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  • August 2021
  • Article
  • Economic Journal

Voter Mobilization and Trust in Electoral Institutions: Evidence from Kenya

By: Benjamin Marx, Vincent Pons and Tavneet Suri
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Abstract

Voter mobilization campaigns face trade-offs in young democracies. In a large-scale experiment implemented in 2013 with the Kenyan Electoral Commission (IEBC), text messages intended to mobilize voters boosted participation but also decreased trust in electoral institutions after the election, a decrease that was stronger in areas that experienced election-related violence as well as with individuals on the losing side of the election. The mobilization backfired because the IEBC promised an electronic voting system that failed, resulting in manual voting and tallying delays. Using a simple model, we show signaling high institutional capacity via a mobilization campaign can negatively affect beliefs about the fairness of the election.

Keywords

Political Participation; Electoral Institutions; Field Experiment; Voting; Political Elections; Behavior; Trust

Citation

Marx, Benjamin, Vincent Pons, and Tavneet Suri. "Voter Mobilization and Trust in Electoral Institutions: Evidence from Kenya." Economic Journal 131, no. 638 (August 2021): 2585–2612.
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About The Author

Vincent Pons

Business, Government and the International Economy
→More Publications

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More from the Authors
  • Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News By: Vincent Pons, Jesse M. Shapiro, Bharat Anand and Susan Pinckney
  • Causes and Extent of Increasing Partisan Segregation in the U.S. – Evidence from Migration Patterns of 212 Million Voters By: Jacob R. Brown, Enrico Cantoni, Vincent Pons and Emilie Sartre
  • The Marshall Plan: The Politics and Economics of Europe's Recovery After World War II By: Vincent Pons, Marco Tabellini and Vestal McIntyre
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