work in progress
The Party’s Hand in Primary Elections: Evidence from Party Primaries in a New Democracy
In response to mounting calls for internal party democracy, political parties in new democracies have increasingly allowed for mass participation in the candidate selection process. While these reforms should result in the diminishing influence of party leaders and the ascendancy of mass preferences over the selection of party candidates, few studies have examined whether this is the case. I investigate this question in Kenya, where major incumbent and opposition parties have adopted primary elections to select their candidates for legislative office. Drawing on insights from qualitative interviews with elected officials, original data on primary elections, as well as a survey and embedded experiments of primary voters, I show that contrary to expectations, parties wield significant influence over the outcome of primaries and that primary voters can be persuaded to select the party’s favored candidate over other higher quality aspirants. These findings have implications for our understanding of the relationship between internal party democracy and democratic accountability in the developing world.
Arrested Debate: Opposition Repression and Parliamentary Speech
with Fiona Shen-Bayh (Maryland)
How does the repression of opposition leaders outside of parliament affect legislative behavior within it? Prior research emphasizes the effects of repression on mobilization, protest, and elections, but few works examine its consequences on legislative debate. We argue that in democratic contexts where dissent is normally allowed and encouraged, opposition repression has a chilling effect on opposition speech-making because it generates uncertainty over both the bounds of permissible speech and the consequences of speaking beyond these bounds. We explore these dynamics in Zambia during the presidency of Edgar Lungu, when the opposition leader Hakainde Hichilema was suddenly and arbitrarily arrested on charges of sedition and treason. Using data on more than 350,000 parliamentary speeches from the Zambian National Assembly between 2011-2021, we leverage a difference-in-differences design to compare parliamentary speech patterns of opposition and incumbent party legislators before and after the arrest of the opposition leader. We find a marked deterioration in the quantity and quality of debate following the arrest, including persistent reductions in the frequency and length of speeches made by opposition legislators as well as their discussion of substantive policy issues. We further show that opposition legislators were more likely to be interrupted during their speaking turn and denied requests to speak by the House Speaker, which we interpret as increased incivility by incumbent party members towards opposition members. Our findings demonstrate the pernicious consequences of repression on freedom of speech and democratic representation in new democracies.
Mobile Communication Technology and National Identity in Sub-Saharan Africa
with Benjamin Laughlin (NYU Abu Dhabi) and Anna Schultz
We examine how the expansion of mobile internet infrastructure affects national identity in sub-Saharan Africa. In diverse societies where elections are contested along ethno-communal lines, we argue that access to mobile internet undermines national identity because it facilitates voter exposure to the polarizing tendencies of internet-based social media and communication platforms. Applying a difference-in-differences design on mobile coverage maps and geocoded survey data of more than 50,000 African citizens, we show that access to mobile internet reduces identification with the nation by up to 5-7 percentage points. To establish support for our electoral mechanism, we exploit as-if random variation in the timing of individuals’ survey interviews relative to presidential elections, during which we argue divisive and polarizing forces are at their peak. Our analysis shows that electoral proximity intensifies the negative effect of mobile internet. These findings highlight how technological innovations can inhibit the process of state-building in diverse societies.
Do Voters Respond to Cross-Cleavage Campaigning in Polarized Societies?
with Leo Arriola (UC Merced), Matthew Gichohi (Chr. Michelsen Institute), and Ken Opalo (Georgetown)
Are cross-cleavage campaigns effective in polarized societies? While social demographics and electoral rules in many countries compel candidates to pursue votes outside their own identity groups, the efficacy of such campaigns remains unclear in polarized contexts. We argue that cross-cleavage electoral outreach through in-person campaign rallies can inadvertently trigger inter-group differentiation and competition, resulting in the heightened salience of identity and depressed voter support for outgroup candidates. We assess these claims by exploiting the timing of an unscheduled campaign rally held by an outgroup presidential candidate in another ethnic group’s stronghold during Kenya’s 2017 election. Comparing survey respondents before and after the rally, we find that the outgroup candidate’s post-rally favorability significantly decreased among ingroup voters, while the proportion of voters identifying in ethnic terms simultaneously increased. These findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the challenges faced in democratic elections in socially divided societies.
Partisanship, Gender, and the Structure of Politician Networks in Zambia
with Leo Arriola (UC Merced), Justine Davis (Michigan), Melanie Phillips, and Lise Rakner (Bergen)
Although women have entered government in African countries at an unprecedented rate over the past three decades, it remains unknown to what extent they have acquired the influence necessary to shape policymaking. Are women able to exercise personal influence to the same degree or in the same ways as their male counterparts? We argue that women tend to be less influential than men due to the structure of their personal networks with other politicians. Prior scholarship on African politics has demonstrated that political outcomes depend on the personal ties that connect politicians to one other. Based on a novel network survey among Zambian candidates, we demonstrate that women tend to be peripherally situated within networks. We find that women are systematically less likely to be connected to others in social or work networks among politicians. We also demonstrate that, while having fewer connections than men, women have connections with more important people in both social and work networks.
Lasting Effects of Transient Exposure to the Greek Refugee Crisis: Affective versus Cognitive Responses to Tragedy and Realistic Threat
with Nicholas Sambanis (Yale)
We investigate whether transient exposure to refugees can durably affect native attitudes and behavior. Our case is Greece’s refugee crisis, which saw a sudden influx of more than 1 million refugees in 2015 following the escalation of conflicts in the Middle East. We capitalize on the fact that the Aegean Islands—the epicenter of the refugee crisis—are home to the campus for the University of the Aegean (UA), which draws students from across Greece. We conduct a targeted survey (N=3,900) of student cohorts that attended university prior to or during the refugee crisis. Employing an instrumented difference-in-difference design and a matching strategy informed by distinctive features of the Greek university admissions system, we compare the current-day attitudes, preferences, and behavioral dispositions of students who attended the University of the Aegean and thereby had significant exposure to refugees during the crisis, to otherwise similar students who attended university elsewhere and thus had limited exposure. Our findings paint a more complex picture than existing work; students who attended UA during the crisis have more favorable attitudinal and behavioral dispositions towards refugees today, but also simultaneously support more restrictive immigration policy.
Competing Frames and Policymakers’ Preferences for LGBT+ Protection: Experimental Evidence from Zambia
with Leo Arriola (UC Merced), Justine Davis (Michigan), Melanie Phillips, and Lise Rakner (Bergen)
When are politicians willing to extend formal social protections to LGBT+ minorities? While the protection of civil liberties and rights for LGBT+ communities continues to feature prominently in political debates around the world, there is limited understanding of the factors that shape the views of politicians who enact the laws that govern these protections. This study examines the effectiveness of two competing frames—that cast the protection of LGBT+ individuals either as a public health crisis or a human rights crisis—that advocacy organizations frequently employ to persuade policymakers to liberalize their position on LGBT+ minority protection. Drawing on a survey and experiment conducted among more than 600 political candidates who contested for national and local office in Zambia, we show that politicians are significantly more likely to respond to the human rights frame than the public health frame. These effects are primarily driven by male candidates and exist only when the crisis is explicitly framed in terms of its impact on the general public rather than the LGBT+ communities themselves. An analysis of open-ended responses provides suggestive evidence regarding the mechanism underlying these effects; the human rights frame appears to have reduced politicians’ tendency to dehumanize members of the LGBT+ community.