The Complementarity Advantage: Parties, Representativeness and Newcomers' Access to Power

Why have ethnic minority women-a group experiencing 'double barriers' in society and politics-gained inroads into formal politics in Belgium more quickly than ethnic minority men? Our qualitative analysis of candidate selection shows that political parties prefer ethnic minority women candidates because their 'intersectional identity mix' is maximally complementary to groups embodied by the incumbents. It enables party selectors to maximise the representativeness of the list by including a limited number of newcomers. The groups that are able to cash in on such a 'complementarity advantage' vary depending on the identity of the incumbents and the political salience of social groups' identities.