Developing States, Shaping Citizenship

Hern, Erin

doi:10.3998/mpub.9989603

Cited by 19 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…The following section presents the analysis using data from a survey conducted by Hern across four districts in Zambia, including Livingstone and Kazungula Districts in Southern Province, Kabwe District in Central Province, and Solwezi District in Northwestern Province (Hern, forthcoming). The survey included 1,500 respondents and was administered between October 2013 and February 2014.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pentecostal Identity and Citizen Engagement in Sub-Saharan Africa: New Evidence from Zambia

Sperber

Hern

2018

Politics and Religion

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Since the 1980s, Pentecostal and other born again Christian movements have become increasingly prominent in the public spheres of many sub-Saharan African states. A dearth of reliable survey data has constrained investigation of the potential influence of these religious movements on political attitudes and participation. This article analyzes original survey data from Zambia, a majority-Christian nation. These data, from a stratified random sample of 1,500 Zambians, indicate that Pentecostals do in fact share partisan preferences and report higher levels of political interest and participation than other Christians. They are less likely, however, to contact elected officials—a finding that accords with ethnographic accounts of Pentecostal pastors as political interlocutors for their politically mobilized congregations. We further contextualize and explore the external validity of our findings using cross-national survey data collected by the Pew Forum (2010, N = 9,500). We conclude by underscoring the value of further survey research on religion and politics in the region.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pentecostal Identity and Citizen Engagement in Sub-Saharan Africa: New Evidence from Zambia

Sperber

Hern

2018

Politics and Religion

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“…For them, protest was not a way of sanctioning the government—it was a way of communicating their preferences to government officials. Indeed, in these data, the best predictor of protest behavior was not political affiliation but a measure of perceived government responsiveness: those who reported that they thought the government “generally tried to help them with access to goods and services” were 64% more likely to report protest behavior than those who reported they had been marginalized or ignored by the government, ceteris paribus (Hern, 2019). This understanding of protest behavior dovetailed with Harris’s findings (based on survey data) in South Africa that many of those who participated in service delivery protests against the African National Congress (ANC) were in fact ANC supporters who wanted to communicate their preferences to the government rather than change who was in power.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…While Zambia has held democratic multiparty elections since 1991, the party system remains volatile and there is little programmatic distinction between major parties. While Hern’s (in press) survey indicated that support for the ruling Patriotic Front (PF) still hovered around 45%, many respondents indicated that they “support the ruling party because it is the ruling party,” rather than supporting the party based on its platform or performance. Indeed, 40% of the sample indicated that they did not support any party at all, expressing the sentiment that the parties are “all the same.” While most Zambians expressed their intention to continue to vote, they expressed little faith that this political act would make a difference.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Taking to the Streets: Protest as an Expression of Political Preference in Africa

Harris

Hern

2018

Comparative Political Studies

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Between 2011 and 2014, there were five times as many protests per annum in Africa as there had been in 2000. The majority of these protests were related to deteriorating economic conditions, poor service delivery, inadequate wages, and economic inequality. These protests, which we term "valence protests," do not fit easily into typical narratives about contentious behavior: they are neither social movements, nor revolutionary, nor a manifestation of organized laborinstead, many of these protests are a collective expression of a valence issue of which the government is well aware. We argue for a different conceptual framework for valence protests and contend that they are a way for politically engaged citizens to express their political preferences when voting is insufficient. Using Round 5 Afrobarometer data, we find empirical support for this claim. We also find that citizens more readily communicate political preferences through protest in countries governed by dominant parties. 1 This is not to say that incumbents know precisely what voters want. Even in developed democracies such as the US, incumbents are not always aware of what voters want, hence the use of polling. Rather, we argue that while African regimes are low information contexts generally (Posner 2005, Gottlieb 2016), governments throughout Africa are aware, for example, that education and health need improvement, that jobs are needed, and that people rely on a variety of price subsidies. This is to say that governments are generally aware that many key sectors need improvement.

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“…Our conceptualization of environmental efficacy builds on scholarship on political efficacy. The latter refers to individuals' beliefs that the political system will respond to them (Mokken 1971); in the African context, political efficacy is strongly linked to political participation (Hern 2019). Similarly, citizens' perceptions of their own ability to impact environmental outcomes-a construct we term "environmental efficacy"-is a critical determinant of environmental activism and mobilization (Ahn et al 2015;Cleveland, Kalamas, and Laroche 2005;Hines, Hungerford, and Tomera 1987;Lam 2006).…”

Section: Marginalization Political Efficacy and Community Institutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Beyond education, past interactions with the government inform individuals' evaluations of whether activism might succeed (Chamberlain 2012;Roser-Renouf et al 2014). Hern (2019) argues that citizens feel empowered to act politically when they think that government is making efforts to provide services, while political elites perceived as untrustworthy or incompetent reduce "group efficacy" (Lubell, Zahran, and Vedlitz 2007). Social policies can also affect citizen agency (Hunter and Sugiyama 2014), as can institutions ranging from direct democracy (Bowler and Donovan 2002) to electoral rules (Karp and Banducci 2008) to regime types (Coleman and Davis 1976).…”

Section: Marginalization Political Efficacy and Community Institutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Stymies Action on Climate Change? Religious Institutions, Marginalization, and Efficacy in Kenya

Honig¹,

Smith²,

Bleck³

2021

Perspect. polit.

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Addressing climate change requires coordinated policy responses that incorporate the needs of the most impacted populations. Yet even communities that are greatly concerned about climate change may remain on the sidelines. We examine what stymies some citizens’ mobilization in Kenya, a country with a long history of environmental activism and high vulnerability to climate change. We foreground efficacy—a belief that one’s actions can create change—as a critical link transforming concern into action. However, that link is often missing for marginalized ethnic, socioeconomic, and religious groups. Analyzing interviews, focus groups, and survey data, we find that Muslims express much lower efficacy to address climate change than other religious groups; the gap cannot be explained by differences in science beliefs, issue concern, ethnicity, or demographics. Instead, we attribute it to understandings of marginalization vis-à-vis the Kenyan state—understandings socialized within the local institutions of Muslim communities affected by state repression.

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Developing States, Shaping Citizenship

Cited by 19 publications

References 0 publications

Pentecostal Identity and Citizen Engagement in Sub-Saharan Africa: New Evidence from Zambia

Pentecostal Identity and Citizen Engagement in Sub-Saharan Africa: New Evidence from Zambia

Taking to the Streets: Protest as an Expression of Political Preference in Africa

What Stymies Action on Climate Change? Religious Institutions, Marginalization, and Efficacy in Kenya

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