RAPID: International Election Observation and Perceptions of Election Credibility

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On June 25, 2014, Tunisia announced that it will hold its first post-revolution parliamentary election on October 26, 2014, and its first post-revolution presidential election on November 23, 2014. This project seeks to evaluate how election observers affect citizens' political attitudes and behaviors around these elections. Election observers, which come from both international and domestic organizations, seek to improve public confidence in elections through their presence at elections and their public reports on election quality. Previous research suggests that local citizens' perceptions of elections' credibility may affect their political participation in a myriad of ways, from promoting democratic engagement and voter turnout to increasing the likelihood of protest and election violence. Thus, election observers may have significant effects on democratization and peace through their effects on beliefs about election credibility. Given the political events in the Middle East and North Africa since 2011, the knowledge produced from this proposed study has great relevance for peace and stability in the region. In particular, the knowledge can help to inform policymakers and international non-governmental organizations that are involved in post-conflict re-construction . This project will embed experiments in a panel survey around Tunisia's legislative and presidential elections, which will occur on October 26, 2014, and November 23, 2014, respectively. The experiments will deliver information about election observers' presence and reports at the October 26th election to randomly selected citizens in a nationally representative survey conducted immediately following that election. Factors that will be varied include the identity of election observers (U.S., European, or domestic) and the content of their reports (positive or negative). The project's outcomes will include citizens' perceptions of the credibility of the October 26th election as well as their election turnout, vote choice, and other political behaviors (e.g., protest) during and after the November 23rd election. The latter outcomes will be measured via a post-election survey with the same panel of respondents immediately following the November 23rd election. Thus, if election observers affect perceptions of election credibility, then this project will also be able to estimate how election observers affect a range of other future political behaviors via beliefs about election credibility for the first time using causal mediation analysis.