Votes without Leverage

Download or read book Votes without Leverage written by Anna L. Harvey and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-07-13 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using recent theoretical developments in the political economy of institutions and electoral behavior, this book attempts to solve an enduring puzzle in women's electoral politics, namely why the increasing importance of women's votes in the 1920s did not imply increasing success for the lobbying efforts of women's organizations. The book argues that women's exclusion from the suffrage created terms that led to distinctive patterns of post-suffrage female electoral politics. These electoral dynamics in turn are responsible for the decline in the political influence of women's organizations by the mid-1920s.