Quality matters : electoral outcomes and democratic health in Africa
Master Thesis
2009
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University of Cape Town
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Abstract
In December 2007, Kenyans went to the polls to elect a president, Member of Parliament, and local councillor. As citizens who had most recently voted out one of Africa's longest standing "Big Men," in Daniel Arap Moi, there was an understandable level of excitement and enthusiasm from citizens to exercise their vote once again, as well as from the rest of world which was eager to uphold Kenya as a model of African democracy. Unfortunately as the polls closed five days later; the Kenyan Electoral Commission had been disgraced, the two main political parties were mired in ballot stuffing accusations, and violence had engulfed Nairobi, Kisumu, and the Rift Valley. While the flawed election led to an irreplaceable loss of life and severely damaged the nation's economy and reputation, it is unclear whether this flawed election would diminish Kenyan's democratic health and progress towards democratic consolidation. Indeed, recent and compelling social science evidence suggests that flawed elections do not necessarily hinder democratic development in Africa, and thus the greatest indication of Kenya's democratic progress was simply that the election was held. However, as a witness to Kenya's 2007 election, I feared that Kenya's democratic progress would be severely impeded as people voiced their discontent with elections, voting, political parties, and most importantly, democracy itself. In an attempt to determine if in fact flawed elections have a long-term detrimental impact on democratic health and consolidation I investigate the relationship between the "freeness and fairness," of elections {or electoral quality} and two indicators of democratic health: {1} popular perceptions of democratic supply and {2} popular demand for democracy. "Supply," is measured as popular satisfaction with the way democracy works plus the recognition of living in a democracy. "Demand," is measured as support for democracy plus rejection of three forms of authoritarianism, military rule, one man rule and one party rule. These indicators are aggregate measures taken from responses to Afrobarometer surveys, and have been utilized previously to assess citizen's views of democracy and the prospects for democratic growth and consolidation. Using three rounds of Afrobarometer surveys I analyze data from 18 countries and 33 elections in Africa between 1996 and 2005, using both elections and countries as the unit of analysis. The empirical results demonstrate that there is a strong correlation between electoral quality and perceived supply of democracy, but no correlation between electoral quality and the current level of demand. In other words electorates tend to see electoral outcomes as the preeminent event in determining how satisfied they are with democracy, but do not directly link the outcome of the most recent election to their support for democracy. Although the level of electoral quality did not directly correlate with the level of demand, further analysis showed that flawed elections on average negatively influence both supply and demand. Free and Fair elections, on the other hand, had a much smaller but positive influence on supply and demand. Taken together, there is compelling evidence to suggest that electoral outcomes do shape people's perception and support for democracy. If in fact citizen opinion and support for democracy is critical to democratic consolidation than this research finds that flawed elections can significantly impede democratic growth and retard the consolidation process.
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Includes bibliographical references (p. 59-61).
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Reference:
Greenberg, A. 2009. Quality matters : electoral outcomes and democratic health in Africa. University of Cape Town.