Candidate Qualifications and Discrimination: Evidence from Afghanistan

• In Event: Public Opinion and Experimental Methods in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

Do qualifications help candidates from historically marginalized groups in the court of public opinion? While some argue that high professional and educational qualifications level the playing field for female and minority candidates, others warn of backlash. A third strand of scholarship finds that candidate qualifications have little bearing on respondents’ attitudes towards candidates from historically under-represented groups (Teele et al., 2018; Hankla et al. 2022).

We examine these processes with data from an original conjoint experiment fielded in three Afghan provinces in 2016. The conjoint asked over 2,000 Afghan respondents to rank and choose between hypothetical profiles of candidates with varying gender, ethnic and educational attributes. We explore whether high education levels boost respondents' support for hypothetical candidates from two traditionally excluded groups: women and Hazaras – a historically marginalized Shi’ite minority.

We find little evidence of public opinion backlash against high educated female candidates. Our models consistently estimate that respondents are more likely to choose a high educated female candidate over a low educated male candidate. Higher education, however, is less of an asset for Hazara candidates. Respondents are indifferent to profiles with highly educated Hazara candidates, and they are just as likely to select a profile with a less educated non-Hazara.

However, once candidates’ gender is taken into account, we find that education lifts Hazara male candidates’ favourability over less educated coethnic and non-coethnic candidates. High education also strengthens Hazara female candidates’ favourability relative to less educated Hazara female candidates. Nevertheless, unlike with highly educated Hazara men, our respondents remain biased against highly educated Hazara female candidates.

The results suggest that Hazara women face more significant electoral obstacles than either Hazara men or women of other ethnicities, and that qualifications can only go so far in mitigating this effect. Our findings therefore suggest limited evidence in favour of a qualifications gap in the Afghan context and underscore the need for a multidimensional intersectional approach in future research. In that sense, they are aligned with Bauer (2020)'s argument that intersecting identities shape how individuals value candidates’ qualifications. Policies designed to encourage the political inclusion of women and marginalized groups should take account of these intersectional differences. We conclude by proposing theoretical mechanisms underpinning these findings.

Authors

• Jasmine Bhatia, Birkbeck University of London

• Steve Monroe, National University of Singapore