Political Mobilization and Electoral Politics in Africa

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

What motivates political participation, especially in newer and flawed democracies? How do elements of democratization and autocratization shape political behavior? The four papers on this panel address these questions from various angles with a regional focus on Africa. The first two papers examine strategies for mobilizing individuals, while the second two examine how the broader regime context influences political mobilization.

In “Addressing Gender Gaps,” Sperber and McClendon use an experimental intervention ahead of Zambia’s 2021 election to investigate how efficacy-building civic and voter education interventions might reduce the gender gap in participation. They find that their intervention, which paired affirmations and “self-help” activities with civic education, reduced the gender gap in both intended and actual political behaviors. In “Pulling for the Party,” Beardsworth, Gkoutna, and Harris examine how party activists. In “Pulling for the Party,” Beardsworth, Gkoutna, and Harris investigate how party activists attempt to influence voters, including which strategies they target at which voters, and which are most effective. Using a three-wave panel survey around Zimbabwe’s 2023 elections, they argue that party activists use information about voters to select which of a wide range of mobilization strategies they should use.

Turning to regime-level characteristics, in “Democracy and Ethnic Diversity,” Green examines how democratization affects ethnic identity across Africa, arguing that democratization leads to higher levels of identification with ethnic minority groups because democratic processes render them politically relevant. Analyzing survey data from 1.8 million respondents alongside a case study of Burkina Faso, he shows that ethnic fractionalization increases with democratization. Lastly, in “Visibility of Autocratization,” Hern introduces the novel concept of “visibility” as regards to autocratizing incumbents, arguing that visibly autocratizing incumbents are more likely to be voted out of office than their subtly autocratizing counterparts. She develops this concept with original survey data from Zambia, and tests it using a dataset of African elections since 1990, alongside Afrobarometer data in four key cases.

Together, these four papers shed light on the micro- and macro-dynamics of political mobilization in Africa, underscoring the roles of educational interventions, party activities, and regime characteristics in shaping the rates and nature of political mobilization around elections.

Sub Unit

• Division 53: African Politics

Individual Presentations

• The Gendered Effect of Promoting Youth Political Efficacy in Civic Education - Elizabeth S. Sperber, University of Denver; Gwyneth McClendon, New York University

• Campaign Strategies and Information Embeddedness in Zimbabwe - Adam Harris, University College London; Nicole Beardsworth, University of Pretoria; Ioanna Gkoutna, University College London

• Democracy and Ethnic Diversity in Sub-Saharan Africa - Elliott D. Green, London School of Economics

• Visibility of Autocratization, Voter Behavior, and Election Outcomes in Africa - Erin Accampo Hern, Syracuse University

Chair

• Carl Müller-Crepon London School of Economics and Political Science

Discussant

• Rachel Sigman University of Denver