Collaborative Research: Voter Mobilization and Electoral Subversion in the Workplace

该合同符合2013年3月26日颁布的《2013年综合和进一步持续拨款法案》（P.L. 113-6）第五章第543节B部分。知识价值：该项目对美国国家安全利益很重要，因为它解决了破坏民主的经济胁迫问题。学者们早就认识到，非民主国家的统治者可以通过颠覆选举来延长他们的任期，他们把重点放在选票箱欺诈、镇压、贿选、贿选、赞助支出和拉拢反对派精英上。然而，他们在很大程度上忽视了当代混合政权中颠覆选举的一种突出形式：雇主对选民的强制动员。在许多国家，雇主——公司经理、主管、首席执行官、房东、老板、董事等等——利用他们对工人的影响力，诱使他们参加投票或以特定的方式投票。通过对1)俄罗斯公司经理和2)俄罗斯、乌克兰、格鲁吉亚、洪都拉斯、阿尔及利亚、黎巴嫩、莫桑比克、博茨瓦纳、南非、马来西亚、印度尼西亚和柬埔寨的居民的调查，本研究试图确定公司经理在选举期间向员工施加政治压力的条件。这项研究揭示了混合政权的统治者颠覆选举和阻止民主化的一种尚未得到充分研究的手段。它还确定了经济结构如何影响一个国家政权更迭的前景。此外，尽管我们对裙带关系的了解表明，它主要局限于社会网络紧密的贫困农村地区，但本研究探讨了裙带关系交换如何在现代工业环境中持续存在。更广泛的影响：通过确定允许领导人通过工作场所颠覆选举的条件，本研究将帮助决策者和民主援助团体制定提高选举公正性的计划。更具体地说，拟议的研究将导致投票监控技术的发展，这种技术可以检测工作场所的选举颠覆和信息程序，这些程序可以由非政府组织部署，以减少工作场所经济胁迫的发生率。拟议中的研究还将表明，不完整的经济改革使企业依赖于国家，从而使工人的投票权容易受到侵犯。因此，本项目将帮助决策者理解减少国家对企业权力的经济改革如何有助于促进政治自由化。最后，这项研究有助于我们理解为什么以及何时混合制度崩溃；这本身就是一项重要的公共政策考虑。

This award satisfies Division B, Title V, Sec. 543 of the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act of 2013 (P.L. 113-6, enacted on March 26, 2013). Intellectual Merit: The project is important to US national security interests because it addresses economic coercion that undermines democracy. Scholars have long recognized that rulers in non democracies can extend their tenure by subverting elections, focusing on ballot-box fraud, repression, turnout-buying, vote buying, patronage spending, and the co-optation of opposition elites. However, they have largely overlooked one prominent form of electoral subversion in contemporary hybrid regimes: the coercive mobilization of voters by employers. In many countries, employers - firm managers, supervisors, CEOs, landlords, bosses, directors and so on - use their leverage over workers to induce them to turn out and/or vote a specific way. Using surveys of 1) firm managers in Russia and 2) residents of Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Honduras, Algeria, Lebanon, Mozambique, Botswana, South Africa, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Cambodia, this research seeks to identify the conditions under which firm managers apply political pressure on their employees during elections.This research sheds light on an understudied means by which rulers in hybrid regimes subvert elections and forestall democratization. It also identifies how the structure of the economy affects a country's prospects for regime change. In addition, while much of what we know about clientelism suggests that it is largely confined to poor, rural settings with tight-knit social networks, this research explores how clientelist exchange can persist in modern, industrial settings. Broader Impacts: By identifying the conditions that allow leaders to subvert elections via the workplace, this research will help policymakers and the democracy assistance community to develop programs that improve the integrity of elections. More specifically, the proposed research will lead to the development of vote monitoring techniques that can detect workplace electoral subversion and informational programs that can be deployed by NGOs to reduce the incidence of economic coercion in the workplace. The proposed research will also show how incomplete economic reform, which leaves firms dependent on the state, can make workers' voting rights vulnerable to infringement. Thus, this project will help policymakers understand how economic reforms that reduce state power over firms can help promote political liberalization. Finally, this research contributes to our understanding of why and when hybrid regimes break down; an important public policy consideration in its own right.