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Voting for the Devil You Know: Understanding Electoral Behavior in Authoritarian Regimes

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Voting for the Devil You Know: Understanding Electoral Behavior in Authoritarian Regimes VOTING FOR THE DEVIL YOU KNOW: UNDERSTANDING ELECTORAL BEHAVIOR IN AUTHORITARIAN REGIMES A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Natalie Wenzell Letsa August 2017 © Natalie Wenzell Letsa 2017 VOTING FOR THE DEVIL YOU KNOW: UNDERSTANDING ELECTORAL BEHVAIOR IN AUTHORITARIAN REGIMES Natalie Wenzell Letsa, Ph. D. Cornell University 2017 In countries where elections are not free or fair, and one political party consistently dominates elections, why do citizens bother to vote? If voting cannot substantively affect the balance of power, why do millions of citizens continue to vote in these elections? Until now, most answers to this question have used macro-level spending and demographic data to argue that people vote because they expect a material reward, such as patronage or a direct transfer via vote-buying. This dissertation argues, however, that autocratic regimes have social and political cleavages that give rise to variation in partisanship, which in turn create different non-economic motivations for voting behavior. Citizens with higher levels of socioeconomic status have the resources to engage more actively in politics, and are thus more likely to associate with political parties, while citizens with lower levels of socioeconomic status are more likely to be nonpartisans. Partisans, however, are further split by their political proclivities; those that support the regime are more likely to be ruling party partisans, while partisans who mistrust the regime are more likely to support opposition parties. In turn, these three groups of citizens have different expressive and social reasons for voting. This dissertation argues that ruling party partisans vote out of a sense of civic duty, opposition parties vote to improve democracy, and nonpartisans vote when they are mobilized by their communities during elections. Overall, the dissertation shows that in Cameroon, expressive and social reasons are more important to explaining the voting act than economic motivations. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Natalie Wenzell Letsa received her B.A. in political science from Reed College in Portland, Oregon in 2009. She earned her Ph.D. in Government from Cornell in 2017. She will be a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. She will also be joining the faculty of the Department of International and Area Studies at the University of Oklahoma as the Wick Cary Assistant Professor of Political Economy. iv For Kwame v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation was motivated by the desire to give voice to people who are not usually heard. With this in mind, I start by thanking the thousands of ordinary Cameroonians who took the time to talk to the random American who showed up on their doorstep. This project would not have been possible without them, and the depth of my gratitude is impossible to express. Every single one of my 576 interviewees taught me something new, and the first major lesson of my Cameroonian education was the torturous journey of navigating my complex role as a privileged stranger. Being an American both opened and closed doors for me, which was a deeply humbling experience. One of my first surveys in Yaoundé was with an old man who was so excited to be interviewed by une blanche that we took an extra 20 minutes to review his corkboard of political memorabilia, which prominently featured a photograph of Chantal Biya with Michelle Obama. In Bafoussam, door after door was closed in my face and I could hardly find a willing participant, while in Bamenda I had people lining up for the privilege of an interview. I remember the young woman— barely old enough to do the survey—who outright refused to be interviewed by a French woman. But once I pulled out my American accent and passport, she was delighted to oblige. In Mvila in the South, my assistants and I had the police called on us on three separate occasions. In the tiny village of Baforchu in Santa, I shared a long and enlightening political conversation with a random circle of elders over palm wine and donuts. In an equally tiny village, Bot Makak in Nyong et Kellé district, a fou chased me around the village screaming at the top of his lungs that I had arrived in order to begin the killing of the “black babies.” Whether being welcomed with open arms or being run out of town, each of these experiences cut through my pride and exposed my privilege, for which I am grateful. The other chief lesson from my time in Cameroon was discovering the incredible diversity of human thought and experience. It was not uncommon to spend 30 minutes listening to a passionate anti-regime tirade, only to walk next door in order to hear an equally genuine and impassioned defense of the president and his regime. In vi the middle of Bamenda, a man explained to me how he was incredibly proud to vote in elections, but that in each election he would randomly choose who to vote for because, according to his opaque political philosophy, “the SDF could not exist without the RDPC, and the RDPC could not exist without the SDF.” Go figure. The joy of this dissertation was collecting these diverse opinions and experiences; the challenge was making sense of them. For the second part, I cannot thank enough the members of my dissertation committee, who have been an immense source of support for my work from the start. Nicolas van de Walle was on board with my vision for this project from very early on, and his encouragement provided me the confidence to move forward during several moments of paralysis. Nic’s door was never closed, and it was through our meandering conversations that I learned almost everything that I know about Africanist political science. Valerie Bunce provided invaluable feedback at every step of the process. This dissertation is framed within the authoritarianism literature because of her, and her vast knowledge of autocratic politics kept me accountable from prospectus through fieldwork to defense. Adam Levine inspired my love for public opinion, and for his methodological guidance, the empirics of this dissertation were made possible. Before leaving for Cameroon, it never really occurred to me that single-handedly implementing a 2,400 respondent survey in a country I had never been to before was overly ambitious. I attribute this sense of limitless possibility to Adam. I would also like to thank Tom Pepinsky, who has offered his advice and feedback at multiple stages of the dissertation process, as well as Peter Enns, who read early drafts of my dissertation work for both third year colloquium as well as dissertation colloquium. Thanks also to Jeremy Wallace, who offered excellent feedback as my outside reader. Last but certainly not least, I would like to thank Tina Slater for her indefatigable administrative assistance over the past six years. Miguel Bityeki, Brenda Masanga, Evelyn Ngu, and Shella Ayula (and Kwame Letsa!) implemented the survey across Cameroon. Miguel put everything into perspective for me; he made sense of my experiences that made no sense. In many ways, he gave me the foundations for how I now understand Cameroonian politics. vii Brenda is the hardest worker I know, and her tireless work ethic put me to shame. Together, Miguel and Brenda made my time in Cameroon what it was—I’m not sure I have ever laughed harder than those evenings on the side of the road in Boumnyebel. Evelyn was my hustler, and she made all things possible. We worked alone together to complete most of the survey, and our voyages throughout the Northwest, Southwest, West, and East built between us a camaraderie rarely felt in life. The empirics in this dissertation would have been impossible without these incredible people. Also from Cameroon, I would like to thank my fixer, Patrice Bigombe, whose incredible generosity of time and contacts opened doors for me throughout the country. Thank you to Professor Yves Paul Mandjem, who personally drove me around Yaoundé for two days so I could get access to people and resources at MINADT and ELECAM. I thank Professor Luc Sindjoun, whose blessing to do research in Cameroon quite literally made my fieldwork possible (and saved me from a few pickles with the authorities). Thanks to Aristide Onambele at ELECAM, who illuminated many dark corners of Cameroonian politics for me, and also offered an excellent drinking spot for several important milestones during my time in Cameroon. And a final thanks to my photocopier at Ngoa-Ekele. I have forgotten his name, but he was a shining light in a sea of darkness; a moment of sheer, uncontested competency and brilliance when all else seemed to be failing. For all of these people, I did not and do not understand why you were so generous to me, but I promise to pay the favor forward. I would also like to thank many friends for their support along the way. In Cameroon, Amethyst Gillis, Christelle Blanc, Jake Moore, Katherine Kalaris, Raman Chettiar (and the photocopy machine at the British High Commission!), Sarah Cook Runcie, Connor O’Steen, Aunty Edith, and Thierry Nga. In the US, my cohort at Cornell has offered endless support and laughter over the past six years, especially David Cortez (my BCF) and Mariano Sanchez Talanquer, as well as Lin Fu, Sarah Maxey, Thibaud Marcesse, Seb Dettman, and Lauren Honig. Martha Wilfahrt managed to restore my sanity on multiple occasions, and always gives me new ideas and perspectives. I am forever grateful to Michael Allen, Rebecca Valli, David De viii Micheli, and Whitney Taylor for adopting me as their own.
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