The literature on Political Business Cycles (PBCs) has suffered from two limitations, namely a dominant focus on government policies rather than outcomes that could influence voter behaviour, and a lack of attention to the relationship between PBCs and democratization. Using multiple fine-grained data on objective and subjective outcomes we examine the nature of PBCs in Sub-Saharan Africa, a region which has experienced substantial levels of democratization in recent decades. We demonstrate clear evidence for the existence of PBCs in Sub-Saharan Africa and that the nature of the PBC changes with democratization. Specifically, we show that PBCs in non-democracies focus more on the provision of private goods and less on public goods, with this reversing as countries democratize. These findings, which hold across data sources and are robust to various specifications, have important implications for our understanding of the link between elections and development outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa and beyond.

While existing work has demonstrated that campaign donations can buy access to benefits such as favorable legislation and preferential contracting, we highlight another use of campaign contributions: buying reductions in regulatory enforcement. Specifically, we argue that in return for campaign contributions, Colombian mayors who rely on donor-funding (compared with those who do not) choose not to enforce sanctions against illegal deforestation activities. Using a regression discontinuity design, we show that deforestation is significantly higher in municipalities that elect donor-funded as opposed to self-funded politicians. Further analysis shows that only part of this effect can be explained by differences in contracting practices by donor-funded mayors. Instead, evidence of heterogeneity in the effects according to the presence of alternative formal and informal enforcement institutions, and analysis of fire clearance, support the interpretation that campaign contributions buy reductions in the enforcement of environmental regulations.

We study the effects of terrorism on political trust and national versus ethnic identification. Making use of unexpected attacks by the extremist group Boko Haram in Nigeria, which occurred during the fieldwork of a public opinion survey in 2014, we show that even in a context of weak state institutions and frequent terrorist activities, terror attacks significantly increase political trust. We also find that the attacks significantly reduced the salience of respondents' national identity, instead increasing ethnic identification. These findings run counter to arguments that “rally around the flag” effects following terror attacks result from increased patriotism. The results have important implications for understanding the effects of terrorism in contexts of weak state institutions, frequent political violence, and politically salient ethnic divisions.

How do coups affect social trust? Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in the prevalence of coups, in particular across West Africa. Although significant attention has been paid to the effects of other forms of political violence and instability on social trust, to date very little research has considered how social trust is affected by coups, which represent a distinctive form of intra-elite conflict. Building on insights from work in philosophy and social psychology, we conceptualise trust as an adaptive response to vulnerability. Coups represent moments of violent competition for power between elites that create uncertainty about the state as a provider of security and essential services. Consequently, we argue that social trust will increase in response to coups, as a means of offsetting this uncertainty and insecurity. We exploit a unique natural experiment in Burkina Faso to identify the causal effect of coups on social trust, using data from a survey that was in the field during September 2022, when Burkina Faso experienced its second coup of that year. This provides robust evidence that coups can increase social trust, and further analysis supports the proposed mechanism that increased social trust following the coup was a response to uncertainty and insecurity. For external validity, analysis of cross-national survey data from the Afrobarometer series suggests that the positive relationship between coup exposure and social trust holds more broadly.

We study the effects of terrorism on political trust and national versus ethnic identification. Making use of unexpected attacks by the extremist group Boko Haram in Nigeria, which occurred during the fieldwork of a public opinion survey in 2014, we show that even in a context of weak state institutions and frequent terrorist activities, terror attacks significantly increase political trust. We also find that the attacks significantly reduced the salience of respondents' national identity, instead increasing ethnic identification. These findings run counter to arguments that “rally around the flag” effects following terror attacks result from increased patriotism. The results have important implications for understanding the effects of terrorism in contexts of weak state institutions, frequent political violence, and politically salient ethnic divisions.

AbstractWe use a natural experiment to study how the announcement of the UK COVID‐19 lockdown affected citizens' attitudes towards the pandemic and the government's response to it. On the day of the lockdown announcement, YouGov ran a survey that captured responses before and after the announcement. Comparison of these responses suggests that the lockdown announcement made people more supportive of the government's response to the crisis but also (perhaps surprisingly) more concerned about the pandemic. Analysis of heterogeneous treatment effects suggests that the announcement narrowed gaps in perceptions of the crisis, increasing support for the government's response especially among those who had been least supportive and increasing concern about the pandemic especially among those who had been least concerned. Overall, the findings highlight a tension inherent in governing during times of crisis: actions that increase people's confidence in government and induce compliance with government directives may also tend to increase anxiety among the population.

Why do some citizens in new democracies attach to parties while others do not? We investigate the determinants of partisanship in Africa by theorizing the role of parties' group mobilization tactics and testing our arguments alongside existing explanations from new democracies. First, using original data on candidate ethnicity, we evaluate a debate as to whether coethnicity with presidential and/or vice presidential candidates is associated with greater partisanship. Contrary to traditional wisdom, we find no continent-wide relationship-prominently studied cases (e.g. Kenya, Ghana) may be falsely overgeneralized. Second, we propose that partisanship is more likely among rural citizens. We find robust, continent-wide support for this relationship, which we show is partially driven by citizens' links to traditional authorities, who often act as opinion leaders and/or brokers for parties. As in other new democracies, partisanship is positively associated with experience with multiparty democracy, the electoral cycle, age, male gender, and education.

Chapter 5 evaluates the core assumption underlying the argument that voters in Africa engage in evaluative voting and condition their support on the provision of public goods and services. This assumption is crucial because without it there would be no reason to think that politicians should implement pro-rural policies in order to win rural votes. Moreover, it is not obvious that the assumption holds, because existing work on the determinants of voter choice in African elections has focused predominantly on issues of clientelism and ethnic voting. In examining whether voters in Africa use elections to hold governments accountable for their performance in office, Chapter 5 narrows the focus to a single country, Ghana. Doing so accounts for important contextual variations in how goods are provided, which influence the extent to which responsibility for this provision can be attributed to political action. The analysis uses data on two types of goods to investigate whether Ghanaian voters are evaluative. First it looks at education, considering a range of inputs at the district level. Usefully, analysis of this data supports the idea that voters are more likely to condition their support on the provision of goods and services which can be attributed to political action than on those which cannot. Acknowledging limitations to inference resulting from aggregation to the district level, the chapter then turn to roads. Analysis of an original panel dataset containing detailed information on road conditions throughout Ghana provides even more robust evidence that electoral support is affected by the provision of public goods.

This chapter is the first of two that provide quantitative cross-national evidence to support the book’s central theoretical claim. Responding directly to the puzzle of urban incumbent hostility discussed in Chapter 2, this chapter evaluates the expectation that the lower proclivity of urbanites to support incumbents and express satisfaction with democracy should be conditional on levels of urbanization. More specifically, analysis of public opinion data from twenty-eight countries across Africa shows that urban hostility towards incumbents and dissatisfaction with democracy are not only robust to a variety of potentially confounding factors but are decreasing with urbanization. The data come from multiple rounds of the Afrobarometer Survey Series, enabling the use of fixed effects models to estimate robust within-country effects by leveraging changes to urbanization over time. These findings are important because, as highlighted in Chapter 2, the expectation that urban incumbent hostility should be conditional on urbanization is a unique observable implication of the book’s argument. Although scholars have put forward a variety of reasons for why urbanites across Africa should be less likely than rural residents to support incumbents, none of these alternative explanations account for the conditional effects demonstrated in this chapter. As such, this evidence supports the theoretical claim that electoral competition leads African governments to pursue pro-rural development policies.

Chapter 2 presents the theoretical argument underlying the hypothesis that the introduction of competitive elections across Africa results in pro-rural development. This argument is motivated by a puzzle: despite widespread acceptance that party competition in Africa is dominated by issues of ethnicity and clientelism, not by an urban–rural cleavage, urban residents across Africa are significantly less likely to support incumbents than their rural counterparts. How can this stark urban–rural electoral cleavage be accounted for? After reviewing relevant existing literature, Chapter 2 argues that democratic elections make African governments more responsive to rural interests. This follows from acknowledgement of the particular demographic contexts in which electoral institutions are embedded across Africa. Because a majority of Africans live in rural areas, competitive elections create incentives for governments to implement pro-rural policies to win the support of the rural majority, thereby generating dissatisfaction among urban voters. The argument rests on the assumption that voters in Africa condition their votes on the provision of public goods and services, at least in part. This assumption is crucial, because if it does not hold then there would be no reason to think that politicians should implement pro-rural policies in order to win rural votes. This argument implies an important conditional effect, that incentives to implement pro-rural policies should dissipate as the size of the rural majority decreases. Consequently, the extent of urban–rural differences in development outcomes resulting from electoral competition should be conditional on levels of urbanization. Taken together, the theoretical argument implies three key empirical implications: (1) across Africa, urban hostility towards incumbents and dissatisfaction with democracy should be conditional on levels of urbanization; (2) the distribution of benefits resulting from democratic electoral competition should be targeted primarily towards rural areas; (3) the extent of pro-rural targeting of the democratic dividend should be conditional on levels of urbanization.

How have African rulers responded to the introduction of democratic electoral competition? Despite the broadly negative picture painted by the prevailing focus on electoral fraud, clientelism, and ethnic conflict, Rural Democracy argues that the full story is somewhat more promising. While these unfortunate practices may be widespread, African rulers also seek to win votes through the provision and distribution of public goods and services. The central argument in Rural Democracy is that in predominantly rural countries the introduction of competitive elections leads governments to implement pro-rural policies, in order to win the votes of the rural majority. As a result, across much of Africa the benefits of democratic electoral competition have accrued primarily in terms of rural development. This broad claim is supported by cross-national evidence, both from public opinion surveys and from individual level data on health and education outcomes. The argument’s core assumptions about voting behavior are supported with quantitative evidence from Ghana, and qualitative historical evidence from Botswana provides further support for the underlying theoretical mechanism. Taken together, this body of evidence provides reasons to be optimistic about the operation of electoral accountability in Africa. African governments are responding to the accountability structures provided by electoral competition; in that sense, democracy in Africa is working.

How do African governments respond to democratic electoral competition? Although the common perception is that African governments have sought to win elections by combining various types of electoral fraud, clientelism, and ethnic mobilization, I argue that democratic elections in Africa have also induced governments to compete for votes by providing basic services. One implication of this is a rural bias in the impact of democracy on basic health and education outcomes. Using individual-level data from 27 African countries, I investigate the theoretical claim that competitive elections create incentives for African governments to implement prorural policies in order to satisfy the rural majority. The results demonstrate that democratic elections significantly increase access to primary education and reduce infant mortality rates, but only for children in rural areas. As the argument expects, these effects are conditional on the level of urbanization.

Without a strong state, how do institutions emerge to limit the impact of one group’s predation on another’s economic activities? Motivated by the case of northern Somalia, we develop a model that highlights the monitoring challenges that groups face in making cooperation self-enforcing, and two key factors that influence their likelihood of overcoming this challenge: the ratio of economic interests across productive and predatory sectors, and the existence of informal income-sharing institutions. Our model explains why conflicts between pirates and livestock traders can be resolved in the region of Somaliland, where the ratio of economic interests favors the productive sector and traditional institutions promote income sharing between groups, but not in the region of Puntland, where these conditions do not hold. The model also accounts for several of the empirical patterns in the relationships between piracy, livestock exports, and conflict in both regions.

How have African rulers responded to the introduction of democratic electoral competition? Despite the broadly negative picture painted by the prevailing focus on electoral fraud, clientelism, and ethnic conflict, the book argues that the full story is somewhat more promising. While these unfortunate practices may be widespread, African rulers also seek to win votes through the provision and distribution of public goods and services. The author's central argument is that in predominantly rural countries the introduction of competitive elections leads governments to implement pro-rural policies, in order to win the votes of the rural majority. As a result, across much of Africa the benefits of democratic electoral competition have accrued primarily in terms of rural development. This broad claim is supported by cross-national evidence, both from public opinion surveys and from individual level data on health and education outcomes. The argument's core assumptions about voting behavior are supported with quantitative evidence from Ghana, and qualitative historical evidence from Botswana presents further evidence for the underlying theoretical mechanism. Taken together, this body of evidence provides reasons to be optimistic about the operation of electoral accountability in Africa. African governments are responding to the accountability structures provided by electoral competition; in that sense, democracy in Africa is working. Oxford Studies in African Politics and International Relations is a series for scholars and students working on African politics and International Relations and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate on contemporary …

Why do some citizens in new democracies attach to parties while other do not? We investigate the determinants of partisanship in Africa by theorizing the role of parties’ group mobilization tactics and testing our arguments alongside existing explanations from Latin America and Eastern Europe. First, we propose that partisanship is more likely among rural (versus urban) residents, due largely to “public” bloc voting led by traditional authorities. Second, using original data on candidate ethnicity, we evaluate a debate as to whether coethnicity with presidential and vice-presidential candidates is associated with greater partisanship. We find robust, continent-wide support that rural villagers are more likely to be partisan, and that this is likely driven by citizens’ links to traditional authorities. We find no relationship between partisanship and candidate coethnicity. As in other new democracies, partisanship is positively associated with experience with multiparty democracy, the electoral cycle, age, male gender, and education. Working Paper: 2 – 2019 – Research Concentration: Legislative Politics and Policymaking ∗University of Oxford, UK †Corresponding Author. Vanderbilt University, USA. kristin.michelitch@vanderbilt.edu Candidate Coethnicity, Rural Dwelling, and Partisanship in Africa Robin Harding∗and Kristin Michelitch†

Abstract A substantial body of scholarship has considered the impact of regime types on public spending and basic service provision, much of which has implications for education. While some of the theoretical and empirical conclusions from this work are globally applicable, there are also important ways in which the relationship between democracy and education may be influenced by the African context. The most useful theoretical arguments for why democracy may influence public spending, and spending on education in particular, focus on the political incentives generated by multiparty electoral competition. Related but distinct arguments focus on how this may impact in turn on education outcomes, and on why these dynamics may vary because of factors that are particularly pertinent in many African countries. These include variations in the degree of electoral competitiveness and political competition as well as in levels of economic development and ethnic fractionalization. A large body of empirical evidence investigates these various arguments, evaluating the impact of democracy on both education spending and education outcomes. Although evidence for the positive impact of democracy on education is compelling, evidence for this relationship in Africa remains limited and is hampered by limitations to data. In particular, although evidence suggests democracy may have a positive impact on access to education in Africa, there is less evidence for its impact on the quality of education. Future work should continue to address these issues while seeking to investigate sources of heterogeneity in the impact of democracy on education in Africa.

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Do voters in Africa use elections to hold governments accountable for their performance in office? In contexts of limited information and weak state capacity, it can be difficult for citizens to attribute the provision of public goods and services to political action. As a result, voters often have little information about government performance on which to condition their electoral support. Such contexts are frequently characterized by clientelism or ethnic politics, and there is a widespread impression that African elections are little more than contests in corruption or ethnic mobilization. Using an original panel data set containing electoral returns and detailed information on road conditions throughout Ghana, the author provides robust evidence that when a public good can be attributed to political action, as is the case with roads in Ghana, electoral support is affected by the provision of that good. The author also uses data on a variety of educational inputs to test the claim that votes are conditioned only on attributable outcomes.

Does democracy affect the provision of basic services? We advance on existing empirical work on this subject by exploring the potential mechanisms through which a democratic transition may prompt a government to alter provision of basic services to its citizens. In an environment of weak state capacity, in which it is difficult for voters to attribute outcomes to executive actions, we suggest that electoral competition is most likely to lead to changes in policies where executive action is verifiable. Considering the context of African primary education as an example, we suggest that electoral competition will therefore give governments an incentive to abolish school fees, but it will have less effect on the provision of school inputs, precisely because executive actions on these issues are more difficult to monitor. We evaluate this claim by approaching it in three different ways, using cross-national as well as individual-level data, including an original data set on primary school fee abolitions. First we show that in Africa, democracies have higher rates of school attendance than nondemocracies. Moreover, evidence suggests that this is primarily due to the fact that democracies are more likely to abolish school fees, not to the fact that they provide more inputs. We then estimate the likelihood that a government will abolish school fees subsequent to an election, taking account of endogeneity concerns involving election timing. Finally, we use survey data from Kenya to provide evidence suggesting that citizens condition their voting intentions on an outcome that a politician can control directly, in this case abolishing school fees, but not on outcomes over which politicians have much more indirect influence, such as local school quality.