Documenting Electoral Violence Assessing Tradeoffs in Data Collection Methods

• In Event: Evaluating Electoral Violence

Abstract

The lack of accurate locally sourced data is an obstacle to improving knowledge of electoral violence in African countries. Research on this form of violence is often based on secondary sources that limit the level of detail and even the accuracy of associated data. In this context, we are implementing four data-collection sources — civil society monitors, local leaders, citizens, and media — to compare their effectiveness in generating data on various forms of electoral coercion and violence. We assess the methodologies based on metrics related to event type (e.g., frequency, location, timing) as well as in relation to publicly available violence datasets. For this assessment, the methodologies will be implemented over a six-month period in a random sample of locations in the run-up to the October 2020 presidential elections in Côte d’Ivoire, a country where elections have been routinely marred by violence since the reestablishment of multiparty politics. Data are collected for one month before the election and three weeks afterward. The project’s resulting assessment will identify tradeoffs associated with each data source in terms of validity, accuracy, scalability, and cost — factors to be taken into account by organizations that seek to build their own data collection programs or even use those of others to better understand electoral violence. The primary goal in this research is to develop a protocol that provides African researchers with reliable, replicable, and low-cost means for collecting data on electoral violence in diverse settings. While versions of the methodologies described above have been employed in some African countries, no existing study has sought to integrate these approaches to determine the degree to which they can produce comparable levels of information both in terms of quality and quantity.

Authors

• Leonardo R. Arriola, University of California, Berkeley

• Arsene Brice Bado, Centre de Recherche et d'Action pour la Paix (CERAP)

• Justine Davis, University of Michigan

• Allison Namias Grossman, Stanford University

• Aila M. Matanock, University of California-Berkeley