In recent years, scholarship in the subfield of women and politics has met with a puzzling trend. The percentage of women in state legislatures, once steadily growing, has leveled off and even decreased in recent years. It is from this puzzle that Kira Sanbonmatsu's book begins: Why is the growth of women's representation in the state legislatures slowing down, and what do political parties have to do with it? Sanbonmatsu's argument is thoughtful, detailed and compelling, and she generates a bounty of information for scholars of women and politics, state politics, and political parties.

The author's analysis focuses on whether stronger political parties will attempt to influence the prenomination process in order to draw women candidates into office, thus increasing the representation of women in the state legislatures. On the one hand, Sanbonmatsu expects that parties may enhance women's representation by acting as recruiters who find more women candidates to run in the primaries. On the other hand, parties may act as gatekeepers by making their preferences known in the primaries through endorsements, financial assistance, or discouragement of potential opponents. Because of assumptions about women as candidates, this gatekeeping function could stifle women's candidacies and lower the number of women in office. She tests these alternatives using three main data sources: in-depth semistructured interviews with state and legislative party leaders, state legislators, and other actors, such as interest groups in Alabama, Colorado, Iowa, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Ohio; a mail survey of state party and legislative leaders and Ohio state legislative candidates; and a quantitative analysis of women nominees for major parties.

Contrary to her expectations, Sanbonmatsu finds that strong parties do not facilitate, and in fact can hinder, the development of a deep pool of women candidates. In Ohio, for example, where party recruitment is strongest, legislators report that potential women candidates are often not on the radar of party leaders when they recruit; rather, they recruit from informal social networks that some legislators refer to as “good ol' boy” networks. Conversely, in Alabama, weak parties do not offer women opportunities to be self-starters; lack of confidence in women candidates by interest groups and state public opinion remain enough to suppress the draw of women to the candidate pool.

One of the most significant contributions of Sanbonmatsu's research is her analysis of perceptions among potential candidates and party leaders. Interviews with women and men legislators reveal that there is a substantial gender gap in perceptions about the nomination process; for instance, 78% of men candidates think the party is equally encouraging of men and women candidates, but only 34% of women believe this (p. 139). Moreover, stereotypes that have been dismissed in scholarly literature, such as campaign finance differences between men and women, are perceived as quite real by the legislators she interviews. There seems to be an interesting disconnect between what political scientists find in research about women candidates and what party leaders perceive about women candidates, indicating that understanding perception can be as important in research about women candidates as analyzing the realities of outcomes.

Sanbonmatsu's analysis also sheds interesting light on our knowledge about political parties. In Chapter 3, she notes that legislative campaign committees in the states often engage in more political recruiting than do state or local party leaders. Though congressional work has identified the influence of Hill committees in the congressional campaign, this reveals a trend toward the increasing power of these committees at the state legislative level as well. Additionally, it is clear that parties vary widely in their attempts to control nominations. Some, like the Massachusetts Democrats, have such a majority that they give recruiting and gatekeeping little thought; others, like both parties in North Carolina, engage in a sort of preprimary intended to weed out candidates and avoid competition in a primary. Sanbonmatsu's interviews with party elites in the states are among the most in-depth sources of knowledge about party organization at the state level.

A notable problem in this research is both a testament to the author's research skill and a detriment typical of state legislative research. Explanations abound in the existing literature for the shallow pool of women candidates: Public opinion in a state is not conducive to women's success, women perceive less of a chance to win and therefore hesitate to run, or women do not run because of disproportionate responsibility in the home. Each of these explanations has merit to a degree, and Sanbonmatsu is clear and candid in pointing out instances in her six cases when these explanations seem to be pertinent. However, the confluence of variables and possible explanations for the differences among the six cases can become overwhelming in relation to the party influence over nominations. She is to be commended for using an alternative data source, the quantitative information about state legislative recruiting practices found in chapter 6, to test her conclusions from the six case studies and try to alleviate this problem to some extent. Nevertheless, her work serves as a reminder that within the richness of variation among state legislative practices can be frustration over the myriad differences among the states.

Two additional problems characterize the research here and are both acknowledged by the author. First, social desirability is likely an issue within the interviews; for instance, she notes that both Democrats and Republicans indicated that their party offered more opportunities for women candidates (p. 113). Several quotations from women legislators suggest that they may have felt more comfortable expressing doubts about the recruitment of women candidates to a female interviewer than men legislators would be. Second, the analysis here is based largely on one point in time, and therefore does not capture how changes in party involvement in the nomination process or concerted efforts to recruit women candidates (such as Iowa's Women in Public Policy, p. 142) may increase or decrease the number of women running for office in a state. Future studies could examine these changes, as well as how party influence (or the lack thereof) on the nomination process structures women's behavior once in office.

Overall, Sanbonmatsu's work is a substantial contribution to our knowledge about why more women candidates do not run for political office. The interview evidence she uses is so rich with observation about women, parties, and state politics that a short description of the central question here cannot do it justice. Where Women Run is a must-read for scholars in these areas of American politics.