Political Participation and Electoral Practices in Ghana: The Role of Domestic Election Observers and Information

Harvard University, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

This study will investigate the effect of domestic election observers and information about the integrity of the election process on political participation and the incidence of electoral malpractice in a new democracy. Although reports of electoral malpractice are very common in new democracies and election observers are deployed to minimize them, very few studies have examined the effectiveness of these observers. Moreover, existing studies have focused on international observers who are usually present only for a short period around election day. Interested parties may engage in fraud in voter registration, intimidate the opposition, stuff ballot boxes, and otherwise alter the outcome long before international observers arrive. The study will revolve around a field experiment that will be conducted in Ghana around the December 2008 national elections, in collaboration with the Accra-based Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana). The experimental design of the study will enable inferences about the impact of long-term domestic observers that is not confounded by unobserved factors. The study will also contribute to knowledge about the conditions under which social differences translate into violence during elections and about the extent and location of electoral malpractice. For the first treatment, CDD will randomize domestic election observers over a subset of Ghanaian constituencies. These observers will report on party activities and possible electoral malpractice, such as voter intimidation and political violence, in their constituencies from mid-2008. The second treatment is the exogenous introduction of information about the observers and their findings at the community level. The randomized nature of these treatments will allow for an estimate of the impact of the presence of domestic observers as well the role of information on both voter and party behavior at the constituency level. Surveys in communities with and without these treatments will be used to assess their impact on individual political attitudes and voting behavior. The results of this study should have broader impacts upon improving the integrity of elections in new democracies and increase citizens' confidence in the democratic process. Domestic observers and civic education meetings are locally-based, NGO-centered interventions that easily scale up and are already common in new democracies; the analysis will point to the specific conditions under which these measures can have the greatest effect, a significant consideration for NGOs operating under resource limitations. CDD has strong links to both research and policy-oriented organizations in sub-Saharan Africa and will disseminate this study's findings to other on-the-ground agencies in the African democracy community.