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

主要研究员：哥伦比亚大学Macartan Humphreys合伙：哥伦比亚大学Jeffrey Krutz标题：博士论文研究：博士论文研究：政治科学博士论文研究：撒哈拉以南非洲的政治信息和选举行为摘要在过去20年里，撒哈拉以南非洲发生的一些最重大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、报纸和互联网在非洲越来越大的领土上普及。因此，数百万人发现，获得娱乐、散居国外的社区的信息，以及可能最重要的是关于他们国家政治的新闻变得更容易、更便宜。社会科学家才刚刚开始研究通信和信息交流方面的这些新发展如何影响公民对政治的了解，从而影响该地区的政治竞争。这一研究项目试图更具体地了解非洲大众媒体最近的发展如何影响公民的选举决策过程。非洲投票行为的主导理论主要关注种族认同和候选人在竞选期间分配相对便宜的商品等因素。然而，越来越多的信息，如有关官员腐败的新闻报道、政府分配做法和政策结果，是否会影响这些因素在选民决策考量中的显着性？该项目发展了撒哈拉以南非洲的信息收集战略和选举决策理论，将族裔和货物分配等因素的某些重要性归因于它们向选民提供的政治信息。该理论假设，随着其他可能令人困惑的政治事实变得更加普遍，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会下降。为了检验这些假设的正确性，将在乌干达的多个地点进行一系列实验室实验。受试者将接触到关于假想的两名候选人角逐地方政府职位的各种信息。在这些信息处理之后，将包括候选人的教育水平、过去作为民选官员的表现以及对有争议的地方问题的立场等线索，将衡量参与者对同族和商品分销商的支持程度和评价。这些实验将导致建立一个数据集，在此基础上可以测试撒哈拉以南非洲的投票行为理论。这项研究的结果应该会提高我们对政治信息获取的不同如何影响撒哈拉以南非洲以及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的理解。

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.