IPSR SPECIAL ISSUE: GENDER AND POLITICAL FINANCING

 

IPSA’s flagship journal, the International Political Science Review (IPSR), starts the year with a special issue on Gender and Political Financing. Money is power, and power is very difficult to access without money. Contesting elections is a very costly affair that compels many candidates around the world to have, and/or raise, large sums of money. Most especially, this applies to candidates in countries who must privately fundraise, but even in countries with public financing and strict regulation of election expenses, candidates face time and opportunity costs.

 

This special issue (January 2023, Volume 44, Number 1) asks the question whether these costs are gendered. Covering seven case studies in six papers, the authors concretely demonstrate that the costs of running for office are not gender neutral. Rather, the first three contributions convincingly show that women face higher prohibitive costs and face more hurdles while fundraising (see articles by Murray; Atmor and Kenig; Feo et al.). The second trio of articles (Buckley and Mariani; Muriaas et al.; Shin and Kwon) enhance our knowledge of the roles of political parties in mitigating financial gender gaps.

 

IPSA members can access the full IPSR archive dating back to 1980 through the My IPSA menu. IPSR is published by SAGE and is committed to publishing peer-reviewed material that makes a significant contribution to international political science.

1. The beginning of the new year provides an opportunity to look back on the previous year and take stock, and numerous summaries are available on the most significant events that marked 2022. A useful tool for navigating recent events is “The Year in Review” offered by many newspapers and institutions, including Time, the Financial Times, the World Street Journal, Reuters, and the World Bank (Media Sources on the IPSAPortal).

 

2. The striking findings of the Pew Research Center’s 2022 Report present a retrospective of the past year through 15 of its most striking research findings. These findings represent a small sample of the Center’s research publications and cover some of the biggest news events of 2022, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (with a correlation between following the news of the war and viewing Russia as an enemy of the U.S.), the legality of abortion (with few Americans taking an absolutist view either in support or in opposition to it), and the evolution of information access trends, with TikTok becoming a growing source of information compared to other social media (Research Institutes on the IPSAPortal).

 

3. The 2012 MOOC Hype provided a major boost to the online learning business. The global pandemic served to advance MOOC markets and investments, spurring the creation of numerous online startups and prompting universities to rethink their strategies. But it also seems that many overestimated the “new normal.” By 2022, big online learning providers enacted layoffs, and entering 2023 only one major independent MOOC provider is left standing. The annual report provided by Class Central, 2022 Year in Review: The “New Normal” that Wasn’t, offers some interesting highlights of major trends in the online education landscape (Thematic Sites on the IPSAPortal).