The impact of elections: voting, political behaviour and democracy in sub-Saharan Africa

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This research project analyses the chequered history of elections in sub-Saharan Africa. While ballots in much of the continent continue to be linked to corruption, violence and political instability, recent elections in some countries have apparently confirmed a democratic transition. Combining the techniques of history and political science, the project will re-examine the relationship between an individual's experience of elections and their political attitudes and behaviours. Do particular experiences of elections predispose individuals to reject malpractice or, alternatively to accept, or even demand it? If so, do voters become one of the barriers to, as well as the agents of democratic consolidation? The project will focus on three African countries whose political and electoral histories have been very different - Ghana, Kenya and Uganda. Our findings will foster greater understanding of democratisation in these three countries and beyond, and will inform the continued efforts of policy-makers and practitioners to promote transparent and accountable government through free and fair elections. This comparative project brings a team of historians and political scientists together to ask why it is that elections work better in some places and times than others. It aims to test the extent to which the quality of elections is shaped by popular expectations and demands, and challenges the idea that poor elections are solely the product of the undemocratic attitudes of state officials. It considers how different sorts of electoral experiences can lead individuals to have different political attitudes and expectations, and investigates when and how the evolution of anti-rigging attitudes and good electoral practice supports positive cycles of democratic consolidation. One of our key aims is to demonstrate how such cycles come into being so that we can show how positive experiences of democratic consolidation can be encouraged in previously authoritarian contexts.The project covers about sixty years of history, from the immediate pre-independence elections to the present day. It covers three countries - Kenya, Uganda and Ghana. These were similar in their institutional colonial legacy: all were British territories, which saw the rapid elaboration of an electoral system in the very last years of colonial rule - but their post-independence histories differed substantially. All now share first-past-the-post and multi-party electoral systems, but with very different levels of democratic consolidation.Our research will use multiple research techniques to interrogate a diverse body of material, from archival records to qualitative interviews to quantitative survey data and cutting-edge 'laboratory' work. This will allow the project team to focus on the processes of the elections themselves, and how these have both revealed and remade ideas about political action. Elections were - and are - performances which draw in vast numbers of people, and consume vast state and public resources and energy. But they are also negotiated events, the product of influences that are international, national and sometimes very local. Although the practice of election is typically intended to be uniform and consistent, the experience of voters and of politicians and election officials actually varies within any given election, and across time. Drawing on this innovative combination of research methods, the project will make a major contribution to academic debates, and will achieve consistent high-level policy engagement through consistent engagement with policy-makers and timely production of briefings tailored to the needs of governments, international agencies and research users. As a result, the project will inform a range of players involved in the making and remaking of elections across the continent.