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Replication Data for: Able and Mostly Willing: An Empirical Anatomy of Information's Effect on Voter-Driven Accountability in Senegal

Harvard Dataverse (Africa Rice Center, Bioversity International, CCAFS, CIAT, IFPRI, IRRI and WorldFish)

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Title Replication Data for: Able and Mostly Willing: An Empirical Anatomy of Information's Effect on Voter-Driven Accountability in Senegal
 
Identifier https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/QAJQXP
 
Creator Bhandari, Abhit
Larreguy, Horacio
Marshall, John
 
Publisher Harvard Dataverse
 
Description Political accountability may be constrained by the reach and relevance of information campaigns in developing democracies and---upon receiving information---voters' ability and will to hold politicians accountable. To illuminate voter-level constraints and information relevance absent dissemination constraints, we conducted a field experiment around Senegal's 2017 parliamentary elections to examine the core theoretical steps linking receiving different types of incumbent performance information to electoral and non-electoral accountability. Voters immediately processed information as Bayesians, found temporally benchmarked local performance outcomes particularly informative, and updated their beliefs for at least a month. Learning that incumbents generally performed better than expected, voters durably requested greater politician contact after elections while incumbent vote choice increased among likely-voters and voters prioritizing local projects when appraising incumbents. In contrast, information about incumbent duties did not systematically influence beliefs or accountability. These findings suggest voters were able and mostly willing to use relevant information to hold politicians to account.
 
Subject Social Sciences
Benchmarking
Field experiments
Information
Political accountability
Voting behavior
 
Contributor Marshall, John
 
Source Afrobarometer Data, Round 6, 2016, available at http://www.afrobarometer.org.



Conseil constitutionnel, République du Sénégal, Résultats législatives 2017. Accessed August 2017.



Commission électorale nationale autonome, République du Sénégal.



Jessica Gottlieb, Guy Grossman, Horacio Larreguy, and Benjamin Marx. 2019. “A Signaling Theory of Distributive Policy Choice: Evidence From Senegal.” Journal of Politics (81)2: 631–647)