Michael Wahman
Biographic Data
| ID | 86298 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michael Wahman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michael |
| FAMILY NAME | Wahman |
| SIGNATURE | WAHMAN M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Michigan State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7334-5793 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 592 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 34 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 15 |
Updated data and new insight: A new version of WTH’s authoritarian regime type dataset
Cheerleaders for Autocracy: Parliamentary Speech Making During Democratic Backsliding in Malawi and Zambia
Legislatures worldwide have played a decisive role in enabling and preventing democratic backsliding. Although most research has focused on the formal legislative role of parliaments in the backsliding process, this study focuses on the behavior of individual legislators and their discursive support for executives. We argue that government parties are likely to enhance pressure on government party legislators to support the executive during perio…
Messages Matter: How Voter Education Campaigns Affect Citizens’ Willingness to Vote for Women
Governments and organizations around the world pour money into campaigns designed to increase female political representation, including voter education campaigns. Do such campaigns promote women in politics? We argue that where single-member district contests and clientelism incentivize voters to support viable candidates, information about discrimination against women can undercut support for women in elections. Instead, messages that stress wo…
The Global Crisis of Trust in Elections
This article introduces a special issue on trust in elections. While the number of electoral democracies has grown globally, we are currently experiencing a crisis of electoral trust. Political polarization, social divisions, and the rapid spread of misinformation have all been related to enhanced widespread skepticism about the quality of national elections. The special issue is focused on two central questions: How can we explain variations in …
Where Are the Sore Losers? Competitive Authoritarianism, Incumbent Defeat, and Electoral Trust in Zambia’s 2021 Election
How do electoral turnovers shape citizen perceptions of election quality in competitive authoritarian regimes? We argue that electoral outcomes are crucial for determining perceptions of electoral quality. While detailed evaluation of electoral trust is complex in competitive autocracies with institutional uncertainty and polarized electoral environments, turnovers send strong and unequivocal signals about election quality. Previous literature ha…
How Strategic Violence Distorts African Elections
While violence is a common occurrence in African elections, most attention has been focused only on a handful of cases with extreme levels of fatal election violence. Not only are these cases unrepresentative of the African continent as a whole, but focusing narrowly on these cases is also misleading when trying to understand the broader role that electoral violence plays in contemporary African democracies. Far more pervasive is the non-fatal ty…
How Does Primary Election Manipulation Affect the Selection of Women Candidates? Evidence from Malawi
How does manipulation of primary elections affect the selection of women candidates for parliament? The underrepresentation of women in politics is a well-researched global phenomenon. However, as most work focuses on general elections, we overlook the disadvantages that women face in the selection process. Specifically, primary elections often provide ample room for manipulation. We argue that manipulation skews electoral contests in favor of ca…
The political economy of urban party switching in African elections: Evidence from Zambia
Zambia experienced its third electoral turnover in the 2021 election. While the ruling Patriotic Front (PF) lost votes across the territory, the electoral collapse in urban Zambia was particularly remarkable. This paper argues that economic performance voting can explain urban party switching in Zambia. The argument is supported by a unique panel survey of Zambian voters in the period 2019-2022. We show that urban voters were more likely to deser…
Controlling Territory, Controlling Voters: The Electoral Geography of African Campaign Violence
Violence in election campaigns is common across the African continent and beyond. According to some estimations, most African elections contain some degree of violence and most of this violence happens before elections, during the campaign. Campaign violence distorts political competition by creating an uneven playing field tilted towards actors with repressive capacity. It also enhances political inequalities and deprives voters of a meaningful …
Paying to Play: How Parliamentary Candidates Fund Ruling Party Campaigns in Malawi
What are the sources of incumbent parties' superior financial resources in parliamentary election campaigns in Africa's clientelistic democracies? Scholars have emphasized ruling parties' access to state resources. We document a different mechanism, where government parties attract candidates willing and able to devote their personal resources to parliamentary (and by extension presidential) campaigns in the hope of gaining access to central reso…
Regional cleavages in African politics: Persistent electoral blocs and territorial oppositions
Do socio-economic cleavages shape electoral dynamics in African countries? Previous individual-level and party systems research on African politics has de-emphasized socio-economic factors, contributing to the common view that ethnic cleavages and short-term ethnic alliances define politics both locally and nationally. Focusing on Kenya, Zambia, and Malawi, we draw on methods in electoral geography to offer a spatial analysis of geographic patter…
Electoral Rulings and Public Trust in African Courts and Elections
On the African continent, where elections are often surrounded by accusations of fraud and manipulation, legal avenues for challenging elections may enhance election integrity and trust in political institutions. Court rulings on electoral petitions have consequences for the distribution of power, but how do they shape public opinion? We theorize and study the way in which court rulings in relation to parliamentary election petitions shape public…
Systematic Measurement Error in Election Violence Data: Causes and Consequences
What are the causes and consequences of systematic measurement error in violence measures drawn from media-based conflict event data? More specifically, how valid are such event data for geocoding and capturing election violence? This study examines sub-national variation in election violence and uses original data from domestic election monitor surveys as a comparison to widely used sources of event data. The authors show that conventional data …
From Thin to Thick Representation: How a Female President Shapes Female Parliamentary Behavior
How does the symbolic power of a female president affect female parliamentary behavior? Whereas female descriptive representation has increased around the world, women parliamentarians still face significant discrimination and stereotyping, inhibiting their ability to have a real voice and offer "thick" representation to women voters. We leverage the case of Malawi, a case where the presidency changed hands from a man to a woman through a truly e…
Electoral turnovers and the disappointment of enduring presidential power: Constitution making in Zambia
Much has been written about the strength of African presidentialism. This article studies the resilience of presidential power in Zambia in the face of electoral turnover. Opposition election campaigns, conducted by both the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) and the Patriotic Front (PF), featured deep constitutional reform as prominent campaign pledges. Nevertheless, after winning the presidency, both parties failed to reduce presidential p…
Pre-election violence and territorial control: Political dominance and subnational election violence in polarized African electoral systems
Cross-national research on African electoral politics has argued that competition increases the prospects for pre-election violence. However, there is a dearth of systematic research on the effect of political competition on pre-election violence at the subnational level. We theorize that in African democracies characterized by competition at the national level but low subnational competitiveness (polarization), violence is often a manifestation …
Elite coordination and popular protest: The Joint Effect on Democratic Change
Authoritarian elections offer a window of contestation where a democratic opposition may increase the pressure on authoritarian regimes to implement democratic change. Pressure may come either from popular protest (vertical threats), or from a coordinated counter-elite (lateral threats). Previous research on electoral authoritarianism has emphasized the importance of both lateral and vertical threats for democratization, but have not theorized ho…
Leverage, diplomacy, and African lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and intersex rights: Malawi and Zambia compared
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and intersex (LGBTI) rights have become central to the Western human rights (HR) agenda in Africa. Nevertheless, diplomatic responses to violations of LGBTI rights have appeared ad hoc and inconsistent. We explore the tools used for the promotion of LGBTI rights in Africa and theorize about the costs involved in promoting such rights in a resistant environment. We argue that engaging publicly in the promotio…
Violence and Candidate Nomination in Africa
Institutional stepping stones for democracy: How and Why Multipartyism Enhances Democratic Change
cholars of electoral authoritarianism and comparative institutions have emphasized how authoritarian regimes implement multiparty elections to stabilize authoritarian rule and diffuse political opposition. Consequently, the literature has advised against the notion that multiparty elections constitute a general lever for democratization. This article presents evidence in support of a more positive understanding of multipartyism and democracy. We …
Fighting for a name on the ballot: Constituency-level analysis of nomination violence in Zambia
What factors increase the likelihood of nomination violence? Nomination violence can be an expression of both horizontal conflict, between local political elites, and vertical conflict, between national and local elites. We theorize about factors that may increase the risks of vertical and horizontal conflict and leverage a unique dataset of constituency-level nomination violence obtained from surveys with 464 domestic election observers active i…
Candidate nomination, intra-party democracy, and election violence in Africa
This article introduces a special issue on candidate nomination, intra-party democracy, and election violence in Africa. Although a burgeoning literature on African democratization has focused on the topic of electoral violence, little attention has been given to violence during party nominations. When local-level or national-level competition between parties is low, as in much of Africa, electoral politics become a matter of intra-party rather t…
Captured Countryside? Stability and Change in Sub-National Support for African Incumbent Parties
Many existing accounts of African elections assume that voters base their electoral decisions on cues and incentives that are anchored in highly stable ethnic cleavage structures. Yet several newer contributions to the study of African electoral politics have questioned the ethno-clientelistic voting thesis and highlighted other determinants of vote choice, such as class, ideology and performance evaluation. Existing research has, however, not de…
Democracy in Reverse: The 2016 General Election in Zambia
On 11 August 2016, Zambia held elections for the presidency, National Assembly, local councillors, and mayors. Concurrently, a referendum was held on whether to enhance the Bill of Rights in the Constitution of Zambia. The elections were significant for several reasons: It was the first contest under a newly amended Constitution, which introduced important changes to the electoral framework. It also marked a break with Zambia's positive historica…
Nationalized incumbents and regional challengers: Opposition- and incumbent-party nationalization in Africa
The African party literature, especially research prescribing to the long-dominant ethnic voting thesis, has asserted that African party systems exhibit low levels of party nationalization. However, systematic research on nationalization across parties and party systems is still lacking. This study argues that the prospects for building nationalized parties vary substantially between incumbent and opposition parties. Incumbent parties, with their…
Authoritarian regime types revisited: Updated Data in Comparative Perspective
This article introduces a modified and updated version of the authoritarian regime type dataset first introduced by Hadenius and Teorell [2007. Pathways from authoritarianism. Journal of Democracy, 18 (1), 143–157]. The basic logic and merits of this dataset is presented, previously published criticism of the index is addressed and practical advice for potential users is provided. The dataset is also compared theoretically and empirically with th…
Are democratic sanctions really counterproductive
Previous research has shown that sanctions have a negative impact on the level of democracy in targeted authoritarian countries. This runs counter to substantive comparative literature on democratization which finds that economic stress is connected with regime collapse and democratic liberalization. To solve this puzzle, we focus on the effects of “democratic sanctions” (those that explicitly aim to promote democracy) which have become the most …
Offices and policies - Why do oppositional parties form pre-electoral coalitions in competitive authoritarian regimes
Opposition Coalitions and Democratization by Election
This article critically assesses the argument that oppositional coordination creates democratization by elections. It argues that the previously acknowledged democratizing effect of pre-electoral coalitions is better described as an alternation effect, by which coordinated oppositional parties are more likely to win elections. The positive effect of oppositional coalitions is, however, short lived and intimately connected with cases where the ele…
Democratization and electoral turnovers in sub-Saharan Africa and beyond
This study criticizes approaches equating opposition electoral victories with democratization in competitive authoritarian regimes. Not only are these approaches theoretically problematic, but there are also important empirical reasons to distinguish between electoral turnovers and democratization. The study goes on to explain why some African turnovers have been successful in bringing about democratization while others have not. This study promo…
Pre-election violence and territorial control: Political dominance and subnational election violence in polarized African electoral systems
Cross-national research on African electoral politics has argued that competition increases the prospects for pre-election violence. However, there is a dearth of systematic research on the effect of political competition on pre-election violence at the subnational level. We theorize that in African democracies characterized by competition at the national level but low subnational competitiveness (polarization), violence is often a manifestation …
From Thin to Thick Representation: How a Female President Shapes Female Parliamentary Behavior
How does the symbolic power of a female president affect female parliamentary behavior? Whereas female descriptive representation has increased around the world, women parliamentarians still face significant discrimination and stereotyping, inhibiting their ability to have a real voice and offer "thick" representation to women voters. We leverage the case of Malawi, a case where the presidency changed hands from a man to a woman through a truly e…
Rural bias in African electoral systems: Legacies of unequal representation in African democracies
Systematic Measurement Error in Election Violence Data: Causes and Consequences
What are the causes and consequences of systematic measurement error in violence measures drawn from media-based conflict event data? More specifically, how valid are such event data for geocoding and capturing election violence? This study examines sub-national variation in election violence and uses original data from domestic election monitor surveys as a comparison to widely used sources of event data. The authors show that conventional data …
Nationalized incumbents and regional challengers: Opposition- and incumbent-party nationalization in Africa
The African party literature, especially research prescribing to the long-dominant ethnic voting thesis, has asserted that African party systems exhibit low levels of party nationalization. However, systematic research on nationalization across parties and party systems is still lacking. This study argues that the prospects for building nationalized parties vary substantially between incumbent and opposition parties. Incumbent parties, with their…
Elite coordination and popular protest: The Joint Effect on Democratic Change
Authoritarian elections offer a window of contestation where a democratic opposition may increase the pressure on authoritarian regimes to implement democratic change. Pressure may come either from popular protest (vertical threats), or from a coordinated counter-elite (lateral threats). Previous research on electoral authoritarianism has emphasized the importance of both lateral and vertical threats for democratization, but have not theorized ho…
Democracy in Reverse: The 2016 General Election in Zambia
On 11 August 2016, Zambia held elections for the presidency, National Assembly, local councillors, and mayors. Concurrently, a referendum was held on whether to enhance the Bill of Rights in the Constitution of Zambia. The elections were significant for several reasons: It was the first contest under a newly amended Constitution, which introduced important changes to the electoral framework. It also marked a break with Zambia's positive historica…
Candidate nomination, intra-party democracy, and election violence in Africa
This article introduces a special issue on candidate nomination, intra-party democracy, and election violence in Africa. Although a burgeoning literature on African democratization has focused on the topic of electoral violence, little attention has been given to violence during party nominations. When local-level or national-level competition between parties is low, as in much of Africa, electoral politics become a matter of intra-party rather t…
Captured Countryside? Stability and Change in Sub-National Support for African Incumbent Parties
Many existing accounts of African elections assume that voters base their electoral decisions on cues and incentives that are anchored in highly stable ethnic cleavage structures. Yet several newer contributions to the study of African electoral politics have questioned the ethno-clientelistic voting thesis and highlighted other determinants of vote choice, such as class, ideology and performance evaluation. Existing research has, however, not de…
Electoral Rulings and Public Trust in African Courts and Elections
On the African continent, where elections are often surrounded by accusations of fraud and manipulation, legal avenues for challenging elections may enhance election integrity and trust in political institutions. Court rulings on electoral petitions have consequences for the distribution of power, but how do they shape public opinion? We theorize and study the way in which court rulings in relation to parliamentary election petitions shape public…
Fighting for a name on the ballot: Constituency-level analysis of nomination violence in Zambia
What factors increase the likelihood of nomination violence? Nomination violence can be an expression of both horizontal conflict, between local political elites, and vertical conflict, between national and local elites. We theorize about factors that may increase the risks of vertical and horizontal conflict and leverage a unique dataset of constituency-level nomination violence obtained from surveys with 464 domestic election observers active i…
Not all dictators are equal: Coups, fraudulent elections, and the selective targeting of democratic sanctions
Since the end of the Cold War, Western powers have frequently used sanctions to fight declining levels of democracy and human rights violations abroad. However, some of the world's most repressive autocracies have never been subjected to sanctions, while other more competitive authoritarian regimes have been exposed to repeated sanction episodes. In this article, we concentrate on the cost-benefit analysis of Western senders that issue democratic…
Institutional stepping stones for democracy: How and Why Multipartyism Enhances Democratic Change
cholars of electoral authoritarianism and comparative institutions have emphasized how authoritarian regimes implement multiparty elections to stabilize authoritarian rule and diffuse political opposition. Consequently, the literature has advised against the notion that multiparty elections constitute a general lever for democratization. This article presents evidence in support of a more positive understanding of multipartyism and democracy. We …
The Presidential, Parliamentary and Local Elections in Malawi, May 2014
On 20 May 2014, Malawi arranged tripartite elections for president, parliament and local councils. The elections were remarkable for several reasons, seen from both an African and a Malawian perspective. Despite an uneven electoral playing field, the elections were highly competitive, ultimately leading to the country's second turnover of power when opposition challenger Peter Mutharika defeated the incumbent president, Joyce Banda. The electoral…
The Global Crisis of Trust in Elections
This article introduces a special issue on trust in elections. While the number of electoral democracies has grown globally, we are currently experiencing a crisis of electoral trust. Political polarization, social divisions, and the rapid spread of misinformation have all been related to enhanced widespread skepticism about the quality of national elections. The special issue is focused on two central questions: How can we explain variations in …
Regional cleavages in African politics: Persistent electoral blocs and territorial oppositions
Do socio-economic cleavages shape electoral dynamics in African countries? Previous individual-level and party systems research on African politics has de-emphasized socio-economic factors, contributing to the common view that ethnic cleavages and short-term ethnic alliances define politics both locally and nationally. Focusing on Kenya, Zambia, and Malawi, we draw on methods in electoral geography to offer a spatial analysis of geographic patter…
Electoral turnovers and the disappointment of enduring presidential power: Constitution making in Zambia
Much has been written about the strength of African presidentialism. This article studies the resilience of presidential power in Zambia in the face of electoral turnover. Opposition election campaigns, conducted by both the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) and the Patriotic Front (PF), featured deep constitutional reform as prominent campaign pledges. Nevertheless, after winning the presidency, both parties failed to reduce presidential p…
Paying to Play: How Parliamentary Candidates Fund Ruling Party Campaigns in Malawi
What are the sources of incumbent parties' superior financial resources in parliamentary election campaigns in Africa's clientelistic democracies? Scholars have emphasized ruling parties' access to state resources. We document a different mechanism, where government parties attract candidates willing and able to devote their personal resources to parliamentary (and by extension presidential) campaigns in the hope of gaining access to central reso…
Electoral coordination in Anglophone Africa
Electoral coordination has been a primary concern for scholars of African politics, interested in topics such as ethnic conflict mitigation and democratisation, for decades. However, understanding of micro-level electoral coordination in Sub-Saharan Africa is generally still very limited. This study is the first to investigate voter coordination in Sub-Saharan Africa using constituency-level election results. Studying 20 single-member district el…
How Does Primary Election Manipulation Affect the Selection of Women Candidates? Evidence from Malawi
How does manipulation of primary elections affect the selection of women candidates for parliament? The underrepresentation of women in politics is a well-researched global phenomenon. However, as most work focuses on general elections, we overlook the disadvantages that women face in the selection process. Specifically, primary elections often provide ample room for manipulation. We argue that manipulation skews electoral contests in favor of ca…
Offices and policies - Why do oppositional parties form pre-electoral coalitions in competitive authoritarian regimes
Opposition Coalitions and Democratization by Election
This article critically assesses the argument that oppositional coordination creates democratization by elections. It argues that the previously acknowledged democratizing effect of pre-electoral coalitions is better described as an alternation effect, by which coordinated oppositional parties are more likely to win elections. The positive effect of oppositional coalitions is, however, short lived and intimately connected with cases where the ele…
Authoritarian regime types revisited: Updated Data in Comparative Perspective
This article introduces a modified and updated version of the authoritarian regime type dataset first introduced by Hadenius and Teorell [2007. Pathways from authoritarianism. Journal of Democracy, 18 (1), 143–157]. The basic logic and merits of this dataset is presented, previously published criticism of the index is addressed and practical advice for potential users is provided. The dataset is also compared theoretically and empirically with th…
Electoral coordination in Anglophone Africa
Electoral coordination has been a primary concern for scholars of African politics, interested in topics such as ethnic conflict mitigation and democratisation, for decades. However, understanding of micro-level electoral coordination in Sub-Saharan Africa is generally still very limited. This study is the first to investigate voter coordination in Sub-Saharan Africa using constituency-level election results. Studying 20 single-member district el…
Democratization and electoral turnovers in sub-Saharan Africa and beyond
This study criticizes approaches equating opposition electoral victories with democratization in competitive authoritarian regimes. Not only are these approaches theoretically problematic, but there are also important empirical reasons to distinguish between electoral turnovers and democratization. The study goes on to explain why some African turnovers have been successful in bringing about democratization while others have not. This study promo…
Nationalized incumbents and regional challengers: Opposition- and incumbent-party nationalization in Africa
The African party literature, especially research prescribing to the long-dominant ethnic voting thesis, has asserted that African party systems exhibit low levels of party nationalization. However, systematic research on nationalization across parties and party systems is still lacking. This study argues that the prospects for building nationalized parties vary substantially between incumbent and opposition parties. Incumbent parties, with their…
Are democratic sanctions really counterproductive
Previous research has shown that sanctions have a negative impact on the level of democracy in targeted authoritarian countries. This runs counter to substantive comparative literature on democratization which finds that economic stress is connected with regime collapse and democratic liberalization. To solve this puzzle, we focus on the effects of “democratic sanctions” (those that explicitly aim to promote democracy) which have become the most …
Rural bias in African electoral systems: Legacies of unequal representation in African democracies
Not all dictators are equal: Coups, fraudulent elections, and the selective targeting of democratic sanctions
Since the end of the Cold War, Western powers have frequently used sanctions to fight declining levels of democracy and human rights violations abroad. However, some of the world's most repressive autocracies have never been subjected to sanctions, while other more competitive authoritarian regimes have been exposed to repeated sanction episodes. In this article, we concentrate on the cost-benefit analysis of Western senders that issue democratic…
The Presidential, Parliamentary and Local Elections in Malawi, May 2014
On 20 May 2014, Malawi arranged tripartite elections for president, parliament and local councils. The elections were remarkable for several reasons, seen from both an African and a Malawian perspective. Despite an uneven electoral playing field, the elections were highly competitive, ultimately leading to the country's second turnover of power when opposition challenger Peter Mutharika defeated the incumbent president, Joyce Banda. The electoral…
Democracy in Reverse: The 2016 General Election in Zambia
On 11 August 2016, Zambia held elections for the presidency, National Assembly, local councillors, and mayors. Concurrently, a referendum was held on whether to enhance the Bill of Rights in the Constitution of Zambia. The elections were significant for several reasons: It was the first contest under a newly amended Constitution, which introduced important changes to the electoral framework. It also marked a break with Zambia's positive historica…
Leverage, diplomacy, and African lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and intersex rights: Malawi and Zambia compared
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and intersex (LGBTI) rights have become central to the Western human rights (HR) agenda in Africa. Nevertheless, diplomatic responses to violations of LGBTI rights have appeared ad hoc and inconsistent. We explore the tools used for the promotion of LGBTI rights in Africa and theorize about the costs involved in promoting such rights in a resistant environment. We argue that engaging publicly in the promotio…
Violence and Candidate Nomination in Africa
Institutional stepping stones for democracy: How and Why Multipartyism Enhances Democratic Change
cholars of electoral authoritarianism and comparative institutions have emphasized how authoritarian regimes implement multiparty elections to stabilize authoritarian rule and diffuse political opposition. Consequently, the literature has advised against the notion that multiparty elections constitute a general lever for democratization. This article presents evidence in support of a more positive understanding of multipartyism and democracy. We …
Fighting for a name on the ballot: Constituency-level analysis of nomination violence in Zambia
What factors increase the likelihood of nomination violence? Nomination violence can be an expression of both horizontal conflict, between local political elites, and vertical conflict, between national and local elites. We theorize about factors that may increase the risks of vertical and horizontal conflict and leverage a unique dataset of constituency-level nomination violence obtained from surveys with 464 domestic election observers active i…
Candidate nomination, intra-party democracy, and election violence in Africa
This article introduces a special issue on candidate nomination, intra-party democracy, and election violence in Africa. Although a burgeoning literature on African democratization has focused on the topic of electoral violence, little attention has been given to violence during party nominations. When local-level or national-level competition between parties is low, as in much of Africa, electoral politics become a matter of intra-party rather t…
Captured Countryside? Stability and Change in Sub-National Support for African Incumbent Parties
Many existing accounts of African elections assume that voters base their electoral decisions on cues and incentives that are anchored in highly stable ethnic cleavage structures. Yet several newer contributions to the study of African electoral politics have questioned the ethno-clientelistic voting thesis and highlighted other determinants of vote choice, such as class, ideology and performance evaluation. Existing research has, however, not de…
Elite coordination and popular protest: The Joint Effect on Democratic Change
Authoritarian elections offer a window of contestation where a democratic opposition may increase the pressure on authoritarian regimes to implement democratic change. Pressure may come either from popular protest (vertical threats), or from a coordinated counter-elite (lateral threats). Previous research on electoral authoritarianism has emphasized the importance of both lateral and vertical threats for democratization, but have not theorized ho…
Pre-election violence and territorial control: Political dominance and subnational election violence in polarized African electoral systems
Cross-national research on African electoral politics has argued that competition increases the prospects for pre-election violence. However, there is a dearth of systematic research on the effect of political competition on pre-election violence at the subnational level. We theorize that in African democracies characterized by competition at the national level but low subnational competitiveness (polarization), violence is often a manifestation …
Electoral Rulings and Public Trust in African Courts and Elections
On the African continent, where elections are often surrounded by accusations of fraud and manipulation, legal avenues for challenging elections may enhance election integrity and trust in political institutions. Court rulings on electoral petitions have consequences for the distribution of power, but how do they shape public opinion? We theorize and study the way in which court rulings in relation to parliamentary election petitions shape public…
Systematic Measurement Error in Election Violence Data: Causes and Consequences
What are the causes and consequences of systematic measurement error in violence measures drawn from media-based conflict event data? More specifically, how valid are such event data for geocoding and capturing election violence? This study examines sub-national variation in election violence and uses original data from domestic election monitor surveys as a comparison to widely used sources of event data. The authors show that conventional data …
From Thin to Thick Representation: How a Female President Shapes Female Parliamentary Behavior
How does the symbolic power of a female president affect female parliamentary behavior? Whereas female descriptive representation has increased around the world, women parliamentarians still face significant discrimination and stereotyping, inhibiting their ability to have a real voice and offer "thick" representation to women voters. We leverage the case of Malawi, a case where the presidency changed hands from a man to a woman through a truly e…
Electoral turnovers and the disappointment of enduring presidential power: Constitution making in Zambia
Much has been written about the strength of African presidentialism. This article studies the resilience of presidential power in Zambia in the face of electoral turnover. Opposition election campaigns, conducted by both the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) and the Patriotic Front (PF), featured deep constitutional reform as prominent campaign pledges. Nevertheless, after winning the presidency, both parties failed to reduce presidential p…
Paying to Play: How Parliamentary Candidates Fund Ruling Party Campaigns in Malawi
What are the sources of incumbent parties' superior financial resources in parliamentary election campaigns in Africa's clientelistic democracies? Scholars have emphasized ruling parties' access to state resources. We document a different mechanism, where government parties attract candidates willing and able to devote their personal resources to parliamentary (and by extension presidential) campaigns in the hope of gaining access to central reso…
Regional cleavages in African politics: Persistent electoral blocs and territorial oppositions
Do socio-economic cleavages shape electoral dynamics in African countries? Previous individual-level and party systems research on African politics has de-emphasized socio-economic factors, contributing to the common view that ethnic cleavages and short-term ethnic alliances define politics both locally and nationally. Focusing on Kenya, Zambia, and Malawi, we draw on methods in electoral geography to offer a spatial analysis of geographic patter…
Political science (31 works) · Politics (27 works) · Law (25 works) · Political Conflict and Governance (25 works) · Law (23 works) · Political economy (21 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Democracy (18 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (15 works) · Economics (14 works)