 2009 E uropean P arliament elections. The findings show that the inclusiveness of the selectorates in the early stage of candidate selection processes is a key determinant of the representativenes…
Cross-National Gender Gaps in Political Knowledge
Although the majority of studies on political knowledge document lingering gender-based differences in advanced industrial democracies, most contributors have drawn such conclusions from a single or a handful of countries, using limited batteries of political information items. Exploiting a pooled data set of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems encompassing 106 post-election surveys in forty-seven countries between 1996 and 2011, this arti…
Do electoral rules matter? Explaining national differences in women's representation in the European Parliament
The European Parliament (EP) has one of the highest proportions of women in its ranks, with over a third in 2009. Although previous research has pointed to the use of proportional representation (PR) in European elections as ‘friendlier’ to women, few have looked at differences in the types of PR rules in use in each country. In this article, we argue that the conventional wisdom according to which institutional design—the choice of electoral rul…
Measuring presidential powers
The purpose of this article is to address the issues of validity and reliability in existing additive indices measuring the strength of executives. Many data efforts, such as Frye et al. (2000) as well as Armingeon and Careja (2007), propose indices of presidential power based on a simple accumulation of a set of individual constitutional prerogatives allotted to the head of state according to the design proposed by Shugart and Carey (1992). Thes…
Do parliaments underrepresent women’s policy preferences? Exploring gender equality in policy congruence in 21 European democracies
Although there are considerably more men than women in most parliaments around the world, we know little about whether male-dominated legislatures neglect women's policy preferences. Our article addresses this gap by analysing the congruence of policy preferences between women, men and their elected representatives. We endeavour to answer two questions. Are women's policy preferences underrepresented in modern democracies? If so, which factors ex…
Is There a Necessary Condition for Democracy? The Role of State Capacity in Postcommunist Countries
Although postcommunist countries share a common past, the variability of outcomes in both democracy and economic reform is very large in the region. Only a few countries have become Western-type democracies in Central and Eastern Europe and the Baltic. By contrast, the norm is clearly not democracy for other Soviet successor states. In this article, the author attributes this variation to differences in the infrastructural capacity of the state. …
A tool to evaluate state capacity in post‐communist countries, 1989–2006
In an attempt to bring together the research on state capacity, this article proposes a five‐item index to operationalise and measure the concept of state capacity. The index was constructed for 26 post‐communist countries on a yearly basis from their first year of independence from communist rule to 2006. Different states unavoidably display dissimilar levels of aptitude in the different domains of state capacity, but the aggregated index of sta…
Exploring the relationship between infrastructural and coercive state capacity
State power is usually defined as a concept encompassing two components: one is the infrastructural and administrative aspect of power; the other is the despotic or coercive power of the state. Hence, states can be strong in two different ways. Several scholars have emphasized the importance of infrastructural state capacity for democratization, and some even go so far as to suggest that infrastructural state capacity is a necessary condition for…
This time it’s different? Effects of the Eurovision Debate on young citizens and its consequence for EU democracy – evidence from a quasi-experiment in 24 countries
This paper was co-authored by Jurgen Maier, Thorsten Faas, Berthold Rittberger, Jessica Fortin-Rittberger, Kalliope Agapiou Josifides, Susan Banducci, Paolo Bellucci, Magnus Blomgren, Inta Brikse, Karol Chwedczuk-Szulc, Marina Costa Lobo, Mikolaj Czesnik, Anastasia Deligiaouri, Tomaz Dezelan, Wouter deNooy, Aldo Di Virgilio, Florin Fesnic, Danica Fink-Hafner, Marijana Grbesa, Carmen Greab, Andrija Henjak, David Nicolas Hopmann, David Johann, Gabo…
The Higher the Fewer? Patterns of Female Representation Across Levels of Government in Germany
Women's representation in elected assemblies across varying levels of government is often theorised to be shaped as a pyramid, with the highest proportion of women at the local level, where barriers to entry are minimal. Mapping women's representation in Germany, however, we find contradictory evidence, since the pyramid is spun on its head. Looking at the representation of women in legislatures across three levels of government reveals relativel…
The role of infrastructural and coercive state capacity in explaining different types of electoral fraud
While effective state capacity can reasonably be considered a necessary condition for democratization, strong states do not automatically produce democratic regimes, nor do they guarantee their survival. Far from being sufficient conditions for democracy, strong or capable states are also thought to be indispensable for the maintenance of autocratic rule. The present article puts to the test the hypothesis that a certain level of state capacity i…
Towards a Gender-Equal Bundestag? The Impact of Electoral Rules on Women’s Representation
Cross-sectional research designs show that proportional representation (PR) tends to produce more equitable outcomes in terms of gender representation. While existing research provides valuable insights into the covariates of gender representation, such cross-sectional designs fail to provide a definitive test of the influence of electoral rules both over time and in the case of mixed systems. Addressing this gap, this article proposes a longitud…
Masculinity, sexism and populist radical right support
Introduction The gender gap in populist radical right voting—with women being less likely to support populist radical right parties than men—is well-established. Much less is known about the interplay between gender, masculinity and populist radical right voting. This study investigates the extent to which masculinity affects women and men's likelihood of supporting populist radical right parties. Focusing on sexism as a link between masculinity …
How Party Systems Shape Local–National Gender Gaps
Women’s representation is highest in local assemblies in some countries, while others display the largest share of female office-holders at the national level. Drawing on a new data set mapping the representation of women at all four levels of government in Germany during the 2000s, we argue that differences in party system configurations across echelons explain these distinct patterns and provide evidence for this claim. We show that left-wing p…
Political Knowledge
This article investigates gender gaps in political knowledge by exploiting a pooled dataset containing the four modules of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, thereby allowing the comparison of seven different measurements of political knowledge, the most comprehensive comparison to date. The paper’s findings are threefold. First, the two conventional types of political knowledge—factual or placement knowledge—belong to different latent c…
Still a glass ceiling? Tracing the limits to women’s representation in elected office
Unpacking Gender, Age, and Education Knowledge Inequalities
Objective Scrutinize how the three main sources of knowledge inequalities, namely, gender, age, and education, relate to the content, format, and object of the survey items used to measure knowledge Methods Using a pooled data set encompassing 106 postelection surveys in 47 countries from the CSES, we perform analyses by stacking the data at the question level. Results Questions probing familiarity with electoral and partisan politics provide kno…
What is special about women in EU institutions
This essay takes stock of the current state of scholarship on gendered careers in the European Union. Examining the careers of women in the political system of the European Union raises several theoretical and analytical issues, especially considering the long-held reputation of European Union institutions as particularly favorable to the representation of women. First, it will ask whether scholarship has produced convincing evidence substantiati…
Elusive indeed - The mechanical versus psychological effects of electoral rules at the district level
While electoral research has become one of political science’s most fertile areas, to date no empirical contribution has addressed the three mechanisms of the electoral chain – strategic entry, strategic voting, and the electoral system’s mechanical effect – in a unified analytical framework. This paper addresses this shortcoming by analysing the effect of electoral systems on party system size, accounting for all three mechanisms. Our study yiel…
Patterns of Democracy
A tool to evaluate state capacity in post‐communist countries, 1989–2006
In an attempt to bring together the research on state capacity, this article proposes a five‐item index to operationalise and measure the concept of state capacity. The index was constructed for 26 post‐communist countries on a yearly basis from their first year of independence from communist rule to 2006. Different states unavoidably display dissimilar levels of aptitude in the different domains of state capacity, but the aggregated index of sta…
Explaining Post-Communist Founding Elections Results through Initial State Capacity
While a consensus is emerging about the importance of state building and state capacity for democratization in both post-communist and developing countries, comparatively few explicit attempts have been made to provide empirical support for the relationship between the two concepts. Even more problematic is to find an explicit causal mechanism linking high state capacity with democracy. State capacity can be understood as the capability of the st…
Is There a Necessary Condition for Democracy? The Role of State Capacity in Postcommunist Countries
Although postcommunist countries share a common past, the variability of outcomes in both democracy and economic reform is very large in the region. Only a few countries have become Western-type democracies in Central and Eastern Europe and the Baltic. By contrast, the norm is clearly not democracy for other Soviet successor states. In this article, the author attributes this variation to differences in the infrastructural capacity of the state. …
Towards a Gender-Equal Bundestag? The Impact of Electoral Rules on Women’s Representation
Cross-sectional research designs show that proportional representation (PR) tends to produce more equitable outcomes in terms of gender representation. While existing research provides valuable insights into the covariates of gender representation, such cross-sectional designs fail to provide a definitive test of the influence of electoral rules both over time and in the case of mixed systems. Addressing this gap, this article proposes a longitud…
Measuring presidential powers
The purpose of this article is to address the issues of validity and reliability in existing additive indices measuring the strength of executives. Many data efforts, such as Frye et al. (2000) as well as Armingeon and Careja (2007), propose indices of presidential power based on a simple accumulation of a set of individual constitutional prerogatives allotted to the head of state according to the design proposed by Shugart and Carey (1992). Thes…
Do electoral rules matter? Explaining national differences in women's representation in the European Parliament
The European Parliament (EP) has one of the highest proportions of women in its ranks, with over a third in 2009. Although previous research has pointed to the use of proportional representation (PR) in European elections as ‘friendlier’ to women, few have looked at differences in the types of PR rules in use in each country. In this article, we argue that the conventional wisdom according to which institutional design—the choice of electoral rul…
Exploring the relationship between infrastructural and coercive state capacity
State power is usually defined as a concept encompassing two components: one is the infrastructural and administrative aspect of power; the other is the despotic or coercive power of the state. Hence, states can be strong in two different ways. Several scholars have emphasized the importance of infrastructural state capacity for democratization, and some even go so far as to suggest that infrastructural state capacity is a necessary condition for…
The role of infrastructural and coercive state capacity in explaining different types of electoral fraud
While effective state capacity can reasonably be considered a necessary condition for democratization, strong states do not automatically produce democratic regimes, nor do they guarantee their survival. Far from being sufficient conditions for democracy, strong or capable states are also thought to be indispensable for the maintenance of autocratic rule. The present article puts to the test the hypothesis that a certain level of state capacity i…
Nominating women for E urope
Drawing on an original dataset covering more than 100 political parties in over 20 E uropean U nion M ember S tates, this article analyses how political recruitment procedures affect the proportion of women nominated on party lists in the context of the 2009 E uropean P arliament elections. The findings show that the inclusiveness of the selectorates in the early stage of candidate selection processes is a key determinant of the representativenes…
Cross-National Gender Gaps in Political Knowledge
Although the majority of studies on political knowledge document lingering gender-based differences in advanced industrial democracies, most contributors have drawn such conclusions from a single or a handful of countries, using limited batteries of political information items. Exploiting a pooled data set of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems encompassing 106 post-election surveys in forty-seven countries between 1996 and 2011, this arti…
The Higher the Fewer? Patterns of Female Representation Across Levels of Government in Germany
Women's representation in elected assemblies across varying levels of government is often theorised to be shaped as a pyramid, with the highest proportion of women at the local level, where barriers to entry are minimal. Mapping women's representation in Germany, however, we find contradictory evidence, since the pyramid is spun on its head. Looking at the representation of women in legislatures across three levels of government reveals relativel…
Still a glass ceiling? Tracing the limits to women’s representation in elected office
This time it’s different? Effects of the Eurovision Debate on young citizens and its consequence for EU democracy – evidence from a quasi-experiment in 24 countries
This paper was co-authored by Jurgen Maier, Thorsten Faas, Berthold Rittberger, Jessica Fortin-Rittberger, Kalliope Agapiou Josifides, Susan Banducci, Paolo Bellucci, Magnus Blomgren, Inta Brikse, Karol Chwedczuk-Szulc, Marina Costa Lobo, Mikolaj Czesnik, Anastasia Deligiaouri, Tomaz Dezelan, Wouter deNooy, Aldo Di Virgilio, Florin Fesnic, Danica Fink-Hafner, Marijana Grbesa, Carmen Greab, Andrija Henjak, David Nicolas Hopmann, David Johann, Gabo…
Elusive indeed - The mechanical versus psychological effects of electoral rules at the district level
While electoral research has become one of political science’s most fertile areas, to date no empirical contribution has addressed the three mechanisms of the electoral chain – strategic entry, strategic voting, and the electoral system’s mechanical effect – in a unified analytical framework. This paper addresses this shortcoming by analysing the effect of electoral systems on party system size, accounting for all three mechanisms. Our study yiel…
Political Knowledge
This article investigates gender gaps in political knowledge by exploiting a pooled dataset containing the four modules of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, thereby allowing the comparison of seven different measurements of political knowledge, the most comprehensive comparison to date. The paper’s findings are threefold. First, the two conventional types of political knowledge—factual or placement knowledge—belong to different latent c…
Do parliaments underrepresent women’s policy preferences? Exploring gender equality in policy congruence in 21 European democracies
Although there are considerably more men than women in most parliaments around the world, we know little about whether male-dominated legislatures neglect women's policy preferences. Our article addresses this gap by analysing the congruence of policy preferences between women, men and their elected representatives. We endeavour to answer two questions. Are women's policy preferences underrepresented in modern democracies? If so, which factors ex…
How Party Systems Shape Local–National Gender Gaps
Women’s representation is highest in local assemblies in some countries, while others display the largest share of female office-holders at the national level. Drawing on a new data set mapping the representation of women at all four levels of government in Germany during the 2000s, we argue that differences in party system configurations across echelons explain these distinct patterns and provide evidence for this claim. We show that left-wing p…
How Party Systems Shape Local–National Gender Gaps– Erratum
Unpacking Gender, Age, and Education Knowledge Inequalities
Objective Scrutinize how the three main sources of knowledge inequalities, namely, gender, age, and education, relate to the content, format, and object of the survey items used to measure knowledge Methods Using a pooled data set encompassing 106 postelection surveys in 47 countries from the CSES, we perform analyses by stacking the data at the question level. Results Questions probing familiarity with electoral and partisan politics provide kno…
A welcome from our new editors
Masculinity, sexism and populist radical right support
Introduction The gender gap in populist radical right voting—with women being less likely to support populist radical right parties than men—is well-established. Much less is known about the interplay between gender, masculinity and populist radical right voting. This study investigates the extent to which masculinity affects women and men's likelihood of supporting populist radical right parties. Focusing on sexism as a link between masculinity …
Disentangling different types of sexist attitudes and vote choice in Germany
With a woman as head of German government for 16 years, many hoped (or feared) for significant progress in the areas of gender equality. Rather than progress, however, contributors have noticed a rising backlash against norms of gender equality worldwide, but also in Germany. These developments have sparked a renewed interest in sexism as an explanation for (political) attitudes and behaviours. The context of the 2021 Bundestag election offers a …
Élections européennes de 2024 en Allemagne
European Election in Germany
Political science (24 works) · Law (20 works) · Law (18 works) · Politics (18 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (16 works) · Economics (14 works) · Gender Politics and Representation (13 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Political economy (8 works)