Strategic Compliance with Gender Quotas: A Model of Party Behaviour and Evidence from Brazil

Why do parties follow the rules but sidestep the intent of electoral gender quotas? Although quotas are designed to promote inclusion, parties often nominate women while denying them viable support, resulting in widespread symbolic compliance. This article develops a formal model of strategic quota behaviour, theorising how parties navigate the trade-off between token gestures and meaningful investment. The model incorporates a viability threshold for campaign funding and parameters for elite entrenchment, status quo bias, and ideological commitment. We apply it to Brazil’s 2022 federal deputy elections, simulating party-level decisions using campaign finance and incumbency data. The model captures observed variation in compliance and identifies meaningful residuals, such as the Workers’ Party’s overperformance and NOVO’s underperformance. These findings show that while structural incentives matter, internal party norms and ideologies remain decisive. By combining formal modelling with empirical diagnostics, we provide a new framework for understanding how institutional rules are distorted or activated by political incentives.