1,720,981 research outputs found
Replication Data for: Candidate Debates and Partisan Divisions: Evidence from Malawi's 2019 Presidential Elections
No full textCandidate debates are increasingly organized during elections in democracies and electoral autocracies. How do debates impact partisan divisions and preferences in these contexts? One theoretical perspective suggests that debates should amplify these preferences and divisions, while another implies debates should attenuate them. This paper evaluates these expectations by studying presidential debates organized during Malawi's May 2019 elections. With an experiment and national panel survey, the paper provides evidence consistent with attenuation: debate watchers were substantially more likely to vote across partisan lines (cross-party voting), became more favorable toward out-partisan candidates, and became less favorable toward co-partisans. Suggestive evidence on causal mechanisms shows that these effects were driven by policy persuasion and debates' impact on perceptions of the candidates' policies and qualities. Results advance debates about information processing, campaign effects, and voting behavior in new democracies and electoral autocracies, and have implications for electoral institutions' impact on partisan divisions
Replication Data for: Does Public Support for Judicial Power Depend on Who is in Political Power? Testing a Theory of Partisan Alignment in Africa
No full textJudicial power is central to democratic consolidation and the rule of law. Public support is critical for establishing and protecting it. Conventional wisdom holds that this support is rooted in apolitical factors and not dependent on who is in political power. By contrast, we argue that support may be driven by instrumental partisan motivations and therefore linked to partisan alignment with the executive. We test the argument with survey evidence from 34 African countries. To provide causal evidence, we conduct difference-in-differences analyses leveraging Ghana’s three presidential transitions since 2000. Across Africa, support for judicial power is high, while trust in courts is lower. However, presidential co-partisans are less supportive of horizontal judicial power over the president and more supportive of vertical power over the people. The article demonstrates the importance of partisan alignment with the executive in shaping support for judicial power, with implications for judicial behavior and legitimacy
Replication Data for: Can Democratic Principles Protect High Courts from Partisan Backlash? Public Reactions to the Kenyan Supreme Court’s Role in the 2017 Election Crisis
No full textPublic support is central to the emergence of judicial power. Conventional wisdom holds that citizen commitment to democracy and the rule of law sustains this support. An implication is that such commitments should protect courts from partisan backlash following contentious rulings. But this remains largely untested. The Kenyan Supreme Court’s historic 2017 elections rulings provide an unusual opportunity to test this expectation. After annulling the incumbent president’s victory, the Court upheld his controversial repeat-election win. With data from a national panel survey—conducted before and after the repeat election—we find important partisan-based withdrawals/increases in judicial-power support. There is no evidence that democratic principles attenuated partisan backlash; some were associated with its amplification. However, partisan losers maintain moderately high support despite backlash. Results advance debates about public support for judicial power and provide new evidence about public reactions to assertions of judicial authority in new democracies and electoral autocratic regimes
Replication Data for: The Moderating Effect of Debates on Political Attitudes
No full textIn theory, candidate debates can influence voters by providing information about candidates' quality and policy positions. However, there is limited evidence about whether and why debates influence voters in new democracies. We use a field experiment on parliamentary debates during Ghana's 2016 elections to show that debates improve voters’ evaluations of candidates. Debates have the strongest effect on partisan voters, who become more favorable toward and more likely to vote for opponent-party candidates and less likely to vote for co-partisans. Experimental and unique observational data capturing participants’ second-by-second reactions to the debates show that policy information was the most important causal mechanism driving partisan moderation, especially among strong partisans. A follow-up survey shows that these effects persist in electorally competitive communities, while they dissipate in party strongholds. Policy-centered debates have the potential to reduce partisan polarization in new democracies, but the local political context conditions the persistence of these effects
Replication Data for: The Moderating Effect of Debates on Political Attitudes
No full textIn theory, candidate debates can influence voters by providing information about candidates' quality and policy positions. However, there is limited evidence about whether and why debates influence voters in new democracies. We use a field experiment on parliamentary debates during Ghana's 2016 elections to show that debates improve voters’ evaluations of candidates. Debates have the strongest effect on partisan voters, who become more favorable toward and more likely to vote for opponent-party candidates and less likely to vote for co-partisans. Experimental and unique observational data capturing participants’ second-by-second reactions to the debates show that policy information was the most important causal mechanism driving partisan moderation, especially among strong partisans. A follow-up survey shows that these effects persist in electorally competitive communities, while they dissipate in party strongholds. Policy-centered debates have the potential to reduce partisan polarization in new democracies, but the local political context conditions the persistence of these effects
Replication Data for: Electoral Fraud or Violence: The Effect of Observers on Party Manipulation Strategies
No full textWe 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
Replication Data for: Deepening or Diminishing Ethnic Divides? The Impact of Urban Migration in Kenya
No full textThe impact of urban migration on ethnic politics is the subject of longstanding debate. “First generation” modernization theories predict that urban migration should reduce ethnic identification and increase trust between groups. “Second generation” modernization perspectives argue the opposite: urban migration may amplify ethnic identification and reduce trust. We test these competing expectations with a three-wave panel survey following more than 8,000 Kenyans over a 15-year period, providing novel evidence on the impact of urban migration. Using individual fixed effects regressions, we show that urban migration leads to reductions in ethnic identification: ethnicity’s importance to the individual diminishes after migrating. Yet urban migration also reduces trust between ethnic groups, and trust in people generally. Urban migrants become less attached to their ethnicity but more suspicious. The results advance the literature on urbanization and politics and have implications for the potential consequences of ongoing urbanization processes around the world
Replication Data for: Electoral Fraud or Violence: The Effect of Observers on Party Manipulation Strategies
No full textWe 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
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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