Kristin Baker
Biographic Data
| ID | 95779 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kristin Baker |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kristin |
| FAMILY NAME | Baker |
| SIGNATURE | BAKER K |
| AFFILIATIONS | Australian National University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1328-1468 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 50 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Practising Politics in a Disorderly Democracy
Taking as its starting point Ron May's scholarship on Papua New Guinea as a “disorderly democracy,” this article examines how politics is practised in the PNG Parliament. Using a case study of the events of late 2020, when a vote of no confidence against the Marape government was mooted but eventually failed to materialise, it adopts a practice theory lens to explore how decisions are made, how coalitions are formed and disintegrate, and how poli…
Popular Political Attitudes in Vanuatu: Findings of the Pacific Attitudes Survey
This paper presents the findings of the second Pacific Attitudes Survey (PAS), conducted in Vanuatu from August–October 2023. Drawing on a nationally representative sample ( n = 1330) of ni‐Vanuatu of voting‐age (18+), the PAS gauges the views of ordinary ni‐Vanuatu citizens on a range of questions related to democracy, economics, governance, tradition, climate change, labour mobility and international relations. This article focuses on how ni‐Va…
A Fiji (parliament) for all Fijians? The impact of gender-blind and race-blind electoral provisions in a divided society
The Power of Norms: Gender Equality Reforms in the Parliaments of Fiji and Samoa
Parliaments are increasingly defined as “gendered institutions,” with rules, norms, and practices that are often stubbornly resistant to gender equality initiatives. The gender sensitive parliaments’ global agenda has made substantial progress in both drawing attention to the gendered nature of parliaments and in spearheading gender equality reform. While a positive trend, there remains a significant disconnect between the (global) normative fram…
Gender and Political Leadership in Samoa: Fiame Naomi Mata‘afa and the 2021 Election
Tradition Meets Democracy: Perceptions of Women’s Political Leadership in Samoa
Women are globally underrepresented as political leaders; as of January 2023, only 17 countries had a woman head of government. Included in this small group is Samoa, which elected Fiame Naomi Mata’afa as its first woman prime minister in 2021 after a fiercely contested election and subsequent protracted legal disputes centered around interpretations of Samoa’s 10% gender quota. Drawing on data from the Pacific Attitudes Survey, the first large-s…
Gender and Opposition Leadership in the Pacific Islands
Parliaments in the Pacific Islands are among the most male-dominated in the world. Yet despite the odds, there is a cohort of women who have been elected and won senior roles. This article adds to an emerging literature that examines the gendered pathways to political influence in the region by focusing on the hitherto overlooked role of the opposition leader. It uses a biographical approach to consider the pathways in and through this role by fo…
Reframing Suffrage Narratives: Pacific Women, Political Voice, and Collective Empowerment
Dominant narratives of women's suffrage have been shaped in ways that marginalize Pacific women's experiences.Such narratives have emphasized the struggles of Global North women to achieve individualized political empowerment, primarily through the right to vote, from the late 19th century.By measures of struggle, individual empowerment and temporality, Pacific women have been characterized as passive recipients of the vote in the late 20th centu…
Can women dynasty politicians disrupt social norms of political leadership? A proposed typology of normative change
Social norms that legitimise men as political leaders, and undervalue women’s leadership, are a tenacious barrier to women’s representation globally. This article explores the circumstances under which women dynasty politicians, whose legacy connections have provided them with an initial pathway into politics, are able to disrupt these norms. We test a proposed typology of normative change – one that progresses from norm acceptance, to norm modif…
Copper and solar’: The gendered politics of service delivery in Solomon Islands
Clientelism, and how clientelist political systems evolve over time, is of enduring interest to scholars of politics. The rise of constituency development funds (CDFs), especially in countries where they have come to represent a significant proportion of the government budget, complicates these dynamics, with some arguing their influence in Melanesia has prompted the emergence of a distinct form of statehood. But where do women fit into CDF polit…
The 2019 Bougainville Referendum and the Question of Independence: From Conflict to Consensus
In 2019, a referendum on the political future of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville was held, resulting in a resounding majority–97.7 per cent–for independence from Papua New Guinea. The non-binding referendum was a long-awaited event within a lengthy peace process following a civil war that began in the late 1980s. The conflict caused deep divisions in an already factionalized society and generated divergent ideas on the future status of the …
Localising Global Norms: The Case of Family-Friendly Parliaments
In this article, we extend empirical understandings of feminist institutionalism by outlining a new methodological approach to the study of parliament as a gendered workplace. We argue that while a localised approach to studying institutional change allows a more nuanced appreciation of the role of local cultural context, internationalised norms can be an interesting starting point to work back from. A case study of the New Zealand parliament’s ‘…
Hispanic Caregivers of the Money Follows the Person Program in Connecticut: Satisfaction, Familism, and Burden
Hispanic caregivers provide more assistance than the U.S. average, but underutilize support services and report low levels of program satisfaction. A possible exception is the Money Follows the Person (MFP) program. Using an ordered logit statistical approach, we studied program satisfaction of all Hispanic caregivers assisting Connecticut MFP participants from 2014 to 2019, examining the effects of caregiver familism, burden, and personal charac…
The domestic politics of climate change in the Pacific Islands
Much scholarly attention has been paid to the issue of climate change in the Pacific Islands, in terms of its geopolitical implications, and through the lens of mitigation and adaptation policies and strategies. Comparatively little focus has been given to the domestic politics of climate change in the region: How a changing climate is affecting internal political dynamics. This article traces the boundaries of a new research agenda on the impact…
Correlations of HIV Preexposure Prophylaxis Indications and Uptake, Chicago, Illinois, 2015–2018
Objectives. To examine gaps in identification of preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) candidates, uptake, and use of PrEP by populations most likely to seroconvert. Methods. At a federally qualified health center in Chicago, Illinois, we used electronic medical records, prescription data, and our best approximation of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention PrEP guidelines to determine how many patients were indicated for PrEP relative to HIV diagno…
Addressing collective action problems in Melanesia: The Northern Islands Market Vendors' Association in Vanuatu
This article presents case study findings on the Vanuatu-based Northern Islands Market Vendors' Association (NIMVA) as a vehicle for women-led collective action. While NIMVA’s existence and organisational strength challenges existing political norms, strong gender norms restricting the role of women in society and politics continue to marginalise its capacity to participate politically and pursue transformative change. Using a “permitted empowerm…
Revisiting the Concept of Political Participation in the Pacific
Understanding how citizens participate in politics is important because it shapes political culture and the tenor of democracy. The standard research framing of Pacific politics, centring around institutions both formal and informal, fails to fully account for the myriad of ways in which non-elite Pacific Islanders experience and relate to politics in their daily lives. This scholarly approach results in limited engagement with informal sites of …
Women's Representation and Electoral System Reform in Papua New Guinea: The Limitations of Limited Preferential Voting
Papua New Guinea moved to a limited preferential voting (LPV) system prior to the 2007 national election. The shift from first‐past‐the‐post to preferential voting was intended to encourage the election of candidates with broader mandates from constituents; to reverse the trend of increasing election‐related violence; and to lead to more cooperation between candidates and voting blocs. It was also anticipated that instituting a preferential syste…
What did the winning candidate have that I don’t have?’: Gender, politics and elections in Solomon Islands
Women’s political under-representation is a concern for both emerging and established democracies. In Solomon Islands, only four women were elected to Parliament in the 40 years from independence in 1978 to 2018. This article analyses the barriers to success for female candidates in Solomon Islands elections, focusing on the impact of informal institutions related to kinship, clientelism and leadership. It argues that in a context such as Solomon…
Great Expectations: Gender and Political Representation in the Pacific Islands
Women make up just 6.1 per cent of Pacific parliamentarians. Increasing women’s representation is a key area of focus for political leaders and aid donors, both as a human rights issue and as a vehicle for the substantive representation of women. Women’s participation in politics in the Pacific Islands is often seen as a form of social contract between women. Female voters are expected to vote for female candidates. In exchange, female parliament…
Gender and candidate selection in a weakly institutionalised party system: The case of Samoa
Women’s political representation has historically been low in Samoa, as in much of the Pacific region. Candidate selection is viewed as a crucial factor in women’s under-representation globally. This article contends that the lack of formalised party selection processes sets Samoa apart from most other countries studied as part of the literature on gender and candidate selection. Yet, as this article shows, pre-selection processes exist at the vi…
A History of Psychology: Globalization, Ideas, and Applications
Global, interdisciplinary, and engaging, this textbook integrates materials from philosophical and biological origins to the historical development of psychology. Its extensive coverage of women, minorities, and psychologists around the world emphasizes psychology as a global phenomenon while looking at both local and worldwide issues. This perspective highlights the relationship between psychology and the environmental context in which the disci…
Explaining the outcome of gender quota campaigns in Samoa and Papua New Guinea
This article explores the factors that contribute to the success or failure of gender quota campaigns through an analysis of two case studies from the Pacific Islands region: Samoa and Papua New Guinea. While Samoa became the first Pacific independent state to implement a parliamentary gender quota in 2013, a campaign for 22 reserved seats in the Papua New Guinea Parliament before the 2012 general election was unsuccessful. Drawing on media analy…
Quota Adoption and the Exogenous Track Model: The Parity Laws in the French Pacific Collectivities
Drawing on the work of Dahlerup and Freidenvall (2005), this article considers how the implementation of the French parity laws in the Pacific collectivities fits in with established discourses of quota adoption. It proposes that there is another axis of
Great Expectations: Gender and Political Representation in the Pacific Islands
Women make up just 6.1 per cent of Pacific parliamentarians. Increasing women’s representation is a key area of focus for political leaders and aid donors, both as a human rights issue and as a vehicle for the substantive representation of women. Women’s participation in politics in the Pacific Islands is often seen as a form of social contract between women. Female voters are expected to vote for female candidates. In exchange, female parliament…
Can women dynasty politicians disrupt social norms of political leadership? A proposed typology of normative change
Social norms that legitimise men as political leaders, and undervalue women’s leadership, are a tenacious barrier to women’s representation globally. This article explores the circumstances under which women dynasty politicians, whose legacy connections have provided them with an initial pathway into politics, are able to disrupt these norms. We test a proposed typology of normative change – one that progresses from norm acceptance, to norm modif…
Localising Global Norms: The Case of Family-Friendly Parliaments
In this article, we extend empirical understandings of feminist institutionalism by outlining a new methodological approach to the study of parliament as a gendered workplace. We argue that while a localised approach to studying institutional change allows a more nuanced appreciation of the role of local cultural context, internationalised norms can be an interesting starting point to work back from. A case study of the New Zealand parliament’s ‘…
Explaining the outcome of gender quota campaigns in Samoa and Papua New Guinea
This article explores the factors that contribute to the success or failure of gender quota campaigns through an analysis of two case studies from the Pacific Islands region: Samoa and Papua New Guinea. While Samoa became the first Pacific independent state to implement a parliamentary gender quota in 2013, a campaign for 22 reserved seats in the Papua New Guinea Parliament before the 2012 general election was unsuccessful. Drawing on media analy…
Gender and candidate selection in a weakly institutionalised party system: The case of Samoa
Women’s political representation has historically been low in Samoa, as in much of the Pacific region. Candidate selection is viewed as a crucial factor in women’s under-representation globally. This article contends that the lack of formalised party selection processes sets Samoa apart from most other countries studied as part of the literature on gender and candidate selection. Yet, as this article shows, pre-selection processes exist at the vi…
Reframing Suffrage Narratives: Pacific Women, Political Voice, and Collective Empowerment
Dominant narratives of women's suffrage have been shaped in ways that marginalize Pacific women's experiences.Such narratives have emphasized the struggles of Global North women to achieve individualized political empowerment, primarily through the right to vote, from the late 19th century.By measures of struggle, individual empowerment and temporality, Pacific women have been characterized as passive recipients of the vote in the late 20th centu…
What did the winning candidate have that I don’t have?’: Gender, politics and elections in Solomon Islands
Women’s political under-representation is a concern for both emerging and established democracies. In Solomon Islands, only four women were elected to Parliament in the 40 years from independence in 1978 to 2018. This article analyses the barriers to success for female candidates in Solomon Islands elections, focusing on the impact of informal institutions related to kinship, clientelism and leadership. It argues that in a context such as Solomon…
The Power of Norms: Gender Equality Reforms in the Parliaments of Fiji and Samoa
Parliaments are increasingly defined as “gendered institutions,” with rules, norms, and practices that are often stubbornly resistant to gender equality initiatives. The gender sensitive parliaments’ global agenda has made substantial progress in both drawing attention to the gendered nature of parliaments and in spearheading gender equality reform. While a positive trend, there remains a significant disconnect between the (global) normative fram…
Tradition Meets Democracy: Perceptions of Women’s Political Leadership in Samoa
Women are globally underrepresented as political leaders; as of January 2023, only 17 countries had a woman head of government. Included in this small group is Samoa, which elected Fiame Naomi Mata’afa as its first woman prime minister in 2021 after a fiercely contested election and subsequent protracted legal disputes centered around interpretations of Samoa’s 10% gender quota. Drawing on data from the Pacific Attitudes Survey, the first large-s…
Gender and Opposition Leadership in the Pacific Islands
Parliaments in the Pacific Islands are among the most male-dominated in the world. Yet despite the odds, there is a cohort of women who have been elected and won senior roles. This article adds to an emerging literature that examines the gendered pathways to political influence in the region by focusing on the hitherto overlooked role of the opposition leader. It uses a biographical approach to consider the pathways in and through this role by fo…
Revisiting the Concept of Political Participation in the Pacific
Understanding how citizens participate in politics is important because it shapes political culture and the tenor of democracy. The standard research framing of Pacific politics, centring around institutions both formal and informal, fails to fully account for the myriad of ways in which non-elite Pacific Islanders experience and relate to politics in their daily lives. This scholarly approach results in limited engagement with informal sites of …
Explaining the outcome of gender quota campaigns in Samoa and Papua New Guinea
This article explores the factors that contribute to the success or failure of gender quota campaigns through an analysis of two case studies from the Pacific Islands region: Samoa and Papua New Guinea. While Samoa became the first Pacific independent state to implement a parliamentary gender quota in 2013, a campaign for 22 reserved seats in the Papua New Guinea Parliament before the 2012 general election was unsuccessful. Drawing on media analy…
Quota Adoption and the Exogenous Track Model: The Parity Laws in the French Pacific Collectivities
Drawing on the work of Dahlerup and Freidenvall (2005), this article considers how the implementation of the French parity laws in the Pacific collectivities fits in with established discourses of quota adoption. It proposes that there is another axis of
A History of Psychology: Globalization, Ideas, and Applications
Global, interdisciplinary, and engaging, this textbook integrates materials from philosophical and biological origins to the historical development of psychology. Its extensive coverage of women, minorities, and psychologists around the world emphasizes psychology as a global phenomenon while looking at both local and worldwide issues. This perspective highlights the relationship between psychology and the environmental context in which the disci…
Women's Representation and Electoral System Reform in Papua New Guinea: The Limitations of Limited Preferential Voting
Papua New Guinea moved to a limited preferential voting (LPV) system prior to the 2007 national election. The shift from first‐past‐the‐post to preferential voting was intended to encourage the election of candidates with broader mandates from constituents; to reverse the trend of increasing election‐related violence; and to lead to more cooperation between candidates and voting blocs. It was also anticipated that instituting a preferential syste…
What did the winning candidate have that I don’t have?’: Gender, politics and elections in Solomon Islands
Women’s political under-representation is a concern for both emerging and established democracies. In Solomon Islands, only four women were elected to Parliament in the 40 years from independence in 1978 to 2018. This article analyses the barriers to success for female candidates in Solomon Islands elections, focusing on the impact of informal institutions related to kinship, clientelism and leadership. It argues that in a context such as Solomon…
Great Expectations: Gender and Political Representation in the Pacific Islands
Women make up just 6.1 per cent of Pacific parliamentarians. Increasing women’s representation is a key area of focus for political leaders and aid donors, both as a human rights issue and as a vehicle for the substantive representation of women. Women’s participation in politics in the Pacific Islands is often seen as a form of social contract between women. Female voters are expected to vote for female candidates. In exchange, female parliament…
Gender and candidate selection in a weakly institutionalised party system: The case of Samoa
Women’s political representation has historically been low in Samoa, as in much of the Pacific region. Candidate selection is viewed as a crucial factor in women’s under-representation globally. This article contends that the lack of formalised party selection processes sets Samoa apart from most other countries studied as part of the literature on gender and candidate selection. Yet, as this article shows, pre-selection processes exist at the vi…
Correlations of HIV Preexposure Prophylaxis Indications and Uptake, Chicago, Illinois, 2015–2018
Objectives. To examine gaps in identification of preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) candidates, uptake, and use of PrEP by populations most likely to seroconvert. Methods. At a federally qualified health center in Chicago, Illinois, we used electronic medical records, prescription data, and our best approximation of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention PrEP guidelines to determine how many patients were indicated for PrEP relative to HIV diagno…
Addressing collective action problems in Melanesia: The Northern Islands Market Vendors' Association in Vanuatu
This article presents case study findings on the Vanuatu-based Northern Islands Market Vendors' Association (NIMVA) as a vehicle for women-led collective action. While NIMVA’s existence and organisational strength challenges existing political norms, strong gender norms restricting the role of women in society and politics continue to marginalise its capacity to participate politically and pursue transformative change. Using a “permitted empowerm…
Revisiting the Concept of Political Participation in the Pacific
Understanding how citizens participate in politics is important because it shapes political culture and the tenor of democracy. The standard research framing of Pacific politics, centring around institutions both formal and informal, fails to fully account for the myriad of ways in which non-elite Pacific Islanders experience and relate to politics in their daily lives. This scholarly approach results in limited engagement with informal sites of …
The domestic politics of climate change in the Pacific Islands
Much scholarly attention has been paid to the issue of climate change in the Pacific Islands, in terms of its geopolitical implications, and through the lens of mitigation and adaptation policies and strategies. Comparatively little focus has been given to the domestic politics of climate change in the region: How a changing climate is affecting internal political dynamics. This article traces the boundaries of a new research agenda on the impact…
Copper and solar’: The gendered politics of service delivery in Solomon Islands
Clientelism, and how clientelist political systems evolve over time, is of enduring interest to scholars of politics. The rise of constituency development funds (CDFs), especially in countries where they have come to represent a significant proportion of the government budget, complicates these dynamics, with some arguing their influence in Melanesia has prompted the emergence of a distinct form of statehood. But where do women fit into CDF polit…
The 2019 Bougainville Referendum and the Question of Independence: From Conflict to Consensus
In 2019, a referendum on the political future of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville was held, resulting in a resounding majority–97.7 per cent–for independence from Papua New Guinea. The non-binding referendum was a long-awaited event within a lengthy peace process following a civil war that began in the late 1980s. The conflict caused deep divisions in an already factionalized society and generated divergent ideas on the future status of the …
Localising Global Norms: The Case of Family-Friendly Parliaments
In this article, we extend empirical understandings of feminist institutionalism by outlining a new methodological approach to the study of parliament as a gendered workplace. We argue that while a localised approach to studying institutional change allows a more nuanced appreciation of the role of local cultural context, internationalised norms can be an interesting starting point to work back from. A case study of the New Zealand parliament’s ‘…
Hispanic Caregivers of the Money Follows the Person Program in Connecticut: Satisfaction, Familism, and Burden
Hispanic caregivers provide more assistance than the U.S. average, but underutilize support services and report low levels of program satisfaction. A possible exception is the Money Follows the Person (MFP) program. Using an ordered logit statistical approach, we studied program satisfaction of all Hispanic caregivers assisting Connecticut MFP participants from 2014 to 2019, examining the effects of caregiver familism, burden, and personal charac…
Gender and Opposition Leadership in the Pacific Islands
Parliaments in the Pacific Islands are among the most male-dominated in the world. Yet despite the odds, there is a cohort of women who have been elected and won senior roles. This article adds to an emerging literature that examines the gendered pathways to political influence in the region by focusing on the hitherto overlooked role of the opposition leader. It uses a biographical approach to consider the pathways in and through this role by fo…
Reframing Suffrage Narratives: Pacific Women, Political Voice, and Collective Empowerment
Dominant narratives of women's suffrage have been shaped in ways that marginalize Pacific women's experiences.Such narratives have emphasized the struggles of Global North women to achieve individualized political empowerment, primarily through the right to vote, from the late 19th century.By measures of struggle, individual empowerment and temporality, Pacific women have been characterized as passive recipients of the vote in the late 20th centu…
Can women dynasty politicians disrupt social norms of political leadership? A proposed typology of normative change
Social norms that legitimise men as political leaders, and undervalue women’s leadership, are a tenacious barrier to women’s representation globally. This article explores the circumstances under which women dynasty politicians, whose legacy connections have provided them with an initial pathway into politics, are able to disrupt these norms. We test a proposed typology of normative change – one that progresses from norm acceptance, to norm modif…
The Power of Norms: Gender Equality Reforms in the Parliaments of Fiji and Samoa
Parliaments are increasingly defined as “gendered institutions,” with rules, norms, and practices that are often stubbornly resistant to gender equality initiatives. The gender sensitive parliaments’ global agenda has made substantial progress in both drawing attention to the gendered nature of parliaments and in spearheading gender equality reform. While a positive trend, there remains a significant disconnect between the (global) normative fram…
Gender and Political Leadership in Samoa: Fiame Naomi Mata‘afa and the 2021 Election
Tradition Meets Democracy: Perceptions of Women’s Political Leadership in Samoa
Women are globally underrepresented as political leaders; as of January 2023, only 17 countries had a woman head of government. Included in this small group is Samoa, which elected Fiame Naomi Mata’afa as its first woman prime minister in 2021 after a fiercely contested election and subsequent protracted legal disputes centered around interpretations of Samoa’s 10% gender quota. Drawing on data from the Pacific Attitudes Survey, the first large-s…
Popular Political Attitudes in Vanuatu: Findings of the Pacific Attitudes Survey
This paper presents the findings of the second Pacific Attitudes Survey (PAS), conducted in Vanuatu from August–October 2023. Drawing on a nationally representative sample ( n = 1330) of ni‐Vanuatu of voting‐age (18+), the PAS gauges the views of ordinary ni‐Vanuatu citizens on a range of questions related to democracy, economics, governance, tradition, climate change, labour mobility and international relations. This article focuses on how ni‐Va…
A Fiji (parliament) for all Fijians? The impact of gender-blind and race-blind electoral provisions in a divided society
Practising Politics in a Disorderly Democracy
Taking as its starting point Ron May's scholarship on Papua New Guinea as a “disorderly democracy,” this article examines how politics is practised in the PNG Parliament. Using a case study of the events of late 2020, when a vote of no confidence against the Marape government was mooted but eventually failed to materialise, it adopts a practice theory lens to explore how decisions are made, how coalitions are formed and disintegrate, and how poli…
Political science (20 works) · Politics (20 works) · Law (19 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Island Studies and Pacific Affairs (17 works) · Law (15 works) · Political economy (12 works) · Democracy (8 works) · Gender Studies (8 works) · Gender Studies (7 works)