Do Fairer Elections Increase the Responsiveness of Politicians?
Leveraging novel experimental designs and 2,160 months of Constituency Development Fund (CDF) spending by legislators in Ghana, I examine whether and how fairer elections promote democratic responsiveness. The results show that incumbents elected from constituencies that were randomly assigned to intensive election-day monitoring during Ghana’s 2012 election spent 19 percentage points more of their CDFs during their terms in office compared to those elected from constituencies with fewer monitors. Legislators from all types of constituencies are equally present in parliament, suggesting that high levels of monitoring do not cause politicians to substitute constituency service for parliamentary work. Tests of causal mechanisms provide suggestive evidence that fairer elections motivate high performance through incumbents’ expectations of electoral sanction and not the selection of better candidates. The paper provides causal evidence of the impact of election integrity on democratic accountability.
American Political Science Review, 2019.
Journal Data & Replication APSA feature
Award: Winner of the 2020 Heinz I. Eulau Award, APSR
Citation
@article{k._ofosu2019,
author = {K. Ofosu, George},
title = {Do {Fairer} {Elections} {Increase} the {Responsiveness} of
{Politicians?}},
journal = {American Political Science Review},
date = {2019-11-01},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055419000479},
doi = {10.1017/S0003055419000479},
langid = {en},
abstract = {Leveraging novel experimental designs and 2,160 months of
Constituency Development Fund (CDF) spending by legislators in
Ghana, I examine whether and how fairer elections promote democratic
responsiveness. The results show that incumbents elected from
constituencies that were randomly assigned to intensive election-day
monitoring during Ghana’s 2012 election spent 19 percentage points
more of their CDFs during their terms in office compared to those
elected from constituencies with fewer monitors. Legislators from
all types of constituencies are equally present in parliament,
suggesting that high levels of monitoring do not cause politicians
to substitute constituency service for parliamentary work. Tests of
causal mechanisms provide suggestive evidence that fairer elections
motivate high performance through incumbents’ expectations of
electoral sanction and not the selection of better candidates. The
paper provides causal evidence of the impact of election integrity
on democratic accountability.}
}