Defending the Status Quo : On Adaptive Resistance to Electoral Gender Quotas

Defending the Status Quo explores political elites'' resistance against electoral gender quota reforms, a widespread reform aimed at improving women''s political representation. The book introduces The Resistance Stage Framework, a theoretical model rooted in feminist institutionalism, which outlines how politicians try to block or slow down gender-equitable change throughout the policy process. Through a detailed analysis of Uruguay''s 30-year struggle to adopt and implement electoral gender quotas, the book reveals the adaptive nature of resistance among powerful status quo defenders. Drawing on interviews and legislative debates, the book shows how resistance strategies vary over the policy process and across political parties in response to changing institutional and ideational constraints.

Defending the Status Quo explores political elites'' resistance to electoral gender quota reforms. In order to explain this phenomenon, Cecilia Josefsson develops an original theoretical framework that she calls the Resistance Stage Framework.Anchored in feminist institutionalism and mapped onto the policy process, Josefsson outlines how status quo defenders adapt their resistance strategies to accommodate institutional and ideational changes across agenda setting, policy formulation, decision-making, and implementation phases. She bolsters her theory with a thick description of a 30-year-long process to adopt and implement electoral gender quotas in Uruguay. While Uruguay has been a vanguard in the women''s rights movement, men''s political dominance has been pervasive in this country. The struggle to introduce a gender quota has been marked by repeated reform attempts, persistent resistance, and a wide variation in the responses of the Uruguayan political parties, making this case apt for developing theory and shedding light on the adaptive nature of resistance. Drawing on extensive interviews with Uruguayan political elites, three quota debates, and party electoral lists, Josefsson carefully examines the power struggle over gender quota reform. She shows how powerful status quo defenders, seeking to ignore, stall, and undermine gendered institutional change, adapt their resistance strategies across different political parties and over time, as quota advocates make advances and manage to change the institutional and ideational context.