Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Political Information and Electoral Behavior in Sub-Saharan Africa

主要研究者：PI: Macartan Humphreys，哥伦比亚大学联合PI: Jeffrey Krutz，哥伦比亚大学题目：博士论文研究：政治学博士论文研究：撒哈拉以南非洲的政治信息和选举行为[0720275]摘要撒哈拉以南非洲在过去二十年中发生的一些最重要的变化可以在许多国家的大众媒体环境中找到。政治自由化、技术进步和市场改革使电视、调频广播、报纸和互联网覆盖了非洲越来越多的地区。因此，数以百万计的人发现，他们可以更容易、更便宜地获得娱乐、来自侨民社区的信息，或许最重要的是，他们可以获得有关本国政治的新闻。社会科学家才刚刚开始研究这些通信和信息交流的新发展如何影响公民对政治的认识，从而影响该地区的政治竞争。该研究项目旨在更具体地了解非洲大众传播媒介的最新发展如何影响公民的选举决策过程。非洲投票行为的主流理论主要集中在种族认同和候选人在竞选期间分发相对便宜的商品等因素上。然而，越来越多的信息可用性，如对官员腐败、政府分配做法和政策结果的新闻报道，是否会影响这些因素在选民决策计算中的重要性？本项目发展了撒哈拉以南非洲地区信息收集策略和选举决策的理论，将种族和商品分配等因素的一些重要性归因于它们向选民提供的政治信息。该理论认为，随着其他可能令人困惑的政治事实变得越来越普遍，种族和商品分配等其他因素在选民决策过程中的重要性将下降。为了审查这些假设的有效性，将在乌干达的一些地点进行一系列实验室实验。研究对象将接触到各种关于假设的地方政府职位的两名候选人竞争的信息。在这些信息处理之后，将包括候选人的教育水平、过去当选官员的表现以及对有争议的地方问题的立场等线索，参与者对共同种族和货物分销商的支持和评价水平将被衡量。这些实验将产生一个数据集，用于测试撒哈拉以南非洲地区投票行为的理论。这项研究的结果应该有助于我们更好地理解获取政治信息的不同方式如何影响撒哈拉以南非洲和其他发展中民主国家的种族间关系、裙带关系交流和选举竞争等结果。

Primary Investigators: PI: Macartan Humphreys, Columbia UniversityCo-PI: Jeffrey Krutz, Columbia UniversityTitle: Doctoral Dissertation Research: Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science:Political Information and Electoral Behavior in Sub-Saharan Africa0720275AbstractSome of the most significant changes to have occurred in Sub-Saharan Africa in the last two decades can be found in many countries' mass media environments. Political liberalization, technological advances, and market reforms have made television, FM radio, newspapers, and the Internet available over increasingly large swaths of territory in Africa. As a result, millions are finding it easier and cheaper to access entertainment, information from diaspora communities, and, perhaps most importantly, news about politics in their country. Social scientists have only begun studying how these new developments in communication and information exchange are affecting citizens' knowledge about politics and, consequently, political competition in the region. This research project seeks to understand, more specifically, how recent developments in African mass media have affected citizens' electoral decision-making processes. Dominant theories of voting behavior in Africa focus heavily on factors such as ethnic identities and candidates' distribution of relatively cheap goods during campaign periods. However, does the increasing availability of information, such as journalistic accounts of official corruption, government distributional practices, and policy outcomes, affect the salience of these factors in voters' decision-making calculi? This project develops a theory of information-collection strategies and electoral decision-making in Sub-Saharan Africa that attributes some of the importance of factors such as ethnicity and goods distribution to the political information that they provide to voters. The theory posits that, as other, possibly confounding facts about politics become more widely available, the importance of these other factors, such as ethnicity and goods distribution, in voters' decision-making processes will decline. In order to examine the validity of these hypotheses, a series of laboratory experiments will be conducted in a number of locations in Uganda. Subjects will be exposed to various types of information about hypothetical two-candidate races for local government positions. Following these informational treatments, which will include cues such as candidates' educational levels, past performance as elected officials, and positions on controversial local issues, participants' levels of support for and evaluations of co-ethnics and goods distributors will be measured. These experiments will result in the creation of a dataset on which theories on voting behavior in Sub-Saharan Africa can be tested. The findings of this research should improve our understanding of how variations in access to political information affect outcomes such as inter-ethnic relations, clientelistic exchange, and electoral competition in Sub-Saharan Africa, and other developing democracies as well.