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The Story of the Theory of Critical Mass
Abstract
The theory of a “critical mass” seems to live a life of its own, in spite of reservations expressed by researchers, my own reservations included. In debates about women's political representation, the importance of a certain number or percentage of women in political assemblies is often stressed. According to conventional wisdom, research has shown that it takes a certain minimum representation, for example, 30%, before the minority, here women, are able to make a substantial difference in politics.
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“Recent theoretical (22) and empirical (23) results have shown how a minority of adversarial agents can exert an outsized influence on the group, provided that they reach a threshold or “critical mass” (24–26).”
From Emergent social conventions and collective bias in LLM populations (2025) · cites this paper as [26]
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Metadata
- Authors
- Dahlerup, D.
- Affiliations
- Stockholm University (SE)
- Corresponding author
- Dahlerup, Drude
- ORCID
- Dahlerup, Drude
- Venue
- Politics & Gender
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2006-11-28
- Volume
- 2
- Issue
- 04
- ISSN
- 1743-923X (ISSN-L)
- 1743-9248
- OpenAlex
- W2157199109
- Cited by
- 355
- References
- 5
- Citations by year
- 2026: 16 · 2025: 23 · 2024: 47 · 2023: 16 · 2022: 29 · 2021: 26 · 2020: 12 · 2019: 33 · 2018: 16 · 2017: 20 · 2016: 17 · 2015: 13 · 2014: 17 · 2013: 21 · 2012: 8
- FWCI
- 17.99
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Politics & Gender (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Gender Politics and Representation
- Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Gender and Feminist Studies
- Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Gender Diversity and Inequality
- Keywords
- critical mass, women's political representation, gender quotas, minority representation, political assemblies, gender and politics, women in politics
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