Effective Opposition Strategies: Collective Goods or Clientelism?

Weghorst, Keith R.; Lindberg, Staffan I.

doi:10.1080/13510347.2011.603483

Cited by 62 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…To be sure, we do not attempt to establish a direct link between material inducement and vote outcome in general, as direct correlations are hard to establish due largely to people's unwillingness to provide accurate information on whether or not they vote based on material influence (Kitschelt & Wilkinson, 2007). In recent times, some voters do consider other factors such as past records of politicians, even when attempts are made by the latter to 'buy' the former's choice at elections (Weghorst & Lindberg, 2011;Gadjanova, 2017). Also, we do not claim that campus distributive campaigns are the root causes of vote buying in intra-party and thus national elections, as the campus-party link is a latter development (especially from the 90s and 2000s competitive political period, up to today), and thus the campus-party link is younger than the long history of electoral politics in Ghana.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Campus Politics and Intra-Party Vote Buying in Ghana: How Political Mentorship Could Destruct

Paalo

Gyampo

2019

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Elections in fledgling democracies are punctuated by perceived and observed cases of vote buying otherwise also called electoral clientelism-regarded as a major threat to democratic consolidation. Notions of vote buying are variously captured in the burgeoning literature on democracy, but the ongoing scholarly discussions have failed to engage some growing contemporary trends that also contribute significantly to sustaining the culture of vote buying in intra-party, local and national elections. In our analysis of recent intra-party elections in Ghana, we argue that vote buying has become more complex and more pronounced-and the proliferation of the phenomenon is aided by student campus politics (particularly at the various tertiary institutions), which directly feed into national politics. Following this stance, the article concludes with a recommendation that further empirical research be conducted by scholars and policymakers to fully examine the reinforcing role of campus politics in electoral clientelism during intra-party elections and, by extension, national elections.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Campus Politics and Intra-Party Vote Buying in Ghana: How Political Mentorship Could Destruct

Paalo

Gyampo

2019

JSAA

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“…This paper joins the few recent studies questioning the effectiveness of gifts to secure votes in Sub-Saharan Africa (Weghorst & Lindberg 2011; Guardado & Wantchekon 2014) and advances this work in three ways: it provides an explanation for the persistence of vote buying despite recognition of its futility, it shows that the ineffectiveness of gifts to guarantee votes is partly due to voters' awareness of candidates' records of public goods provision and the subversive actions of the opposition, and it traces the implications of electoral clientelism as status affirmation for parties' broader outreach strategies. It is one of the few studies to focus on competitive areas in Sub-Saharan Africa explicitly and present micro-level data of both voter considerations and candidate strategies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 55%

Electoral clientelism as status affirmation in Africa: evidence from Ghana

Gadjanova

2017

J. Mod. Afr. Stud.

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Why does electoral clientelism persist when ballots are secret and elections are competitive? The provision of material rewards during campaigns is seen as the standard way politicians secure votes in ‘patronage democracies’. Yet monitoring clientelistic bargains is difficult when voting is secret, several competitors may provide material inducements simultaneously, voters view such inducements as gifts and not obligations, and candidates' records are more credible signals of future performance. I argue that where elections are competitive and voters expect gifts, candidates engage in a two-pronged strategy: affirm their own status through public displays of wealth, and undermine opponents' rewards by matching inducements or encouraging voters to break reciprocity norms. In result, neither side's gifts are sufficient for a win, and parties are forced to pursue different linkage mechanisms to voters. One such mechanism involves defining and targeting broader constituencies through policy proposals. Micro-level data from Ghana confirm these expectations. The theory is better suited to environments where candidates' past records are known to constituents than existing explanations, and accounts for the apparent contradiction between the ubiquity of campaign clientelism in Sub-Saharan Africa and recent empirical findings that performance evaluations and non-contingent incentives matter most to voters.

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“…Because institutionalisation is often used as an independent variable in explaining democratisation, previous conclusions about the impact of democracy on voter coordination might be spurious. For instance, looking at the case of Ghana, the high level of party-institutionalisation has often been cited as an explanation for its increase in democracy Weghorst & Lindberg, 2011;Whitfield, 2009). Over time, institutionalisation and coordination have remained relatively stable in Ghana, while the level of democracy has varied considerably.…”

Section: Descriptive Analysismentioning

confidence: 97%

Electoral coordination in Anglophone Africa

Wahman

2014

Commonwealth & Comparative Politics

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Electoral coordination has been a primary concern for scholars of African politics, interested in topics such as ethnic conflict mitigation and democratisation, for decades. However, understanding of micro-level electoral coordination in Sub-Saharan Africa is generally still very limited. This study is the first to investigate voter coordination in SubSaharan Africa using constituency-level election results. Studying 20 single-member district elections during the period 1990-2010 in five Anglophone African countries (Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi and Zambia) demonstrates that many African elections continue to show low levels of electoral coordination. Using a multi-level regression analysis, the study shows that the most important explanation for low levels of coordination across Africa is high voter volatility. It is argued that insufficient information makes it hard for voters and candidates to act strategically. However, the level of democracy, which has been emphasised in earlier aggregate level research, does not significantly affect the level of coordination.

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Effective Opposition Strategies: Collective Goods or Clientelism?

Cited by 62 publications

References 19 publications

Campus Politics and Intra-Party Vote Buying in Ghana: How Political Mentorship Could Destruct

Campus Politics and Intra-Party Vote Buying in Ghana: How Political Mentorship Could Destruct

Electoral clientelism as status affirmation in Africa: evidence from Ghana

Electoral coordination in Anglophone Africa

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