Can Politicians Exploit Ethnic Grievances? An Experimental Study of Land Appeals in Kenya

Horowitz, Jeremy; Klaus, Kathleen

doi:10.1007/s11109-018-9485-1

Cited by 17 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…These considerations help explain why Kenyans who were victims of violence in the 2007 election period were more likely to perceive violence as acceptable in support of a just cause than non-victims of violence (Gutiérrez-Romero, 2014). Drawing on a survey-embedded experiment in the Rift Valley, the epicentre of violence in Kenya, Horowitz & Klaus (2018) find that appeals to ethnic grievances over land were generally unsuccessful – except among those respondents who were land insecure and indigenous to the province. Though Horowitz and Klaus’s hypothetical candidates do not state that they would use violence to resolve ethnic land grievances, their results are suggestive of differential response to ethnic appeals in these settings.…”

Section: Mobilizing Votersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does electoral violence affect vote choice and willingness to vote? Conjoint analysis of a vignette experiment

Gutiérrez-Romero

LeBas

2020

Journal of Peace Research

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Across many new democracies, voters routinely elect candidates associated with violence. Though electoral violence is common, there is little understanding of how it affects voting behaviour. This article examines how electoral violence affects turnout and vote choice. To this end, a vignette experiment is set in a nationally representative survey in Kenya, where electoral violence has been present since the 1990s. In the experiment, voters choose between two rival politicians. The experiment randomizes candidates’ attributes, their rumoured use of electoral violence and their record of reducing poverty. Conjoint analysis is used to isolate the effects of the candidates’ randomized attributes on turnout and vote choice. In contrast to the assumptions made in the literature on electoral violence, voters are less likely to vote for candidates rumoured to have used electoral violence, even when the candidate is a coethnic or a copartisan. This sanctioning effect, however, is not consistent across all voters. Victims of electoral violence and the poorest respondents are less likely to sanction candidates rumoured to have used violence, especially when these candidates have a good record of reducing poverty. The results show that voting turnout decreases when participants are asked to choose between candidates who are rumoured to have used electoral violence. These results are robust to including respondent and interviewer characteristics that might have affected participation in the experiment and how respondents voted. These findings explain why candidates using violence can win elections and why electoral violence has been difficult to eradicate in settings characterized by clientelism and instances of political discourse justifying the use of violence.

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Section: Mobilizing Votersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does electoral violence affect vote choice and willingness to vote? Conjoint analysis of a vignette experiment

Gutiérrez-Romero

LeBas

2020

Journal of Peace Research

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“…Recent research has used survey experiments to test for the effectiveness of grievance-based electoral appeals in Kenya (Horowitz & Klaus, 2020). While Horowitz and Klaus (2020) find that explicit grievance appeals increase support among only a small subset of voters, the results of this online field experiment show that the anger-based partisan grievance appeal increased participation across a broad range of demographic groups. The findings here also extend research on the effects of partisan emotional appeals from developed democracies like the U.S. to non-democratic settings (Brader, 2006;Miller & Krosnick, 2004;Ryan 2012;Weber, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…Group-based grievance appeals have been cited as key mobilizing tactics for parties in emerging multiethnic democracies (Horowitz, 1985), populist right-wing parties in Europe (Ivarsflaten, 2008), and the Republican Party in the U.S. (Valentino et al, 2002). Recent research has used survey experiments to test for the effectiveness of grievance-based electoral appeals in Kenya (Horowitz & Klaus, 2020). While Horowitz and Klaus (2020) find that explicit grievance appeals increase support among only a small subset of voters, the results of this online field experiment show that the anger-based partisan grievance appeal increased participation across a broad range of demographic groups.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mobilization Under Threat: Emotional Appeals and Pro-Opposition Political Participation Online

Young

2021

Polit Behav

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Large numbers of people living under authoritarian governments participate in pro-opposition politics despite sometimes significant risks. Increasing amounts of this political participation are taking place and being organized online. Do emotions play a causal role in inducing pro-opposition participation in authoritarian regimes? Can emotions that mobilize participation be spread via social media? Through an experiment carried out by an opposition party in Zimbabwe, I test whether campaign appeals to opposition supporters’ emotions affect their level of political participation in online pro-opposition discussions. I find that across two different issue areas, randomly assigned anger appeals increase participation on average by 0.4 standard deviations more than enthusiasm appeals with the same informational content. In real terms, this represents between 30% and 170% more participation in the groups assigned to the anger appeals across four different measures of participation. There is little evidence that these effects are stronger in areas with less poverty or that have historically been affected by more violence, or when coupled with messages emphasizing personal power. These results suggest that anger appeals that highlight economic grievances can be an important force for mobilizing online political participation in repressive environments.

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“…Many pieces of information are unlikely to spread among civilian populations. Divisive ethnic rhetoric, despite suspicions to the contrary (Horowitz 2001), does not increase the likelihood that information will spread (Horowitz and Klaus 2018). The information has to fit existing narratives and not contradict known facts (Kaufman 2001).…”

Section: How Motivated Reasoning Drives Rumor Evaluationmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Narratives and Evidence Influence Rumor Belief in Conflict Zones: Evidence from Syria

Schon¹

2020

Perspect. polit.

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Armed conflict creates a context of high uncertainty and risk, where accurate and verifiable information is extremely difficult to find. This is a prime environment for unverified information—rumors—to spread. Meanwhile, there is insufficient understanding of exactly how rumor transmission occurs within conflict zones. I address this with an examination of the mechanisms through which people evaluate new information. Building on findings from research on motivated reasoning, I argue that elite-driven narrative contests—competitions between elites to define how civilians should understand conflict—increase the difficulty of distinguishing fact from fiction. Civilians respond by attempting thorough evaluations of new information that they hope will allow them to distinguish evidence from narratives. These evaluations tend to involve some combination of self-evaluation, evaluation of the source, and collective sense-making. I examine this argument using over 200 interviews with Syrian refugees conducted in Jordan and Turkey. My findings indicate that people are usually unable to effectively distinguish evidence from narratives, so narrative contests are powerful drivers of rumor evaluation. Still, civilian mechanisms of rumor evaluation do constrain what propaganda elites can spread. These findings contribute to research on civil war, narrative formation, and information diffusion.

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Can Politicians Exploit Ethnic Grievances? An Experimental Study of Land Appeals in Kenya

Cited by 17 publications

References 49 publications

Does electoral violence affect vote choice and willingness to vote? Conjoint analysis of a vignette experiment

Does electoral violence affect vote choice and willingness to vote? Conjoint analysis of a vignette experiment

Mobilization Under Threat: Emotional Appeals and Pro-Opposition Political Participation Online

How Narratives and Evidence Influence Rumor Belief in Conflict Zones: Evidence from Syria

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