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Across the world, local governments have expanded opportunities for women’s political inclusion, allowing them to shape governance in their communities. But does women’s inclusion drive systemic change beyond the local level? If so, how? “Representation from Below: The Grassroots Origins of Women’s Political Power,” challenges conventional wisdom by revealing the strategic logic behind how women turn to party-building as a means of gaining influence, driving broader transformations in political parties and democratic politics. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, the natural experiment of gender quotas, and novel data on party activity across India, the book introduces the concept of “inclusive party-building”—a process through which women in local politics recruit other women, reshape party structures, and gain leverage over party elites. They achieve this through their comparative advantage in mobilizing women voters and by organizing collective action within parties. By tracing the rise of women party activists and women’s wings across India, this work shows how women in local politics turn parties into engines of representation, ultimately reshaping the democratic landscape. This talk will explore the book’s core arguments, empirical insights, and the broader implications for women’s political representation in India and beyond. A key finding of the book is that women’s inclusion is not just beneficial for their representation—it is also strategic for parties, demonstrating that the real impact of women’s entry into local politics lies beyond the local realm.

Tanushree Goyal 

is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at Princeton University. Her research sits at the intersection of comparative politics, development, gender, and political economy, with a particular focus on India and Brazil. She investigates fundamental questions about institutions, culture, and democracy, including: What drives inequalities in political access? Can decentralized political institutions enhance accountability, foster collective action, and drive systemic change to improve human welfare? How does culture shape politics, and can politics drive cultural change?

Her work employs diverse methodological approaches, including natural, survey, and field experiments, large-scale and long-form surveys, in-depth qualitative fieldwork, and high-resolution administrative data. Her research has been published in top political science journals, including American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, and Journal of Politics. It has also been widely covered in leading national and international media, and she has contributed opinion editorials to The Indian Express.

Goyal’s scholarship has been recognized with some of the most prestigious awards in political science, including the Mancur Olson Best Dissertation Award in Political Economy (2022) and the Juan Linz Prize for Best Dissertation in the Comparative Study of Democracy & Autocracy (2023). She serves as an Associate Editor at World Politics and is a member of EGAP, J-PAL, EGEN, and the UK’s Political Economy Group.

Previously, she was a postdoctoral scholar at the Harvard Academy and a non-resident visiting fellow at the Center for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania. She earned her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Oxford in 2021 as a member of Nuffield College. Before transitioning to political science, she completed a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Engineering.

Joint Seminar on South Asian Politics