Leonard Wantchekon

Help Me Help You: Conducting Field Experiments with Political Elites

Field experiments can teach important facts about the political world to both political scientists and political elites, whose shared interest in how that world actually works should encourage greater collaboration between the two. Nonetheless, for political scientists, conducting field experiments with elites can seem prohibitively challenging. Drawing on four field experiments with political elites, two in Benin and two in Canada, we outline key lessons on negotiating and conducting field experiments with political elites. Specifically, we outline how ethical concerns can be addressed and overcome. We discuss how the expectations and timelines of campaigns and elites can be managed, particularly when they (appear to conflict) with academic timing and process. Finally, we outline several general concerns about implementation of field experiments and provide some unique solutions.

Clientelism and Voting Behavior: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Benin

The author conducted a field experiment in Benin to investigate the impact of clientelism on voting behavior. In collaboration with four political parties involved in the 2001 presidential elections, clientelist and broad public policy platforms were designed and run in twenty randomly selected villages of an average of 756 registered voters. Using the survey data collected after the elections, the author estimated the effect of each type of message by comparing voting behavior in the villages exposed to clientelism or public policy messages (treatment groups) with voting behavior in the other villages (control groups). The author found that clientelist messages have positive and significant effect in all regions and for all types of candidates. The author also found that public policy messages have a positive and significant effect in the South but a negative and significant effect in the North. In addition, public policy messages seem to hurt incumbents as well as regional candidates. Finally, the evidence indicates that female voters tend to have stronger preference for public policy platforms than male voters.

Resource Wealth and Political Regimes in Africa

Political economists point to the levels of economic development, poverty, and income inequality as the most important determinants of political regimes. The authors present empirical evidence suggesting a robust and negative correlation between the presence of a sizable natural resource sector and the level of democracy in Africa. They argue that resource abundance not only is an important determinant of democratic transition but also partially determines the success of democratic consolidation in Africa. The results illuminate the fact that post-Cold War democratic reforms have been successful only in resource-poor countries such as Benin, Mali, and Madagascar. The authors argue that resource-rich countries such as Nigeria and Gabon can become democratic only if they introduce strong mechanisms of vertical and horizontal accountability within the state.

Does Corruption Information Inspire the Fight or Quash the Hope? A Field Experiment in Mexico on Voter Turnout, Choice, and Party Identification

Retrospective voting models assume that offering more information to voters about their incumbents’ performance strengthens electoral accountability. However, it is unclear whether incumbent corruption information translates into higher political participation and increased support for challengers. We provide experimental evidence that such information not only decreases incumbent party support in local elections in Mexico, but also decreases voter turnout and support for the challenger party, as well as erodes partisan attachments. While information clearly is necessary to improve accountability, corruption information is not sufficient because voters may respond to it by withdrawing from the political process. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our findings for studies of voting behavior.

The “Game” of Torture

The authors explain the prevalence of torture by modeling its institutional structure as a game of incomplete information involving the state, the torturer, and the victim. Once the state endorses torture as a mechanism for extracting information, its will is carried out with positive probability. This is because (a) even a “soft” and “sensitive” state agent might torture the victim to test his or her ability to resist and (b) a weak victim might hold out momentarily to find out whether the torturer is sensitive or “sadistic.” When the state uses torture to intimidate political opposition, all types of torturers will behave sadistically. As a result, torture becomes more widespread and more cruel. The authors explain why a “culture” of individual resistance is the only effective solution to torture.

A Theory of Post-Civil War Democratization:

We model the transition from a chaotic status quo to a more orderly political regime as a two-stage game involving two warring factions and the citizens. The warring factions move first and decide the form of government by (1) inviting an external arbitrator, (2) choosing the people as arbitrator, i.e. democratizing or (3) maintaining the status quo. We analyze the conditions under which democracy is likely to emerge as the outcome of the game. We show that citizens prefer democracy because it generates a sociopolitical order that protects them against ‘banditry’ and expropriation. Because the citizens’ actions generate positive externalities, incentives for democratization are generated in part by the fact that protection against expropriation under democracy also indirectly benefits the warring factions.

On the Nature of First Democratic Elections

This article investigates voting behavior and policy outcomes when violence can occur after the election. The author finds that under complete information, voters will prefer the weak party—that is, the party that is the least capable of controlling violence. Under incomplete information, however, violence might occur, and voters could prefer the party the most capable of controlling violence. Finally, the author shows that despite this likely voting outcome, the weak party will choose to participate nonaggressively in the election, providing legitimacy to the new democratic process.

Strategic Voting in Conditions of Political Instability The 1994 Elections in El Salvador

This article presents a game theoretic model to explain the broad electoral support for the extreme right-wing party, the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), in the 1994 elections in El Salvador. Making use of poll data, the author shows that the deciding factor in this electoral outcome was not the procedural defects, the apathy of the electorate, or the disorganization of the opposition parties but, instead, uncertainty about the peace process. The model helps to explain why during the political campaign, ARENA played the “fear card” and why the peasants voted in such great numbers for a party opposed to the land reform that would greatly benefit them. The author argues that the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) participated in the election not just to win but more to provide legitimacy for the new democratic process. The article concludes by discussing implications of the findings for the prospects for democratic consolidation in El Salvador.

Theory, External Validity, and Experimental Inference: Some Conjectures

It is often argued that experiments are strong on causal identification (internal validity) but weak on generalizability (external validity). One widely accepted way to limit threats to external validity is to incorporate as much variation in the background conditions and in the covariates as possible through replication. Another strategy is to make the theoretical foundations of the experiment more explicit. The latter requires that we develop trajectories of experiments that are consistent with a theoretical argument. In other words, new experiments should not simply consist of changing the context of old ones, but do so in ways that explicitly test various aspects of a theory in a coherent way.

Africa: Dictatorial and Democratic Electoral Systems since 1946

Elections have been an integral part of African politics since independence (Nohlen, Krennerich and Thibaut, 1999; Ellis, 2000). There have been 321 legislative and 167 presidential elections in Africa between 1946 (or independence) and 1996. These elections have occurred in both democratic and authoritarian periods. Although elections have been relatively common in Africa, very little scholarly attention has been paid to them. The dearth of electoral studies focused on Africa compared to other regions of the world can partly be explained by the widespread establishment of single-party regimes in the 1960s. It was not until the re-emergence of democratic multi-party elections following the third wave of democratization in the 1990s that African electoral studies began to grow (Bratton and van de Walle, 1997; Cowen and Laakso, 1997; Wiseman, 1992; Barkan, 1995; Sisk and Reynolds, 1998; Manning, 2002). This chapter represents an addition to this growing literature by providing an overview of elections and electoral systems in Africa. While focusing primarily on the electoral institutions employed in democratic elections, we also consider the role of elections in authoritarian periods. We describe the particular electoral rules employed, investigate why they were chosen and examine their impact on African party systems.