New Perspectives on Political Behavior in Sub-Saharan Africa

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Innovations in survey and experimental methodologies suitable for developing country contexts have greatly enhanced our ability to understand what determines the preferences and behavior of ordinary citizens in sub-Saharan Africa. Recent work employing these approaches, have tended to focus on investigating the extent to which factors such as ethnicity or clientelism—frameworks that have a long tradition in the study of African politics—play in shaping the behavior of African voters. However, such a focus has left little room for scholars to study the role of a diverse array of alternative factors that may feature prominently in the voter’s calculus. For example, do African voters pay attention and respond to the distributional implications of government policies? Are voters willing to reward programmatic policy commitments that serve their interests? Are the opinion and preferences of voters susceptible to elite persuasion and influence?

This panel represents a collective effort to bring novel insights to the study of political behavior across sub-Saharan Africa using survey and experimental methods. Horowitz and Michelitch draw on evidence from surveys and experiments fielded before the 2017 Kenyan elections to examine whether access to government services shapes voter beliefs about future favoritism and preferences for equitable distribution. Gadjanova leverages a survey experiment prior to the 2016 Ghanaian election to examine whether the salience of policies that create clear ethnic winners and losers lead voters to identify on ethnic terms. Greene and Rauschenbach combine a computational analysis of party manifestos and analyses of nationally-representative survey data across seven African countries to show parties that adopt pro-rural platforms enjoy higher support among rural voters. Choi et al. exploit two natural experiments during the period of campaigning for the 2017 Kenyan election to estimate the effect of campaign rallies on how voters evaluate political candidates.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 53: African Politics Conference Group

Chair

• Jeremy Horowitz Dartmouth College

Discussants

• Amanda Lea Robinson Ohio State University

• John F. McCauley University of Maryland, College Park

Individual Presentations

• Does Information About Public Service Delivery Affect Ethnic Discrimination? - Jeremy Horowitz, Dartmouth College; Kristin Grace Michelitch, Vanderbilt University

• Pride, Patronage, or Policies? Mechanisms Behind the Politicization of Ethnicity - Elena Gadjanova, Oxford University

• Programmatic Competition? Evidence for a Rural-Urban Divide in African Elections - Zachary David Greene, University of Strathclyde; Mascha Rauschenbach, University of Mannheim

• Persuasion or Backlash? The Effect of Campaign Rallies in African Elections - Donghyun Danny Choi, University of Pennsylvania; Leonardo R. Arriola, University of California, Berkeley; Matthew K Gichohi, University of Bergen; Ken Ochieng' Opalo, Georgetown University