This article reports on the effects of domestic election observers on electoral fraud and violence. Using an experimental research design and polling station data on fraud and violence during Ghana’s 2012 elections, it shows that observers reduced fraud and violence at the polling stations which they monitored. It is argued that local electoral competition shapes party activists’ response to observers. As expected, in single-party dominant areas, parties used their local political networks to relocate fraud to polling stations without an election observer, and, in contrast, party activists relocated violence to stations without observers in competitive areas – a response that requires less local organizational capacity. This highlights how local party organization and electoral incentives can shape the manipulative electoral strategies employed by parties in democratic elections.

In theory, granting politicians tools to oversee bureaucrats can reduce administrative malfeasance. In contrast, I argue that the political control of bureaucrats can increase corruption when politicians need money to fund election campaigns and face limited institutional constraints. In such contexts, politicians can leverage their discretionary powers to incentivize bureaucrats to extract rents from the state on politicians' behalf. Using data from an original survey of bureaucrats (N = 864) across 80 randomly sampled local governments in Ghana, I show that bureaucrats are more likely to facilitate politicians' corrupt behavior when politicians are perceived to be empowered with higher levels of discretionary control. Using qualitative data and a list experiment to demonstrate the mechanism, I show that politicians enact corruption by threatening to transfer noncompliant officers. My findings provide new evidence on the sources of public administrative deficiencies in developing countries and qualify the presumption that greater political oversight improves governance.

for their collaboration and facilitation of the project. We thank Samuel Kweku Yamoah for helping us to field the survey. We are also grateful to the team of research enumerators who conducted the surveys. Miguel Pereira provided excellent research assistance. Thanks to Darin Christensen, John Sides, and Lynn Vavreck for their feedback on the research design.

When do politicians in developing democracies prioritize meritocratic recruitment over patronage hiring for public sector jobs? I distinguish between menial and professional positions and argue that the former are valuable for sustaining party machines, while manipulating the latter can undermine state performance. Accordingly, politicians will interfere to ensure their co-partisans are hired to menial positions but select professional bureaucrats based on meritocratic criteria. I test my argument using novel bureaucrat-level data from Ghana (n = 17,942) and leverage a change in the governing party to investigate hiring patterns. The results suggest that partisan bias is confined to menial jobs. The findings shed light on the mixed effects of electoral competition on patronage identified in prior studies: competition may dissuade politicians from interfering in recruitment to high-ranked positions, but encourage them to hire partisans for low-ranked positions.

Political parties use different methods—such as holding rallies, door-to-door canvassing, and distributing gifts—to mobilize voters during election campaigns across Africa. But how do parties choose which approach to use in each constituency? We propose that parties prefer to hold rallies in core constituencies, and to use targeted strategies—canvassing and handouts—in swing and opposition districts. However, opposition parties may not have sufficient resources to pursue such a strategy. Ruling parties have the dual advantage of being in a strong financial position, and having the ability to target core voters with state benefits between elections. Using post-election survey data from Ghana’s 2012 election, we show that the ruling party canvassed the most in districts where they were electorally weak and concentrated rallies in their home constituencies. In contrast, the opposition party focused all of its efforts in its home districts. The results highlight how incumbency status shapes parties’ campaign behaviour. They also suggest that ruling parties can combine core and swing voter targeting in different stages of the electoral cycle.