Benin has held several rounds of free and fair presidential and parliamentary elections since 1991, but little is known about how the individual citizens of Benin cast their votes and why. We created a model to test what factors-social, economical, and political-impact individual support for certain candidates, using the Afrobarometer survey. We explored contextual factors, such as concentration of ethnic group in respondent's area, by marrying census data to the Afrobarometer's individual-level data. We found that different candidates appeal to voters for different reasons, and that ethnicity alone is usually not enough to explain support for a candidate. Moreover, we found that when ethnicity is a factor, having a concentration of the ethnic group in your region can enhance the effect of ethnicity on political preferences.
Decentralisation of public policy from national to sub-national governments occurs in 80% of developing and transitioning economies worldwide (Manor, 1999), and is advocated by the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and European Union. Proponents argue that decentralisation disperses political power, involves citizens in the political process, and allows subnational officials to craft efficient policies. After suffering under centralised state policymaking , citizens of Central and Eastern Europe should be avid supporters of decentralisation. Yet 80% of the Polish populace was dissatisfied with decentralisation of health care services by 2000. This article uses public opinion, interview, and elite survey data to examine the critical case of Poland's 1999 health decentralisation, answering two questions about public opinion on decentralisation. First, why were Polish citizens displeased with decentralisation? Second, what factors make or break public evaluations of decentralisation? The article demonstrates that Poles were more dissatisfied with their health care during health decentralisation (1999)(2000)(2001) than when it was centralised (
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