John A Scherpereel
Biographic Data
| ID | 361250 |
|---|---|
| NAME | John A Scherpereel |
| GIVEN NAMES | John A |
| FAMILY NAME | Scherpereel |
| SIGNATURE | SCHERPEREEL J A |
| AFFILIATIONS | James Madison University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3437-6917 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 145 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Representational Counterbalancing: The Case of Cabinet Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries in Canada
This paper argues that when heads of government appoint politicians to government teams, they focus on a particular range of the appointees' representational attributes and construct selection pools for other team positions with an eye toward counterbalancing the appointees' salient representational attributes. Previous research has investigated horizontal counterbalancing, which takes place within teams whose members have roughly equal status (e…
Gender-Balanced Representation and the Erosion of Global Liberal Norms
How will the rise of China and other illiberal regimes affect the behaviour-shaping power of global liberal norms? The paper uses updated dyadic data on ambassadorial appointments to address this question. It focuses on the fate of a global liberal norm on gender-balanced representation. It argues that when powerful international partners discount the importance of gender balance, governments become less likely to prioritise gender balance themse…
Pursuing ‘full gender equality’ in the European Commission: The Case of a Constrained Selector
Numerous European leaders have formed cabinets that contain equal numbers of women and men. But forming a gender-equal team at the center of the European Union remains a particularly difficult undertaking. This article analyses the case of Ursula von der Leyen, who, in 2019, set out to form a gender-equal college of commissioners. It analyses why von der Leyen's first leadership project did not initially succeed and assesses the longer-term prosp…
Gendering Gamson's Law
Which factors explain variation in the gendered composition of governing cabinets? To address this question, we transpose the idea of proportionality between legislative seat shares and cabinet seats shares from studies of the partisan composition of cabinets to studies of the gender composition of cabinets. Gamson's law identifies a strong association between the proportion of legislative seats a party contributes to a governing coalition and th…
The adoption of women’s legislative caucuses worldwide
Recent decades have witnessed the rise, across a wide range of countries, of political institutions designed to promote gender equality and women’s political representation. Existing studies have shown how international diffusion processes have contributed to the adoption of two kinds of such institutions – gender mainstreaming and gender quotas. Mounting evidence suggests that institutional reforms within legislatures constitute the latest wave …
Ratchets and See-Saws: Divergent Institutional Patterns in Women's Political Representation
Women's representation in legislative and executive offices has increased in recent decades. We show, though, that while global legislative and executive trend lines have positive slopes, the two institutions experience distinctive temporal dynamics. When levels of women's legislative representation rise, they tend not to slip back beyond their newly achieved level-women's legislative representation tends to be characterized by a ratchet effect. …
Vertical intra-institutional effects of ministerial turnover in the Council of the European Union
How do high levels of ministerial turnover affect the strength of ministers and bureaucrats in the Council of the European Union? We test two rival hypotheses – one suggesting that high turnover rates will empower bureaucrats, the other suggesting that they will increase uncertainty and increase ministerial involvement. We empirically document high turnover among ministers in the Council. Next, we develop a conceptual framework that identifies fo…
Will rising powers undermine global norms? The case of gender-balanced decision-making
Will rising world powers tilt global norms in less progressive directions? While there has been much theoretical speculation on this question, few scholars have explored it empirically. This article uses existing empirical evidence to test the extent to which countries compromise their own values to gain favor with influential countries. We analyze the gender of ambassadors sent to rising powers and established powers and suggest that this analys…
The Adoption and Use of Twitter as a Representational Tool among Members of the European Parliament
Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) struggle to connect with European publics. Few European Union (EU) citizens feel connected to their MEPs. Levels of turnout for European Parliament (EP) elections are low, and EU citizens rarely retain EP-related news. For these and other reasons, we might expect MEPs to embrace social media platforms, like Twitter, that facilitate interactivity, spontaneity, personality, and informality. In reality, howe…
The Representation of Women in African Legislatures and Cabinets: An Examination with Reference to Ghana
Why do some countries with low levels of women's legislative representation have high levels of women's cabinet representation? We focus on sub-Saharan Africa to show that countries with high levels of women's legislative representation do not necessarily have high levels of women's cabinet representation and discuss how legislative laggards can emerge as cabinet leaders through a case study of Ghana. We argue that three factors—a conducive insti…
Turnover in the C ouncil of the E uropean U nion: What It is and Why It Matters
This article analyzes personnel turnover in the C ouncil of the E uropean U nion. It draws upon analysis of an original monthly database of ministers in EU Member States from 2004 to 2012. After surveying the literature on the negative effects of high legislative turnover, descriptive statistics are presented that demonstrate high levels of turnover in the Council as a whole and high levels of turnover across all nine sectoral Council configurati…
Gender Norms and Women's Political Representation: A Global Analysis of Cabinets, 1979–2009
What role does the international diffusion of gender norms play in determining recent increases in women's political representation? We argue that norm diffusion has larger positive effects on women's cabinet representation than on women's legislative representation. We also show that within cabinets, norm diffusion affects low‐prestige appointments more than high‐prestige appointments. We test these arguments using an original database of minist…
Barriers to Socialization: Turkey and Regional International Organizations
Turkey has long been a productive member of regional international organizations (IOs) like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Council of Europe. Theorists of socialization would predict that Turkey’s activities within these organizations would encourage European Union (EU) members who belong to these IOs to support Turkey’s application for EU membership. In reality, many EU members who share memberships with Turkey voice severe reser…
EU Cohesion Policy and the Europeanization of Central and East European Regions
This article probes the extent to which politics in Central and Eastern European (CEE) regions are becoming Europeanized. Existing analyses suggest that Europeanization and regionalization in CEE have been loosely related phenomena. These claims, along with broader forecasts about the waning post-accession influence of the European Union (EU), generate predictions that the politics of the regions will be ‘lightly Europeanized’. The article presen…
European Culture and the European Union's ‘Turkey Question
This article attempts to discern whether Turkey belongs to Europe's emerging pan-European cosmopolitan culture and investigates the political implications of Turkish cultural 'otherness'. The article revisits Laitin's (2002 Laitin, David D. 2002. 'Culture and National Identity: "The East" and European Integration'. West European Politics, 25(2): 56–80. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) suggestion that social mobili…
Governing the Czech Republic and Slovakia: Between State Socialism and the European Union
Why do democratic leaders sometimes choose not to establish institutions that would promote the consolidation of democracy? And what are the consequences of those choices? Focusing on the cases of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, John Scherpereel explores the interplay of historical institutional legacies, short-term elite interests, and international pressures (i.e., EU conditionality) in the process of state reform
Rebuilding Leviathan: Party Competition and State Exploitation in Post-Communist Democracies by Anna Grzymata-Busse
The Liberal Project and the Transformation of Democracy: The Case of East Central Europe by Sabrina P. Ramet
Sub‐National Authorities in the EU’s Post‐Socialist States: Joining the Multi‐Level Polity
This paper gauges the extent to which sub‐national authorities (SNAs) from the EU’s post‐socialist member states are attempting to affect EU policy making and considers whether their efforts heretofore have proven successful. The paper finds (a) that SNAs are engaging four of the five ‘channels of representation’, (b) that significant cross‐national and intra‐country variation characterizes emerging patterns of mobilization, and (c) that territor…
Renewing the Socialist Past or Moving toward the European Administrative Space: Inside Czech and Slovak Ministries
Do east-central European bureaucrats more resemble their socialist-era predecessors or their member-state counterparts? Are socialist patterns persisting, or are we witnessing isomorphism toward a European Administrative Space (EAS)? Or both? I examine these questions through the Czech and Slovak cases. I begin by contrasting two ideal types: state-socialist administrative space and EAS. I present evidence from a survey of 296 Czech and Slovak ma…
Gender Norms and Women's Political Representation: A Global Analysis of Cabinets, 1979–2009
What role does the international diffusion of gender norms play in determining recent increases in women's political representation? We argue that norm diffusion has larger positive effects on women's cabinet representation than on women's legislative representation. We also show that within cabinets, norm diffusion affects low‐prestige appointments more than high‐prestige appointments. We test these arguments using an original database of minist…
The Adoption and Use of Twitter as a Representational Tool among Members of the European Parliament
Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) struggle to connect with European publics. Few European Union (EU) citizens feel connected to their MEPs. Levels of turnout for European Parliament (EP) elections are low, and EU citizens rarely retain EP-related news. For these and other reasons, we might expect MEPs to embrace social media platforms, like Twitter, that facilitate interactivity, spontaneity, personality, and informality. In reality, howe…
The Representation of Women in African Legislatures and Cabinets: An Examination with Reference to Ghana
Why do some countries with low levels of women's legislative representation have high levels of women's cabinet representation? We focus on sub-Saharan Africa to show that countries with high levels of women's legislative representation do not necessarily have high levels of women's cabinet representation and discuss how legislative laggards can emerge as cabinet leaders through a case study of Ghana. We argue that three factors—a conducive insti…
Sub‐National Authorities in the EU’s Post‐Socialist States: Joining the Multi‐Level Polity
This paper gauges the extent to which sub‐national authorities (SNAs) from the EU’s post‐socialist member states are attempting to affect EU policy making and considers whether their efforts heretofore have proven successful. The paper finds (a) that SNAs are engaging four of the five ‘channels of representation’, (b) that significant cross‐national and intra‐country variation characterizes emerging patterns of mobilization, and (c) that territor…
The adoption of women’s legislative caucuses worldwide
Recent decades have witnessed the rise, across a wide range of countries, of political institutions designed to promote gender equality and women’s political representation. Existing studies have shown how international diffusion processes have contributed to the adoption of two kinds of such institutions – gender mainstreaming and gender quotas. Mounting evidence suggests that institutional reforms within legislatures constitute the latest wave …
Turnover in the C ouncil of the E uropean U nion: What It is and Why It Matters
This article analyzes personnel turnover in the C ouncil of the E uropean U nion. It draws upon analysis of an original monthly database of ministers in EU Member States from 2004 to 2012. After surveying the literature on the negative effects of high legislative turnover, descriptive statistics are presented that demonstrate high levels of turnover in the Council as a whole and high levels of turnover across all nine sectoral Council configurati…
EU Cohesion Policy and the Europeanization of Central and East European Regions
This article probes the extent to which politics in Central and Eastern European (CEE) regions are becoming Europeanized. Existing analyses suggest that Europeanization and regionalization in CEE have been loosely related phenomena. These claims, along with broader forecasts about the waning post-accession influence of the European Union (EU), generate predictions that the politics of the regions will be ‘lightly Europeanized’. The article presen…
Gendering Gamson's Law
Which factors explain variation in the gendered composition of governing cabinets? To address this question, we transpose the idea of proportionality between legislative seat shares and cabinet seats shares from studies of the partisan composition of cabinets to studies of the gender composition of cabinets. Gamson's law identifies a strong association between the proportion of legislative seats a party contributes to a governing coalition and th…
Ratchets and See-Saws: Divergent Institutional Patterns in Women's Political Representation
Women's representation in legislative and executive offices has increased in recent decades. We show, though, that while global legislative and executive trend lines have positive slopes, the two institutions experience distinctive temporal dynamics. When levels of women's legislative representation rise, they tend not to slip back beyond their newly achieved level-women's legislative representation tends to be characterized by a ratchet effect. …
Vertical intra-institutional effects of ministerial turnover in the Council of the European Union
How do high levels of ministerial turnover affect the strength of ministers and bureaucrats in the Council of the European Union? We test two rival hypotheses – one suggesting that high turnover rates will empower bureaucrats, the other suggesting that they will increase uncertainty and increase ministerial involvement. We empirically document high turnover among ministers in the Council. Next, we develop a conceptual framework that identifies fo…
Will rising powers undermine global norms? The case of gender-balanced decision-making
Will rising world powers tilt global norms in less progressive directions? While there has been much theoretical speculation on this question, few scholars have explored it empirically. This article uses existing empirical evidence to test the extent to which countries compromise their own values to gain favor with influential countries. We analyze the gender of ambassadors sent to rising powers and established powers and suggest that this analys…
European Culture and the European Union's ‘Turkey Question
This article attempts to discern whether Turkey belongs to Europe's emerging pan-European cosmopolitan culture and investigates the political implications of Turkish cultural 'otherness'. The article revisits Laitin's (2002 Laitin, David D. 2002. 'Culture and National Identity: "The East" and European Integration'. West European Politics, 25(2): 56–80. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) suggestion that social mobili…
Renewing the Socialist Past or Moving toward the European Administrative Space: Inside Czech and Slovak Ministries
Do east-central European bureaucrats more resemble their socialist-era predecessors or their member-state counterparts? Are socialist patterns persisting, or are we witnessing isomorphism toward a European Administrative Space (EAS)? Or both? I examine these questions through the Czech and Slovak cases. I begin by contrasting two ideal types: state-socialist administrative space and EAS. I present evidence from a survey of 296 Czech and Slovak ma…
Pursuing ‘full gender equality’ in the European Commission: The Case of a Constrained Selector
Numerous European leaders have formed cabinets that contain equal numbers of women and men. But forming a gender-equal team at the center of the European Union remains a particularly difficult undertaking. This article analyses the case of Ursula von der Leyen, who, in 2019, set out to form a gender-equal college of commissioners. It analyses why von der Leyen's first leadership project did not initially succeed and assesses the longer-term prosp…
Gender-Balanced Representation and the Erosion of Global Liberal Norms
How will the rise of China and other illiberal regimes affect the behaviour-shaping power of global liberal norms? The paper uses updated dyadic data on ambassadorial appointments to address this question. It focuses on the fate of a global liberal norm on gender-balanced representation. It argues that when powerful international partners discount the importance of gender balance, governments become less likely to prioritise gender balance themse…
Renewing the Socialist Past or Moving toward the European Administrative Space: Inside Czech and Slovak Ministries
Do east-central European bureaucrats more resemble their socialist-era predecessors or their member-state counterparts? Are socialist patterns persisting, or are we witnessing isomorphism toward a European Administrative Space (EAS)? Or both? I examine these questions through the Czech and Slovak cases. I begin by contrasting two ideal types: state-socialist administrative space and EAS. I present evidence from a survey of 296 Czech and Slovak ma…
Sub‐National Authorities in the EU’s Post‐Socialist States: Joining the Multi‐Level Polity
This paper gauges the extent to which sub‐national authorities (SNAs) from the EU’s post‐socialist member states are attempting to affect EU policy making and considers whether their efforts heretofore have proven successful. The paper finds (a) that SNAs are engaging four of the five ‘channels of representation’, (b) that significant cross‐national and intra‐country variation characterizes emerging patterns of mobilization, and (c) that territor…
Governing the Czech Republic and Slovakia: Between State Socialism and the European Union
Why do democratic leaders sometimes choose not to establish institutions that would promote the consolidation of democracy? And what are the consequences of those choices? Focusing on the cases of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, John Scherpereel explores the interplay of historical institutional legacies, short-term elite interests, and international pressures (i.e., EU conditionality) in the process of state reform
Rebuilding Leviathan: Party Competition and State Exploitation in Post-Communist Democracies by Anna Grzymata-Busse
The Liberal Project and the Transformation of Democracy: The Case of East Central Europe by Sabrina P. Ramet
EU Cohesion Policy and the Europeanization of Central and East European Regions
This article probes the extent to which politics in Central and Eastern European (CEE) regions are becoming Europeanized. Existing analyses suggest that Europeanization and regionalization in CEE have been loosely related phenomena. These claims, along with broader forecasts about the waning post-accession influence of the European Union (EU), generate predictions that the politics of the regions will be ‘lightly Europeanized’. The article presen…
European Culture and the European Union's ‘Turkey Question
This article attempts to discern whether Turkey belongs to Europe's emerging pan-European cosmopolitan culture and investigates the political implications of Turkish cultural 'otherness'. The article revisits Laitin's (2002 Laitin, David D. 2002. 'Culture and National Identity: "The East" and European Integration'. West European Politics, 25(2): 56–80. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) suggestion that social mobili…
Barriers to Socialization: Turkey and Regional International Organizations
Turkey has long been a productive member of regional international organizations (IOs) like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Council of Europe. Theorists of socialization would predict that Turkey’s activities within these organizations would encourage European Union (EU) members who belong to these IOs to support Turkey’s application for EU membership. In reality, many EU members who share memberships with Turkey voice severe reser…
Turnover in the C ouncil of the E uropean U nion: What It is and Why It Matters
This article analyzes personnel turnover in the C ouncil of the E uropean U nion. It draws upon analysis of an original monthly database of ministers in EU Member States from 2004 to 2012. After surveying the literature on the negative effects of high legislative turnover, descriptive statistics are presented that demonstrate high levels of turnover in the Council as a whole and high levels of turnover across all nine sectoral Council configurati…
Gender Norms and Women's Political Representation: A Global Analysis of Cabinets, 1979–2009
What role does the international diffusion of gender norms play in determining recent increases in women's political representation? We argue that norm diffusion has larger positive effects on women's cabinet representation than on women's legislative representation. We also show that within cabinets, norm diffusion affects low‐prestige appointments more than high‐prestige appointments. We test these arguments using an original database of minist…
The Adoption and Use of Twitter as a Representational Tool among Members of the European Parliament
Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) struggle to connect with European publics. Few European Union (EU) citizens feel connected to their MEPs. Levels of turnout for European Parliament (EP) elections are low, and EU citizens rarely retain EP-related news. For these and other reasons, we might expect MEPs to embrace social media platforms, like Twitter, that facilitate interactivity, spontaneity, personality, and informality. In reality, howe…
The Representation of Women in African Legislatures and Cabinets: An Examination with Reference to Ghana
Why do some countries with low levels of women's legislative representation have high levels of women's cabinet representation? We focus on sub-Saharan Africa to show that countries with high levels of women's legislative representation do not necessarily have high levels of women's cabinet representation and discuss how legislative laggards can emerge as cabinet leaders through a case study of Ghana. We argue that three factors—a conducive insti…
Vertical intra-institutional effects of ministerial turnover in the Council of the European Union
How do high levels of ministerial turnover affect the strength of ministers and bureaucrats in the Council of the European Union? We test two rival hypotheses – one suggesting that high turnover rates will empower bureaucrats, the other suggesting that they will increase uncertainty and increase ministerial involvement. We empirically document high turnover among ministers in the Council. Next, we develop a conceptual framework that identifies fo…
Will rising powers undermine global norms? The case of gender-balanced decision-making
Will rising world powers tilt global norms in less progressive directions? While there has been much theoretical speculation on this question, few scholars have explored it empirically. This article uses existing empirical evidence to test the extent to which countries compromise their own values to gain favor with influential countries. We analyze the gender of ambassadors sent to rising powers and established powers and suggest that this analys…
Ratchets and See-Saws: Divergent Institutional Patterns in Women's Political Representation
Women's representation in legislative and executive offices has increased in recent decades. We show, though, that while global legislative and executive trend lines have positive slopes, the two institutions experience distinctive temporal dynamics. When levels of women's legislative representation rise, they tend not to slip back beyond their newly achieved level-women's legislative representation tends to be characterized by a ratchet effect. …
The adoption of women’s legislative caucuses worldwide
Recent decades have witnessed the rise, across a wide range of countries, of political institutions designed to promote gender equality and women’s political representation. Existing studies have shown how international diffusion processes have contributed to the adoption of two kinds of such institutions – gender mainstreaming and gender quotas. Mounting evidence suggests that institutional reforms within legislatures constitute the latest wave …
Pursuing ‘full gender equality’ in the European Commission: The Case of a Constrained Selector
Numerous European leaders have formed cabinets that contain equal numbers of women and men. But forming a gender-equal team at the center of the European Union remains a particularly difficult undertaking. This article analyses the case of Ursula von der Leyen, who, in 2019, set out to form a gender-equal college of commissioners. It analyses why von der Leyen's first leadership project did not initially succeed and assesses the longer-term prosp…
Gendering Gamson's Law
Which factors explain variation in the gendered composition of governing cabinets? To address this question, we transpose the idea of proportionality between legislative seat shares and cabinet seats shares from studies of the partisan composition of cabinets to studies of the gender composition of cabinets. Gamson's law identifies a strong association between the proportion of legislative seats a party contributes to a governing coalition and th…
Gender-Balanced Representation and the Erosion of Global Liberal Norms
How will the rise of China and other illiberal regimes affect the behaviour-shaping power of global liberal norms? The paper uses updated dyadic data on ambassadorial appointments to address this question. It focuses on the fate of a global liberal norm on gender-balanced representation. It argues that when powerful international partners discount the importance of gender balance, governments become less likely to prioritise gender balance themse…
Representational Counterbalancing: The Case of Cabinet Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries in Canada
This paper argues that when heads of government appoint politicians to government teams, they focus on a particular range of the appointees' representational attributes and construct selection pools for other team positions with an eye toward counterbalancing the appointees' salient representational attributes. Previous research has investigated horizontal counterbalancing, which takes place within teams whose members have roughly equal status (e…
Political science (20 works) · Law (19 works) · Law (17 works) · Politics (14 works) · Economics (13 works) · Political economy (11 works) · Sociology (10 works) · European union (9 works) · Gender Politics and Representation (9 works) · European Union Policy and Governance (7 works)