Does First-Hand Experience with Politics Increase Performance-Based Voting?

• In Event: Field Experiments on Service Delivery and Accountability

Abstract

Voters’ reactions to information on politician performance have been the subject of much empirical research in the past few years. However, existing studies have mainly focused on the effects of increased information supply, while ignoring the demand side. In this study, we test if voters’ interest in and utilization of performance information can be increased by giving them first-hand exposure to political processes.

In a field experiment in Burkina Faso, we take advantage of a unique situation that allowed us to give citizens’ first-hand experience with political processes without simultaneously changing their level of information about the performance of incumbent politicians. In the wake of Burkina Faso’s 2014 revolution, elected local governments were temporarily replaced by centrally appointed caretaker governments that operated in the same legal and institutional framework as the elected governments. Several months later, local elections were held, and the previous incumbent politicians were up for re-election, while members of the caretaker governments were ineligible.

Our experiment consisted of two sequential, cross-cutting treatment arms: First, randomly selected voting-age citizens are invited to attend local council meetings under the caretaker governments as “citizen observers”, through which they gained familiarity with local governance processes. Second, an individually-targeted information intervention provided voters with information about the performance of the original incumbent government that was up for re-election.

We investigate how first-hand experience with local governance processes – as “citizen observer” under the caretaker governments – affects voters’ subsequent interest in and processing of performance information about the incumbent government, as well as the relationship between performance information and vote choice.

Authors

• Malte Lierl, German Institute of Global and Area Studies

• Marcus Holmlund, The World Bank