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| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
141816
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| Summary/Abstract |
Do voters in Africa use elections to hold governments accountable for their performance in office? In contexts of limited information and weak state capacity, it can be difficult for citizens to attribute the provision of public goods and services to political action. As a result, voters often have little information about government performance on which to condition their electoral support. Such contexts are frequently characterized by clientelism or ethnic politics, and there is a widespread impression that African elections are little more than contests in corruption or ethnic mobilization. Using an original panel data set containing electoral returns and detailed information on road conditions throughout Ghana, the author provides robust evidence that when a public good can be attributed to political action, as is the case with roads in Ghana, electoral support is affected by the provision of that good. The author also uses data on a variety of educational inputs to test the claim that votes are conditioned only on attributable outcomes.
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| 2 |
ID:
147817
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| Summary/Abstract |
Are contingent electoral strategies, like vote buying and intimidation, effective in Africa? No, according to recent scholarship: unlike parties in other developing regions like Latin America, African parties lack the capacity to violate ballot secrecy and force voters to stick to their end of the bargain. Voters can therefore “defect” and vote their conscience. We challenge this perspective. Recent Afrobarometer data show that nearly one in four Africans doubt ballot secrecy. We argue that the perception of ballot secrecy violation is sufficient for enabling contingent strategies. Drawing upon Afrobarometer data and an original exit poll conducted during the 2008 Ghanaian election, we show that doubts about ballot secrecy correlate with vote buying, intimidation efforts, and measures of campaign intensity, suggesting that they are a deliberate product of party efforts. Pervasive doubts about ballot secrecy challenge the notion that African parties are too weak to implement contingent electoral strategies. African parties can and do convince voters that their vote choices are known, particularly in urban areas where party capacity and community accessibility are highest. Doubts about ballot secrecy enable both vote buying and voter intimidation strategies, and suggest that formal rules enshrining the secret ballot offer insufficient protection to African voters.
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| 3 |
ID:
175415
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| Summary/Abstract |
Sleight of hand in manipulating the computation of results has become the new might for deciding who wins presidential elections. It appears that whoever controls the computation exercises a right to take advantage and win, and whoever loses or relinquishes control of the computation loses the election. As incumbents do not want to be identified with direct interference or rigging, hacking has become an alternative means. This raises a serious challenge for election management bodies (EMBs) and a new frontier for international observation. As electronic data management has become a key battleground, international observers cannot restrict their monitoring to the manual process alone. However, individual states may have data sensitivity concerns about granting electronic monitoring access to partisan international observers. Institutionalizing internationally agreed protocols that would allow real-time monitoring of EMBs’ computer systems by international observers or forensic audits of any stage of the electoral process to investigate interference, manipulation, hacking, and counter claims, is now a necessity. At the same time, the extent to which international monitors can be trusted to be non-partisan is of equal importance and could reduce forum shopping over time.
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