Primaries vs. quotas: Gender and candidate nominations

Parties throughout Latin America have recently addressed two dis-tinct kinds of electoral reforms: primary elections and national-level gender quota laws. This study examines how these reforms inter-act, their mutual compatibility, and their effect on the nomination of men compared to that of women. It develops a series of hypotheses about this relationship by analyzing the 2003 legislative elections in Mexico, a case in which the three main parties relied on both gender quotas and primaries to select their candidates. Although the percentage of women elected to the Mexican Cham-ber of Deputies rose, the Federal Electoral Institute interpreted the gender quota law in a way that weakened its effect on women and limited the degree of openness in the primaries that were held. Legislative office is the key to power in many democratic political sys-tems. The rules for determining who gets the chance to hold that key therefore matter a great deal. Historically, candidate selection for man