Electoral fraud or violence: the effect of observers on party manipulation strategies

This article reports on the effects of domestic election observers on electoral fraud and violence. Using an experimental research design and polling station data on fraud and violence during Ghana's 2012 elections, it shows that observers reduced fraud and violence at the polling stations which they monitored. It is argued that local electoral competition shapes party activists' response to observers. As expected, in single-party dominant areas, parties used their local political networks to relocate fraud to polling stations without an election observer, and, in contrast, party activists relocated violence to stations without observers in competitive areas - a response that requires less local organizational capacity. This highlights how local party organization and electoral incentives can shape the manipulative electoral strategies employed by parties in democratic elections

Socialization, Adaptation, Transnationalism, and the Reproductive Behavior of Sub-Saharan African Migrants in France

Background:  Migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) move from a region with high fertility to regions with low fertility. Yet very few studies have examined the reproductive behavior of international migrants from SSA. Objective: This study examines the roles of origin and destination socialization on the fertility and fertility ideals of SSA migrants in France. The study draws on measures of assimilation to systematically examine the effects of socialization and adaptation as well as transnationalism for the effects of sustained origin ties.  Methods: Data are from the TEO (“Trajectoires et Origines”) survey conducted in France (2008/2009). Logistic regression is used to examine current fertility (the odds of having a birth in the preceding five years), and Poisson regression is used to examine cumulative fertility (children ever born) and fertility ideals (reported ideal number of children in a family). Results: Controlling for sociodemographic factors, first-generation SSA migrants have higher fertility than second-generation SSA migrants and non-immigrants. But first and second-generation SSA migrants have higher fertility ideals than non-immigrants. Among SSA migrants, first and second-generation migrants do not differ in fertility and fertility ideals when adaptation is accounted for. Most measures of adaptation are negatively associated with actual fertility and fertility ideals. Transnationalism is associated with higher fertility ideals but less so with actual fertility. Conclusion: The study finds some evidence for origin socialization, but the findings are more strongly supportive of adaptation to the host society. Origin socialization appears to have a stronger influence on fertility ideals than actual fertility

Partisanship and political accountability in new democracies: Explaining compliance with formal rules and procedures in Ghana

Standard political agency models generally predict an inverse relationship between the degree of partisan allegiance among citizens and political accountability. Does variation in voter attachments to political parties influence the behavior of public officials in new democracies? I take advantage of data from a unique audit of local governments in Ghana—the Functional Organizational Assessment Tool (FOAT)—to examine the impact of partisanship on public officials’ compliance with formal rules and procedures. Because unattached or weakly attached voters are more responsive to the performance of incumbent officials, they are more likely to deter rent seeking, corruption, and other administrative malpractices. Analysis of the baseline FOAT results provides strong support for this idea: compliance with formal rules and procedures is significantly higher in districts where voters evince weak attachments to political parties. This result is robust to controls for alternate explanations and sheds light on the conditions under which politicians would abjure rent seeking and corruption, even in the context of a new democracy where they have so much opportunity to do so

The Sources of Non-discretionary Distributive Politics in Africa

Since the early 2000s, more and more governments in the developing world have introduced programs to transfer cash and deliver complementary public services directly to citizens using purely economic and other technical criteria. A number of careful studies on some of these programs show that political criteria play no role in predicting who does and does not receive benefits. Some scholars suggest that the rising popularity of non-discretionary distribution of public resources by politicians in some developing countries is indicative of a potential decline of clientelism in those countries. That political support for non-discretionary forms of resource distribution is growing and clientelism may be declining in the developing world is welcome news. But these emerging patterns of public resource distribution by politicians raise important questions. In this dissertation, I develop a theory to explain why politicians would design policies and allocate valued benefits to voters in ways that reduce or eliminate their own discretion. I argue that non-discretionary distributive strategies enable incumbent politicians to build electoral support and thus enhancing their chances of reelection in two ways: first, these strategies enable incumbents to extend benefits to voters outside their circle of loyal voters, potentially broadening their electoral support among those voters. Second, non-discretionary distributive strategies help to reduce the risk of offending and potentially alienating some of their loyal voters. This concern is particularly salient in Africa where access to state resources influences electoral behavior. I test this theory with audit and survey data collected in Ghana. I show that the patterns of resource allocation strategies by politicians and the electoral behavior of voters are best explained by the argument presented in this project.Chapter 2 lays out the main argument and identifies a number of empirical implications. I contrast these implications with those of existing theories of clientelism and those on the effects of economic development on bureaucratic reforms. Chapter 2 concludes with preliminary evidence on the impact of public benefits on voting behavior in Ghana using the 2012 Afrobarometer survey. The results show that voters who benefit from a government healthcare program are more likely to vote for the party in government. This effect is driven largely by voters not affiliated to any party. Chapter 3 tests one of the main implications of my argument: that when incumbents are concerned about their chances of reelection they would be more likely to favor non-discretionary forms of resource distribution in swing areas. I use data from a nationwide assessment of all local governments in Ghana on their compliance with budget allocation rules to test this prediction. The results show that local governments in districts with a swing history score significantly higher on their compliance with budget implementation rules than those without a swing history. Moreover, the magnitude of swing reinforces this effect: compliance with budget implementation rules is significantly higher in those districts where the size of the swing is larger.Chapter 4 analyzes survey data to show how the electoral behavior of voters varies with politicians' resource distribution strategies. I show that voters, particularly swing voters, are significantly more likely to vote for incumbent politicians if they believe that the allocation of public resources by these politicians is fair, that is, non-discretionary. The results also show that among loyal voters of incumbent politicians, support for those politicians who are perceived to favor non-discretionary distributive strategies is slightly higher than those perceived to pursue largely discretionary distributive strategies. Chapter 5 concludes with a discussion of the theoretical and policy implications of the findings

Replication Data for: Partisanship and Political Accountability in New Democracies: Explaining Compliance with Formal Rules and Procedures in Ghana

The dataset was created from three main sources in Ghana: The Functional Organizational Assessment (FOAT) data was obtained from the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development; the electoral data was obtained from the website of Ghana's Electoral Commission and various media houses; and the data on district characteristics were taken from the 2010 Population and Housing Census conducted by the Government. I use this data to investigate the relationship between the degree of voter attachments to political parties and political accountability in new democracies

Socialization, Adaptation, Transnationalism and the Reproductive Behavior of Sub-Saharan African Migrants in France

Background:  Migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) move from a region with high fertility to regions with low fertility. Yet very few studies have examined the reproductive behavior of international migrants from SSA. Objective: This study examines the roles of origin and destination socialization on the fertility and fertility ideals of SSA migrants in France. The study draws on measures of assimilation to systematically examine the effects of socialization and adaptation as well as transnationalism for the effects of sustained origin ties.  Methods: Data are from the TEO (“Trajectoires et Origines”) survey conducted in France (2008/2009). Logistic regression is used to examine current fertility (the odds of having a birth in the preceding five years), and Poisson regression is used to examine cumulative fertility (children ever born) and fertility ideals (reported ideal number of children in a family). Results: Controlling for sociodemographic factors, first-generation SSA migrants have higher fertility than second-generation SSA migrants and non-immigrants. But first and second-generation SSA migrants have higher fertility ideals than non-immigrants. Among SSA migrants, first and second-generation migrants do not differ in fertility and fertility ideals when adaptation is accounted for. Most measures of adaptation are negatively associated with actual fertility and fertility ideals. Transnationalism is associated with higher fertility ideals but less so with actual fertility. Conclusion: The study finds some evidence for origin socialization, but the findings are more strongly supportive of adaptation to the host society. Origin socialization appears to have a stronger influence on fertility ideals than actual fertility

Socialization, Adaptation, Transnationalism and the Reproductive Behavior of Sub-Saharan African Migrants in France

Background:  Migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) move from a region with high fertility to regions with low fertility. Yet very few studies have examined the reproductive behavior of international migrants from SSA. Objective: This study examines the roles of origin and destination socialization on the fertility and fertility ideals of SSA migrants in France. The study draws on measures of assimilation to systematically examine the effects of socialization and adaptation as well as transnationalism for the effects of sustained origin ties.  Methods: Data are from the TEO (“Trajectoires et Origines”) survey conducted in France (2008/2009). Logistic regression is used to examine current fertility (the odds of having a birth in the preceding five years), and Poisson regression is used to examine cumulative fertility (children ever born) and fertility ideals (reported ideal number of children in a family). Results: Controlling for sociodemographic factors, first-generation SSA migrants have higher fertility than second-generation SSA migrants and non-immigrants. But first and second-generation SSA migrants have higher fertility ideals than non-immigrants. Among SSA migrants, first and second-generation migrants do not differ in fertility and fertility ideals when adaptation is accounted for. Most measures of adaptation are negatively associated with actual fertility and fertility ideals. Transnationalism is associated with higher fertility ideals but less so with actual fertility. Conclusion: The study finds some evidence for origin socialization, but the findings are more strongly supportive of adaptation to the host society. Origin socialization appears to have a stronger influence on fertility ideals than actual fertility

Protecting the Polls : The Effect of Observers on Election Fraud 1. Working paper

Abstract Do domestic election observers deter electoral fraud? And under what conditions do political parties respond to the presence of observers to negate their impact? We address these questions by studying observers' effects on two markers of fraud -overvoting (more votes cast than registered voters) and unnaturally high levels of turnout -during Ghana's 2012 presidential elections. Our randomized saturation experimental design allows us to estimate observers' causal effects and to identify how political parties strategically respond to observers. We show that observers significantly reduce overvoting and suspicious turnout at polling stations to which they are deployed. We also find that political parties successfully relocate fraud from observed to unobserved stations in their historical strongholds, where they enjoy social penetration and political competition is low, whereas they are not able to do so in politically competitive constituencies. The findings have implications for understanding political party behavior and the effects of governance interventions

Ghana 2012: The Impact of Domestic Election Observation on Electoral Violence, Integrity, and Voting Behavior

This Dataverse contains four distinct datasets collected during a study of the 2012 Presidential elections in Ghana from 60 electoral constituencies in four regions in the country. (1) Data collected using a survey instrument called the Violent Incident Report (VIR) that was administered at treated and control polling stations (2,310 polling stations in total) on election day. Treated stations were under daylong observation by observers from the Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO) and control stations had no observers. This dataset also contains the presidential vote totals from each polling station; (2) Data collected using a survey instrument called the Post-Election Survey (PES) that was administered to roughly 6,000 individual citizens in the communities surrounding treated and control polling stations during the 48 hours following the elections; (3) Data collected in summer 2013 that geocoded locations of treated and control polling stations in one of the four regions of the study (Ashanti); (4) Data collected as part of the same follow-up project that documented other characteristics of the sampled electoral constituencies in the Ashanti region

Replication Data for: Electoral Fraud or Violence: The Effect of Observers on Party Manipulation Strategies

We study the effects of domestic election observers on electoral fraud and violence. With an experimental research design and polling station data on fraud and violence during Ghana’s 2012 elections, we show that observers reduce fraud and violence at polling stations to which they were deployed. We also argue that local electoral competition shapes party activists’ response to observers. In single-party dominant areas, we expect parties to use their local political networks to relocate fraud to polling stations without an election observer. In contrast, we expect party activists to relocate violence to stations without observers in competitive areas — a response that requires less local organizational capacity. The results are consistent with these expectations, highlighting how local party organization and electoral incentives shape the manipulative electoral strategies employed by parties in democratic elections