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1. Whom do African election campaigns contact? And does it matter?

Author:
Robert Mattes, Matthias Krönke, and Sarah J. Lockwood
Publication Date:
02-2025
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Afrobarometer
Abstract:
Canvassing is an important way in which political parties around the world raise awareness and connect with voters. Despite this, the literature on parties in new democracies, and Africa in particular, has tended to overlook this form of activity, focusing instead on vote buying, mass rallies, and meetings. In this paper, we use public opinion survey data from Afrobarometer and the Comparative National Elections Project to show that overall rates of canvassing in Africa are similar to other new, as well as many established, democracies. The data also challenge several dominant views of party campaigns in the Africanist literature. First, African parties do not concentrate primarily on turning out their base, rather than reaching across the partisan divide. Indeed, the opposite is the case. African parties expend more energy contacting nonpartisan independents and cross-partisans, and thus make a potentially meaningful contribution to the supply of multiparty competition. Second, the vast majority of contacts occur without any clientelist exchanges of material goods between parties and individual voters. And third, while incumbent parties enjoy canvassing advantages over opposition parties in around one-third of the surveyed countries, opposition parties (viewed collectively) match the party in power in terms of the ground game in another third, and enjoy higher rates of contact in yet another third.
Topic:
Elections, Democracy, Civic Engagement, and Campaigning
Political Geography:
Africa

2. Party footprints in Africa: Measuring local party presence across the continent

Author:
Matthias Krönke, Sarah J. Lockwood, and Robert Mattes
Publication Date:
10-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Afrobarometer
Abstract:
The conventional view holds that most of Africa’s political parties are organizationally weak, with little grassroots presence. Yet few studies are based on systematically collected data about more than a handful of parties or countries at any given point. In this paper, we focus on one crucial aspect of party organization – the local presence that enables political parties to engage with and mobilize voters – and use Afrobarometer data to develop the Party Presence Index, the first systematic, cross-national measure of local party presence in Africa. We then apply the index to a series of substantive questions, confirming its value and demonstrating its potential to add significantly to our understanding of grassroots party organization.
Topic:
Governance, Democracy, Local, Political Parties, and Community
Political Geography:
Africa

3. Democracy in Africa: Demand, Supply, and the ‘Dissatisfied Democrat’

Author:
Robert Mattes
Publication Date:
02-2019
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Afrobarometer
Abstract:
The increasing threat to democracy from populist movements and authoritarian leaders occupies a prominent place in current political debate. Yet political scientists who study this question reach contrasting conclusions, often because they use different measures and standards of democracy. Some say the world is in a democratic recession, with countries experiencing recent declines in the quality of democracy outnumbering those where it has improved (Diamond, 2015; Lührmann, Mechkova, & Wilson, 2017; Economist, 2018; Freedom House, 2018). Others see no such decline (Levitsky, 2015) or trendless variation (Jiménez, 2017; Skaaning & Jiménez, 2017). In Africa, Freedom House has tracked a significant retreat in political rights, civil liberties, and the overall quality of democracy. The biggest shifts have occurred among countries previously rated as “partly free,” many of which have retreated to “not free” status. Analysts have observed that this is often the result of hybrid regimes using counter-terrorism legislation to shrink democratic spaces (Temin, 2017) or of governments responding to increased electoral competition by restricting opposition parties and critical civil society organizations (Cheeseman, 2019). On the other hand, the V-Dem Institute finds more positive than negative change in Africa (Lührmann et al., 2018). African public opinion seems to embody this sense of divergence. While Yasha Mounk (2018) has claimed to find a systematic decline in citizens’ attachment to democracy across most of the established democracies in North America and Western Europe, Africans’ responses to questions posed by Afrobarometer over the past decade present a more varied and complex picture. At the most general level, the picture seems relatively clear and simple: The typical African is strongly committed to democracy and opposed to authoritarian rule, and has remained so for more than a decade. However, this image of solid democratic commitment changes radically if we narrow our focus to only those people who consistently express pro-democratic preferences across several different survey questions – those whom Afrobarometer describes as “demanding democracy” (Bratton, Mattes, & Gyimah-Boadi, 2005). Under these more demanding criteria, fewer than half of all Africans qualify as committed democrats. And levels of commitment vary sharply depending on a person’s demographic category and level of political engagement. The picture becomes even more complex when we look at specific countries or take a longer-term view. In some countries, publics are strongly committed to democracy, while in others people are largely indifferent. Similarly, some societies are developing more favourable views of democracy over time, while others are moving in the opposite direction. These trends in individual countries may matter even more than trends on the continent as a whole. The same kind of complexity emerges when we examine people’s evaluations of democracy. A slight majority of the Africans we interviewed say their country is a democracy, and somewhat fewer people are satisfied with the way democracy works – two indicators that Afrobarometer combines to measure the perceived “supply of democracy.” Overall, Africans say they get less democracy than they want. But in some countries, the perceived supply of democracy is greater than demand. And while this supply is increasing in some countries, it is declining in others. What does this mix of results mean for the survival of Africa’s multiparty regimes and the deepening of democracy? Of course, a great deal will depend on factors other than what citizens think, such as the degree to which democratic values are embraced by a country’s leaders and elites, as well as the extent to which countervailing institutions (legislature, courts) constrain the executive. But we argue that popular demands also have the power to drive countries toward democracy, and that this is most likely under certain conditions of high, but unmet, popular demand. In particular, this report concludes by highlighting the specific importance of citizens who are not only deeply committed to democracy but who also adopt a critical perspective toward their country’s current leaders and institutions – in other words, those citizens who demand democracy but do not think they are getting it. We describe these citizens as “dissatisfied democrats.” To the extent that citizens’ commitment to democracy matters for the survival and quality of democracy, evidence suggests that it is these dissatisfied democrats who matter most. While fewer than one in six Africans qualify as dissatisfied democrats in our most recent round of surveys, they make up much larger proportions in some countries in which electoral processes are deeply flawed and opposition forces are harassed, suggesting a continuing struggle between the forces of democracy and autocracy. However, dissatisfied democrats are in especially short supply in other places where the space for opposition has recently narrowed, offering little evidence that further restrictions will meet popular resistance.
Topic:
Governance, Public Opinion, Elections, Democracy, and Leadership
Political Geography:
Africa

4. Do Africans Still Want Democracy?

Author:
Robert Mattes and Michael Bratton
Publication Date:
11-2016
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Afrobarometer
Abstract:
Judging by media headlines, democracy appears to be under stress everywhere from leaders like Vladimir Putin in Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, and Yoweri Museveni in Uganda. Yet social scientists know there is often a mismatch between what can be gleaned from news reports or social media and real, underlying trends. To take just one example, media attention to wars in Syria and Iraq suggests rising conflict around the world. Yet compared to previous centuries and especially since the end of the Cold War, both international and civil conflicts are at record lows (Human Security Report Project, 2014). A similar contrast exists between media-fueled perceptions and actual trends in global poverty. The common wisdom suggests worsening living conditions on an overpopulated planet, whereas evidence-based indicators demonstrate that, between 1990 and 2010, the global rate of extreme poverty was cut in half (Economist, 2013). Might the same type of discrepancies exist with regard to democracy? Especially in Africa, where many presidents cling to power (as in Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zimbabwe), manipulate elections (as in Burundi, Gabon, and Zambia), or ignore institutions of public accountability (as in South Africa), one might reasonably conclude that democracy in Africa is only a façade erected to please a credulous audience in the rest of the world. Yet this viewpoint would miss the fact that more than half of all Africans today live in functioning multi-party electoral democracies that are demonstrably freer than the military or one-party regimes that previously dominated the continent. At the same time, the post-1990 gains that African countries registered in terms of civil liberties and political rights peaked in 2006, at least according to expert judgments offered by Freedom House.
Topic:
Governance, Public Opinion, Democracy, and Partisanship
Political Geography:
Africa

5. Ethiopians’ Views of Democratic Government: Fear, Ignorance, or Unique Understanding of Democracy?

Author:
Robert Mattes and Mulu Teka
Publication Date:
05-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Afrobarometer
Abstract:
As part of Afrobarometer's Round 5 surveys in 35 African countries, its partner ABCON PLC Consulting House interviewed 2,400 adult Ethiopians in August 2013. Analysis of the collected data raised significant questions about the comparability of Ethiopia results with those from other surveyed countries, particularly with regard to attitudes toward democracy. These questions are laid out and explored in this working paper. In light of these questions, Afrobarometer has not included Ethiopia results in multi-country analyses. We advise caution in any attempt to compare responses to democracy-related questions from Ethiopia with those from other African countries. Analysts are advised to use the Ethiopia data set only in a stand-alone setting or to limit their comparative analysis to items that are not focused on democracy.
Topic:
Development, Government, Public Opinion, and Democracy
Political Geography:
Africa and Ethiopia

6. Are South Africa’s Youth Really a ‘Ticking Time Momb’?

Author:
Robert Mattes and Samantha Richmond
Publication Date:
01-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Afrobarometer
Abstract:
This paper reviews longitudinal survey data on South Africa’s political culture produced by the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (1994-1998) and Afrobarometer (2000-2011) and finds that while there are real problems with democratic citizenship in South Africa, these problems are largely not peculiar to young people. Compared to other age cohorts, the youth (aged 18-25 years) of South Africa have the same conception of the role of citizen and are no more likely to endorse political violence or to hold negative views and intentions toward immigrants. They have slightly lower levels of cognitive engagement and cognitive sophistication than some other age cohorts and are less likely to engage in political processes. They also exhibit low levels of support for democracy – a problem they share with their elders.
Topic:
Immigration, Democracy, Citizenship, Youth, and Borders
Political Geography:
Africa and South Africa