Consequences of African Electoral Integrity

Session Submission Type: Virtual Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Most African countries organize competitive elections. Ideally, elections should contribute to enhanced political accountability, ensure substantive and descriptive representation, promote increased participation, strengthen regime legitimacy, and mitigate political conflict through increased inclusion and institutionalized avenues for elite replacement. Yet, many functions usually associated with competitive elections are severely compromised when elections fail to live up to international standards of electoral integrity. When elections are manipulated, using various tools, they may in fact serve to deepen group grievances, perpetuate political marginalized of critical populations, such as women and ethnic minorities and enhance political apathy. In Africa, the role of elections has been particularly questioned. While some authors have suggested that elections have become increasingly inclusive and promoted competition and participation over time, others have argued that elections have enhanced levels of corruption, exacerbated ethnic conflict, and fundamentally failed in meaningfully broaden political representation.

In this panel, we discuss the effects of (lacking) electoral integrity on a number of normatively important outcomes, including inter-ethnic trust, female political representation, parliamentary executive oversight, and political participation. Papers in the panel focus on four different African countries: Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and Malawi. The panel will focus on different forms of violent and non-violent electoral manipulation. It will also discuss elections at different levels, including intra-party elections, parliamentary elections, and presidential elections. Panelists will focus on micro-level behavior, as well as sub-national variations in electoral integrity, using innovative data and diverse methods. The panel will make important contributions to the comparative democratization literature by questioning to what extent low electoral integrity may create vicious cycles of political exclusion and instability on the African continent.

Sub Unit

• Division 53: African Politics

Individual Presentations

• Election Quality and the Dynamics of Voter Turnout: Evidence from Nigeria - Bodunrin Joseph Adebo, National Democratic Institute; Nicholas Kerr

• Parliamentarians Back in Parliament: Fairer Elections and MPs as Representatives - Nikolaos Frantzeskakis, Michigan State University

• Party Primaries and Female Representation: Too Much or Too Little Democracy? - Merete Bech Seeberg, Department of Political Science, Aarhus University; Michael Wahman, Michigan State University

• The Enduring Effects of Election Violence: Evidence from Kenya - Kathleen Klaus, Uppsala University

Chair

• Daniela Donno University of Cyprus

Discussant

• George Kwaku Ofosu London School of Economics and Political Science