BONUS LINK: My entire (so far) grad school notes collection can be found here.
Notes on African Elections (Articles by Lindbery, Bratton and Gazibo)
Staffan Lindberg: "
- Eventually things will get better. If he reran this data today, what would it
show?
- Elections themselves are funded internally and its only the
election monitoring that is external.
*A major obstacle is that every time there’s a breakdown,
the election cycle starts over—therefore they have trouble getting to that
magical fourth election.
Michael Bratton, Ravi Bhavnan and Tse-Hsin Chen, “Voting Intensions in Africa: Ethnic, Economic or Partisan?” Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 50, 1 (2012)
- Challenging pessimist argument that in absence of big middle
class are identity based which can only generate instability over time
(therefore there’s never any swing vote)—exacerbating the problem. There’s some ethnic voting but the evaluation
of the economy (and partisanship matters).
Identity matters, but not that much.
Mamoudou Gazibo:
- Electoral commissions are extremely important but there’s a
lot of variation. Some have been able to
create autonomy. An independent and
autonomous EC contributes directly to freer and fairer elections. He doesn’t explain WHY some become better and
some don’t. A good EC makes the
elections less politicized.
- Need to look at the people who are in charge of the
electoral commission—this is perhaps the biggest factor. Example in Togo, where no one even
tries.
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