Elections and identity politics in Kyrgyzstan 1989--2009---moving beyond the 'clan politics' hypothesis.

This dissertation examines the emergence of political pluralism in the unlikely case of Kyrgyzstan. The main question is: How can we explain 'pockets of competition in semi-authoritarian states. The literature has focused on identity politics and more specifically on the 'clan politics' hypothesis, which states that competition is organized along the lines of kinship groups ('clans') and that competition is therefore fractionalized, especially in rural areas. Kyrgyzstan is shown to be a critical case for the 'clan politics' literature. The unit of analysis is two-fold: Single-Member Districts (SMD) and individual candidates in parliamentary elections 1995-2005. Evidence is provided through a candidate survey (n=160), expert interviews, and local level statistics. The whole idea that there actually exists such an informal institution as 'clan politics' in Kyrgyzstan is questioned. At least 'clans' do not exist as corporate groups that actual possess agency characteristics. A 'clan' in the Kyrgyz sense of the word, uruu/uruk, is shown to be something that necessarily involves kinship, therefore refuting a widely used metaphorical conceptualization of the phenomenon. The reason for the politization of these genealogical categories in some rural districts can be found in the incentive structure of the electoral system (SMD), the causal story being: contests were localized and no viable national-level parties existed, therefore some political entrepreneurs turned to imagined 'clans' instead to rally support. This created the impression that there were corporate 'clan' groups that coordinated electoral behavior in rural Kyrgyzstan. Competitiveness has been reduced over time, with the 1995 elections being the most fragmented in terms of Effective Number of Candidates. Until the December 2007 PR elections no new party system emerged. In 2005, the elections were especially competitive in the south, where the already mobilized campaigners later formed the backbone of the ensuing 'Tulip revolution' protests. It is shown that the introduction of election mechanisms empowered local elites to challenge the authorities. Campaign experience and financial resources were also important factors in many competitive races

The higher education impact agenda, scientific realism and policy change: the case of electoral integrity in Britain

Pressures have increasingly been put upon social scientists to prove their economic, cultural and social value through ‘impact agendas’ in higher education. There has been little conceptual and empirical discussion of the challenges involved in achieving impact and the dangers of evaluating it, however. This article argues that a critical realist approach to social science can help to identify some of these key challenges and the institutional incompatibilities between impact regimes and university research in free societies. These incompatibilities are brought out through an autobiographical ‘insider-account’ of trying to achieve impact in the field of electoral integrity in Britain. The article argues that there is a more complex relationship between research and the real world which means that the nature of knowledge might change as it becomes known by reflexive agents. Secondly, the researchers are joined into social relations with a variety of actors, including those who might be the object of study in their research. Researchers are often weakly positioned in these relations. Some forms of impact, such as achieving policy change, are therefore exceptionally difficult as they are dependent on other actors. Strategies for trying to achieve impact are drawn out such as collaborating with civil society groups and parliamentarians to lobby for policy change

Does online voting change the outcome? Evidence from a multi-mode public policy referendum

Do online and offline voters differ in terms of what they vote for? The growth of Internet voting in recent years has opened up new channels of participation. Whether or not political outcomes change as a consequence of these new voting channels is an open question. Here we analyze all the votes cast both offline (n=5.7 million) and online (n=1.3 million) and compare the actual vote choices in a public policy referendum, the world’s largest participatory budget-ing process, in Rio Grande do Sul in June 2014. In addition to examining aggregate outcomes, we also conduct two exit polls to better understand the demographic profiles of online and offline voters. We find that vote choices of online and offline voters are no different, even though our data suggest important demographic differences between the two groups of vot-ers

The Effect of Bureaucratic Responsiveness on Citizen Participation

What effect does bureaucratic responsiveness have on citizen participation? Since the 1940s, attitudinal measures of perceived efficacy have been used to explain participation. The authors develop a “calculus of participation” that incorporates objective efficacy—the extent to which an individual's participation actually has an impact—and test the model against behavioral data from the online application Fix My Street (n = 399,364). A successful first experience using Fix My Street is associated with a 57 percent increase in the probability of an individual submitting a second report, and the experience of bureaucratic responsiveness to the first report submitted has predictive power over all future report submissions. The findings highlight the importance of responsiveness for fostering an active citizenry while demonstrating the value of incidentally collected data to examine participatory behavior at the individual level

A Get-Out-the-Vote Experiment on the World’s Largest Participatory Budgeting Vote in Brazil

Does non-partisan voter mobilization affect the popular vote? We use vote records from a state-level participatory budgeting vote in Brazil– the world’s largest –to assess the impact of voter mobilization messaging on turnout and support for public investments. The government provided records as to how each ballot was cast and designed the tabulation process so that votes could be matched to treatment assignment without compromising the secrecy of the ballot. Citizens (n=43,384) were randomly assigned to receive non-partisan email and text messages designed to encourage voting. We document an impressive 4.7 percentage point increase in online voting in our treatment group. However, we found no effect of messaging on vote choice; voters in the treatment and control groups shared the same sectoral preferences and showed no difference in the average cost of public investment projects they supported. These results suggest non-partisan Get Out the Vote campaigns can increase citizen participation without skewing the outcome

Effects of the internet on participation: Study of a public policy referendum in Brazil

Does online voting mobilize citizens who otherwise would not participate? During the annual participatory budgeting vote in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil—the world's largest—Internet voters were asked whether they would have participated had there not been an online voting option (i-voting). The study documents an 8.2 percent increase in total turnout with the introduction of i-voting. In support of the mobilization hypothesis, unique survey data show that i-voting is mainly used by new participants rather than just for convenience by those who were already mobilized. The study also finds that age, gender, income, education, and social media usage are significant predictors of being online-only voters. However, technology appears more likely to engage people who are younger, male, of higher income and educational attainment, and more frequent social media users