Africa’s Disappearing Election Results: Why Announcing the Winner is Simply Not Enough

Fridy, Kevin S.

doi:10.20940/jae/2009/v8i2a5

Cited by 14 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…However, these new contributions to the field are significantly less comprehensive and updated for the African continent. Electoral commissions in Africa has often chosen not to report disaggregated election results, or failed to make these records readily available (Fridy 2009).…”

Section: Data and Research Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Captured Countryside? Stability and Change in Sub-National Support for African Incumbent Parties

Wahman¹,

Boone²

2018

comp polit

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Many existing accounts of African elections assume that voters base their electoral decisions on cues and incentives that are anchored in highly stable ethnic cleavage structures. Yet several newer contributions to the study of African electoral politics have questioned the ethno-clientelistic voting thesis and highlighted other determinants of vote choice, such as class, ideology and performance evaluation. Existing research has, however, not dealt with geographic dimensions of electoral dynamics. In this paper we contribute to this literature by studying Government-Opposition Swing (GOS) voting in 7 African countries, 28 elections and 1900 parliamentary constituencies. We show that the likelihood of GOS differs from urban to rural, and across different types of rural constituencies. GOS is significantly more common in urban areas and in highly populated rural areas, but significantly less common in the president's home region and in sparsely populated rural regions. The results suggest that electoral and voting dynamics vary across space, even within a single country. We draw inferences about how political and economic geography shapes prospects for autonomous vote choice and performance-related voting.

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Section: Data and Research Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Captured Countryside? Stability and Change in Sub-National Support for African Incumbent Parties

Wahman¹,

Boone²

2018

comp polit

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“…Hence, the study is not generalizable to African multiparty systems with the lowest level of competition. Disaggregated electoral data for African elections are still hard to come by (Fridy, 2009) and unfortunately I had to exclude six more countries (Benin, Burundi, Comoros, Ethiopia, Madagascar, and Mali) due to the unavailability of reliable constituency-level election results. I have used the most recent available data for each country.…”

Section: Data and Dependent Variablementioning

confidence: 99%

Nationalized incumbents and regional challengers

Wahman

2015

Party Politics

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The African party literature, especially research prescribing to the long-dominant ethnic voting thesis, has asserted that African party systems exhibit low levels of party nationalization. However, systematic research on nationalization across parties and party systems is still lacking. This study argues that the prospects for building nationalized parties vary substantially between incumbent and opposition parties. Incumbent parties, with their access to state resources, have been successful in creating nationwide operations, even in countries where geographical factors have been unfavorable and where ethnic fractionalization is high. The analysis utilizes a new data set of disaggregate election results for 26 African countries to calculate nationalization scores for 77 parties and study the correlates of party nationalization. The results show that factors like ethnic fractionalization, the size of the geographical area, and urbanization affect party nationalization, but only in the case of opposition parties. Incumbent parties, on the other hand, generally remain nationalized despite unfavorable structural conditions.

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“…The most important task for electoral Volume 21 No 2 DOI: 10.20940/JAE/2022/v21i2a1 bodies after elections is ensuring that results are accepted as credible and freely available for scrutiny. When the results are not released in stages, but the electoral body decides to wait until releasing the final result, the individual tallies from local communities can go missing, as was the case in the second round of the presidential election in Ghana in 2007 (Fridy 2009). A long, drawn-out counting of the vote has the potential for increasing tension and creating more opportunities for protest.…”

Section: Information Controls Post-electionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Information Controls and Internet Shutdowns in African Elections: The Politics of Electoral Integrity and Abuses of Power

Stremlau,

Dobson

2022

JAE

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Internet shutdowns in Africa are becoming increasingly widespread, particularly when governments face competitive or contentious elections. They have also come to symbolise a widening fracture between competing conceptions of the global Internet and its regulation. Governments in Africa are justifying shutdowns as able address misinformation and disinformation, protect the election process, and ensure national security. International organisations, NGOs, and social networking platforms condemn these as an inadmissible form of censorship and information control, an abuse by political actors seeking to silence critics or manipulate elections. This article offers an alternative reading on internet shutdowns by placing them in the historical context of the wide range of information controls around elections, many of which are widely regarded as being acceptable and legitimate mechanisms to support competitive elections. By offering this context, we can ask what is new about shutdowns and whether they can ever be regarded as a proportionate response to real concerns of social media and election manipulation. We conclude by highlighting the inequalities of online content moderation as an often-overlooked factor in driving the use of shutdowns, and the failure of social media companies to effectively address misinformation and disinformation in Africa, particularly around elections.

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Africa’s Disappearing Election Results: Why Announcing the Winner is Simply Not Enough

Cited by 14 publications

References 9 publications

Captured Countryside? Stability and Change in Sub-National Support for African Incumbent Parties

Captured Countryside? Stability and Change in Sub-National Support for African Incumbent Parties

Nationalized incumbents and regional challengers

Information Controls and Internet Shutdowns in African Elections: The Politics of Electoral Integrity and Abuses of Power

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