The Importance of Preaching to the Converted: the Strategic Use of Campaign Rallies, Campaign Promises, Clientelism, and Violence in African Elections

The Importance of Preaching to the Converted: The Strategic Use of Campaign Rallies, Campaign Promises, Clientelism, and Violence in African Elections Mascha Rauschenbach February 2015 The Importance of Preaching to the Converted: The Strategic Use of Campaign Rallies, Campaign Promises, Clientelism, and Violence in African Elections Mascha Rauschenbach Inaugural dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Social Sciences in the Graduate School of Economic and Social Sciences at the University of Mannheim Dean of the School of Social Sciences at the University of Mannheim: Prof. Dr. Michael Diehl Date of the defense: 23 April, 2015 First Examiner: Prof. Sabine C. Carey (Phd), University of Mannheim Second Examiner: Prof. Dr. Leonard´ Wantchekon, Princeton University Third Examiner: Prof. Dr. Marc Debus, University of Mannheim iv v UNIVERSITY OF MANNHEIM SUMMARY OF THE DISSERTATION This dissertation addresses one of the main puzzles concerning elections in young democracies: Why do undecided voters receive so little attention in parties’ election campaigns? While most theoretical models would expect parties to focus their campaign efforts on voters who do not have strong pref- erences for any party, this is not what the empirical evidence from young democracies shows. Rather, parties spend much time and money on campaigning among their own supporters, which is what the standard models would simply regard as a waste of valuable resources. I provide three key answers for this puzzle. First, parties do not waste resources on courting their supporters who are certain to turn out, at the expense of campaigning among swing voters. They rather mobilize those supporters who would otherwise not go and vote. Second, in contexts where campaign promises have little credibility, the organizers concentrate their energy on voters who are likely to trust them the most, namely their core supporters. Third, in situations in which parties use electoral violence to affect election outcomes, they concentrate their intimidation strategies on citizens who would be difficult to win over, so as to disenfranchise them. This frees up resources to offer benefits to their supporters to mobilize them to turn out on Election Day. The arguments are subjected to various empirical tests analyzing a range of campaign strategies used by presidential candidates in young democracies, and potentially in more established democracies as well. These strategies include: visits by presidential candidates to electoral constituencies to hold campaign rallies; promises of local club goods to constituencies as opposed to national programmatic promises; and attempts at winning votes using voter bribery as opposed to exercising violence. I test predictions of my argument applying a range of methodological approaches and using various original data sources. During fieldwork in Ghana, I collected event data on the journeys of presidential candidates across the country on the basis of content-analysis of two daily newspapers during the campaigning period. In addition, I compiled audio recordings from these campaign rallies and conduct content-analysis of the campaign speeches these candidates held. Furthermore, I conducted qualitative interviews with campaign managers at the national, regional and constituency level as well as focus group interviews with voters. In addition to these observational data, I carried out a survey experiment on the credibility of campaign promises. To establish external validity for the findings from campaigns in Ghana, I compile individual and regional-level data on the use of clientelism and violence in a total of 10 African coun- tries, combining Afrobarometer survey data with regional-level election data. The overall results show that candidates use campaign rallies, campaign promises and clientelistic benefits largely to mobilize turnout among their potential supporters. The findings further show that candidates concentrate promises of local club goods in contexts in which they enjoy a comparatively high level of credibility. In line with my expectation, the incumbent makes many of such local promises in constituencies where his partisans are concentrated. Furthermore, it is nearly exclusively the incumbent who promises local club goods in the first place. As incumbents already exercise discretion over the use of public resources at the time of the campaign and can thus make costly investments, their promises are more credible than those of opposition candidates. The results from the survey experiment conducted in Ghana’s capital Accra confirm that the incumbent is regarded as more credible with his promises than the challenger. They further support my argument that partisans evaluate campaign promises made by vi the candidate they support as much more credible than if the same promises are attributed to a different candidate. Finally, in line with the hypothesis that parties concentrate bribes or promises of redistri- bution on their partisans, because they can disenfranchise voters that do not support them, I find that independent voters and those living in contested regions are most at risk of being subjected to violent intimidation. This dissertation thus provides key answers for the puzzle of why parties in young democracies court their own supporters so intensely. The findings also have important implications for the study of election campaigning in young democracies, beyond this puzzle. The evidence presented shows that the preval- ence of mobilization as a campaigning strategy has been seriously under-estimated by past research. This informs an important debate in the literature and speaks in favor of turnout-buying rather than vote-buying, and mobilization rather than persuasion. The dissertation also advances recent efforts to integrate the use of clientelism and violence as repertoires of campaign strategies. The findings suggest that these two strategies are used among different types of voters and with different goals. vii Acknowledgements I wish to acknowledge the many individuals without whose support and guidance this dissertation would not have been possible. I would like to thank my dissertation committee, Sabine Carey, Leonard´ Wantchekon, and Marc Debus. Above all, I am deeply grateful to Sabine Carey who served as my advisor and guidance throughout every stage of this project for challenging me in the best possible way and for all her invaluable questions, feedback, and comments. I also thank you for your moral support, for showing me what is possible, and for being the best advisor I could have imagined. Leonard´ Wantchekon’s work has inspired me to study African elections and the phenomenon of clientelism in particular. He has provided excellent feedback on my project and many ideas on the research design were born in exchanges with him during my visits to the United States and Benin. I also thank him for introducing me to Emmanuel Gyimah-Boadi and for generously inviting me to the Institute for Empirical Research in Political Economy in Benin. I thank Marc Debus for his support in the final stages of the project and for acting as the head of my committee. I thank my co-author, Matthias Orlowski, for the inspiring and productive work with him. Different portions of this project have benefited from the insights and feedback from a number of schol- ars. I would like to thank Jeremy Horowitz, Nikolay Marinov, Eric Kramon, and Lukas Stotzer¨ who have all provided helpful feedback. I thank my colleagues at the University of Mannheim, Anna-Lena Honig,¨ for help with coding and proof-reading and for keeping me company on lonely weekends at the “Parkring.” I thank Katrin Paula for invaluable methodological advice and Anastasia Ershova for help with coding and Julia Semmelbeck for proof-reading. I am particularly grateful to my dear friends and colleagues, Anita Gohdes and Adam Scharpf, for their continuous advice and support, and most importantly, for going through this together. I would not have been able to do this without you. I also thank Catherine Gohdes for her invaluable linguistic advice and my dear friends, Vera Kern and Bontje Zangerling,¨ for help with proof-reading. For financial support, I thank the German Exchange Service and the University of Mannheim. viii I am greatly indebted to the researchers at the Ghana Center for Democratic Development for excellent guidance and generous support. I thank Emmanual Giymah-Boadi for advising me troughout the field work. Special thanks for generously sharing their insights on Ghanaian politics and introducing me to valuable contacts go to Franklin Oduro, Kojo Asante, Maxwell Amponsah, Kakra Duayeden, Robert Pwazaga and Isaac Owusu Asare. In Ghana, I was very fortunate to have an excellent team of research assistants. Many thanks to Justice Anafure, Pearl Asamoah, Mustapha Awudu, Hartlyne Bakah, Amma Odebea, Emmanuel Kummadey, Aziz Saaka, Linda Yeboah, and Kwaku Yeboah. I am grateful to my friend Kwaku Ofosu Appea Solomon for proof-reading translations, for his advice on the logistics of the survey experiment, and for sharing his meals with me. I thank Alexander Passaro for his excellent research assistance at the University of Mannheim. I would also like to thank a number of important individuals who have inspired me throughout my edu- cation. I thank Rosemarie Hagen, Thomas Herden, and finally Sophie Harding who has encouraged me to take on the endeavor of a PhD. I dedicate this dissertation to my parents, Isabell and Frank Rauschenbach and thank them for their un- conditional love and support. Finally, I thank my best friend, Daniel Schumacher, for putting up with me throughout all these years and for always being by my side. ix Contents List of Tables xiv List of Figures xvi 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Motivation and research question . .2 1.2 Main theoretical argument . .3 1.3 Empirical approach . .4 1.4 Case selection . .5 1.5 Outline of the dissertation . .6 1.6 Central contributions . .7 1.6.1 Theoretical contributions . .7 1.6.2 Empirical and methodological contributions . .8 2 Existing research on the use and the effectiveness of campaigning strategies in new democracies 10 2.1 Defining key concepts .

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