“…The provision of politically relevant information via election-education events should generally increase people’s political efficacy. Micro-level empirical evidence supports Gurr’s (2000) proposition that the perceived availability of political action channels to attain political goals can mitigate individuals’ incentives for violence (Finkel, Horowitz & Rojo-Mendoza, 2012). 2 Hypothesis 2b: Greater exposure to election education increases people’s political efficacy. …”
Section: Disinformation Campaigns and Violence In Electionsmentioning
confidence: 64%
“…Existing research shows that education interventions have security benefits in usually peaceful countries (Vicente, 2014; Fujiwara & Wantchekon, 2013; Birch & Muchlinski, 2017: 4). Yet, as Finkel, Horowitz & Rojo-Mendoza (2012: 64) write: ‘[t]he impact of civic education in more chronically inhospitable contexts is still very much an open question’ (for exceptions, cf. Mvukiyehe & Samii, 2017; Mvukiyehe, 2018).…”
Section: Information Election Violence and Peacekeeping Interventionmentioning
False information, rumours and hate speech can incite violent protest and rioting during electoral periods. To counter such disinformation, United Nations peacekeeping operations (PKOs) routinely organize election-education events. While researchers tend to study how PKOs affect armed group and state behaviour, this study shifts the focus to civilians. It argues that PKOs’ election education reduces violent protest and rioting involving civilians during electoral periods via three pathways. First, learning about PKOs’ electoral security assistance during election-education events may convince people that political opponents cannot violently disturb elections, thereby mitigating fears of election violence. Second, election-education events provide politically relevant information that can strengthen political efficacy and people’s ability to make use of peaceful political channels. Finally, peace messages during election-education events can change people’s calculus about the utility and appropriateness of violent behaviour. Together, these activities mitigate fears, reduce political alienation and counter civilians’ willingness to get involved in violence. To test these expectations, I combine survey data on people’ perceptions and attitudes, events data on violent protest and rioting, and a novel dataset on local-level election-education events carried out by the PKO in Côte d’Ivoire before four elections held between 2010 and 2016. The results show that when the PKO is perceived to be an impartial arbiter, its election-education events have violence-mitigating effects at the individual and subnational levels.
“…The provision of politically relevant information via election-education events should generally increase people’s political efficacy. Micro-level empirical evidence supports Gurr’s (2000) proposition that the perceived availability of political action channels to attain political goals can mitigate individuals’ incentives for violence (Finkel, Horowitz & Rojo-Mendoza, 2012). 2 Hypothesis 2b: Greater exposure to election education increases people’s political efficacy. …”
Section: Disinformation Campaigns and Violence In Electionsmentioning
confidence: 64%
“…Existing research shows that education interventions have security benefits in usually peaceful countries (Vicente, 2014; Fujiwara & Wantchekon, 2013; Birch & Muchlinski, 2017: 4). Yet, as Finkel, Horowitz & Rojo-Mendoza (2012: 64) write: ‘[t]he impact of civic education in more chronically inhospitable contexts is still very much an open question’ (for exceptions, cf. Mvukiyehe & Samii, 2017; Mvukiyehe, 2018).…”
Section: Information Election Violence and Peacekeeping Interventionmentioning
False information, rumours and hate speech can incite violent protest and rioting during electoral periods. To counter such disinformation, United Nations peacekeeping operations (PKOs) routinely organize election-education events. While researchers tend to study how PKOs affect armed group and state behaviour, this study shifts the focus to civilians. It argues that PKOs’ election education reduces violent protest and rioting involving civilians during electoral periods via three pathways. First, learning about PKOs’ electoral security assistance during election-education events may convince people that political opponents cannot violently disturb elections, thereby mitigating fears of election violence. Second, election-education events provide politically relevant information that can strengthen political efficacy and people’s ability to make use of peaceful political channels. Finally, peace messages during election-education events can change people’s calculus about the utility and appropriateness of violent behaviour. Together, these activities mitigate fears, reduce political alienation and counter civilians’ willingness to get involved in violence. To test these expectations, I combine survey data on people’ perceptions and attitudes, events data on violent protest and rioting, and a novel dataset on local-level election-education events carried out by the PKO in Côte d’Ivoire before four elections held between 2010 and 2016. The results show that when the PKO is perceived to be an impartial arbiter, its election-education events have violence-mitigating effects at the individual and subnational levels.
“…In this first published study we reanalyze, Finkel, Horowitz, and Rojo-Mendoza (2012) showed that civic education programs in Kenya cause citizens to have more civic competence and engagement and be more supportive of the political system, with survey responses, 1,347 of which received the program. They also measured a large number of socioeconomic, demographic, and leadership covariates.…”
Section: The Propensity Score Paradoxmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Figure 3.Imbalance-matched sample size graph, with data from Finkel, Horowitz, and Rojo-Mendoza (2012) for the left panel and Nielsen et al. (2011) for the right.…”
We show that propensity score matching (PSM), an enormously popular method of preprocessing data for causal inference, often accomplishes the opposite of its intended goal—thus increasing imbalance, inefficiency, model dependence, and bias. The weakness of PSM comes from its attempts to approximate a completely randomized experiment, rather than, as with other matching methods, a more efficient fully blocked randomized experiment. PSM is thus uniquely blind to the often large portion of imbalance that can be eliminated by approximating full blocking with other matching methods. Moreover, in data balanced enough to approximate complete randomization, either to begin with or after pruning some observations, PSM approximates random matching which, we show, increases imbalance even relative to the original data. Although these results suggest researchers replace PSM with one of the other available matching methods, propensity scores have other productive uses.
“…A number of experimental information campaigns around African elections have shown it is possible to change turnout and even violence levels, even when these campaigns are brief and non-intensive (Collier and Vicente 2011;Wantchekon and Vermeersch 2011). Studies of civic education programs also find durable effects on knowledge and (in some cases) civic behavior, including violence (Finkel and Smith 2011;Finkel, Horowitz et al 2012;Finkel and Rojo-Mendoza 2012).…”
How to promote local order and property rights under weak rule of law? States commonly use education campaigns to influence citizen behavior and, ultimately, change generalized practices and norms (or informal institutions). But can education alone influence behavior, let alone "institutions"? In Liberia, property disputes are endemic, but access to formal legal institutions is scant. An intervention trained residents of 68 towns in mediation and advocated informal resolution practices and forums. We compare them to 179 randomized control towns a year later. We see little short-term impact on dispute levels or ferocity, but observe dramatically higher land dispute resolution and satisfaction. Spillovers within towns indicate generalized changeperhaps an early indication of institutionalization. Qualitative work suggests the intervention imparted superior mediation skills, enhanced the legitimacy of informal practices, and deterred defection to competing forums. We argue education can shift practices and norms by helping citizens coordinate on procedures and institutions.
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