This research project analyzes women in political parties. My most extensive piece of publicized research for this project is my book, The CDU and the Politics of Gender in Germany: Bringing Women to the Party. The book’s main finding is that having an internal organization within a political party can significantly enhance the chances of female party activists to get their agenda adopted by the party.

This research introduces and develops the concept of the corporatist catch-all party. The corporatist catch-all party structure is a type of party organization that can help explain party decision making on personnel and policy issues. This kind of internal party structure also allows for more membership participation than in a classic catch-all party. Kirchheimer argues that when catch-all parties reach out to new constituencies, they are forced to reduce the involvement of membership to facilitate doctrinal flexibility. Corporatist catch-all parties, however, seek to balance the demands of old and new constituencies, not by demobilizing the former, but by mobilizing the latter.  Emerging societal interests are recognized and privileged within the party through a system of internal corporatism. Party policy making and personnel is best explained as the result of internal negotiation among represented groups. Electoral concerns and party ideology certainly matter as well, but these factors are refracted through the lens of internal party dynamics. In addition to finding that women within a corporatist catch-all party have greater success at influencing policy making when they have an effective internal party organization, this book finds, contrary to Kirchheimer, that a political party – even a catch-all party – need not sacrifice internal democracy and ignore its members in order to succeed at the polls.

This research concentrates on the German Christian Democratic Union, but also develops comparisons to other parties. The CDU and the Politics of Gender in Germany uses comparisons with Christian Democratic parties in Austria, Italy and the Netherlands and Social Democratic parties in France and Hungary to demonstrate the importance of an internal party organization for women.