metadata: authors: 0: author: Mvukiyehe,Eric
1: author: Samii,Cyrus
count: Liberia
docna: 0: docna: Promoting democracy in fragile states :
            insights from a field experiment in Liberia
docty: Policy Research Working Paper
subtopic: Conflict and Fragile States,Judicial System Reform,Educational Sciences,Social Cohesion,Armed Conflict
teratopic: Social Development,Conflict and Development
abstracts: cdata!: A field experiment in rural Liberia is
            used to study democratic participation in fragile states.
            Fragile states are marked by political fragmentation, local
            patronage systems, and voter vulnerability. To understand
            the effects of such conditions on democratic expression
            through elections, the experiment introduced new forms of
            interaction between rural citizens and third-party actors:
            (i) civic education and town hall workshops directed by
            non-governmental organizations in communities over nine
            months and (ii) security committees that brought rural
            community representatives into monthly exchange with United
            Nations peacekeepers. Civic education workshops increased
            enthusiasm for electoral participation, produced a
            coordinated shift from parochial to national candidates, and
            increased willingness to report on manipulation. A program
            combining the two interactions had similar effects. The
            security committees had negligible effects. Barriers to
            political information and voter coordination appear to be
            important but resolvable problems for elections in fragile states.
geo_reg_key: 517191
repnme: repnme: Promoting democracy in fragile states :
            insights from a field experiment in Liberia
display_title: Promoting democracy in fragile
            states : insights from a field experiment in Liberia
listing_relative_url: /research/2015/07/24784483/promoting-democracy-fragile-states-insights-field-experiment-liberia
topicv3: Justice m1326106 840,Political Violence and Civil War m1326942 739,Education m1327048 470,Political Violence and War m1327310 2462,Military m1505651 3036
publishtoextweb_dt: 2015-07-15T00:00:00Z
historic_topic: Social Development,Conflict and Development
no_of_pages: 0
author_keys: 0: author_key: 972271
model_extractions: WPS7370 Policy Research Working Paper 7370 Promoting Democracy in Fragile States Insights from a Field Experiment in Liberia _Eric Mvukiyehe Cyrus Samii_ Development Research Group Impact Evaluation Team July 2015
Policy Research Working Paper 7370

# **Abstract**

A field experiment in rural Liberia is used to study democratic participation in fragile states. Fragile states are marked by political fragmentation, local patronage systems, and voter vulnerability. To understand the effects of such conditions on democratic expression through elections, the experiment introduced new forms of interaction between rural citizens and third-party actors: (i) civic education and town hall workshops directed by non-governmental organizations in communities over nine months and (ii) security committees that brought rural community representatives into monthly exchange with United Nations peacekeepers. Civic education workshops increased enthusiasm for electoral participation, produced a coordinated shift from parochial to national candidates, and increased willingness to report on manipulation. A program combining the two interactions had similar effects. The security committees had negligible effects. Barriers to political information and voter coordination appear to be important but resolvable problems for elections in fragile states.

This paper is a product of the Impact Evaluation Team, Development Research Group. It is part of a larger effort by the World Bank to provide open access to its research and make a contribution to development policy discussions around the world. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://econ.worldbank.org. The authors may be contacted at emvukiyehe@worldbank.org.

_The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent._ Produced by the Research Support Team
# Promoting Democracy in Fragile States: Insights from a Field Experiment in Liberia

Eric Mvukiyehe and Cyrus Samii<sup>_⇤_</sup>

> _⇤_ Mvukiyehe (contact author) is Economist, Development Economics Research Group, Impact Evaluation Unit, The World Bank, 1818 H Street NW, Washington DC 20433 (email: emvukiyehe@worldbank.org). Samii is Assistant Professor, Politics Department, New York University, 19 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10012 (email: cds2083@nyu.edu). The study was generously supported by funds from the Folke Bernadotte Academy (FBA), Sweden, and the New York University Department of Politics. The research comes under Columbia University IRB protocol No. AAAI1171. We thank Andrew Peterson and Madeleine Parish for helpful research assistance. For useful feedback, the authors thank Bernd Beber, Christopher Blattman, Annette Brown, Kanchan Chandra, Delia Dumitrescu, Oeindrila Dube, Michael Gilligan, Birger Heldt, Macartan Humphreys, Joan Ricart-Huguet, Leonard Wantchekon, Sule Yaylaci, Thomas Zeitzoff, and workshop participants at 3ie/IFPRI, EGAP, EPSA 2013, Evaluation 2013, FBA Peacekeeping Working Group, NYU, Princeton, Stanford CDDRL, and UBC. This work does not in any way represent the views of any of the above-named institutions.
Promoting Democracy in Fragile States

# **1 Introduction**

One way to characterize the “quality” of elections is in terms of the clarity with which they convey voters’ policy preferences (Powell, 2007). In “fragile states,” which are defined by a lack of consolidated political authority operating under the rule of law (North, Wallis and Weingast, 2009), a few factors interfere with election quality in these terms. These include problems in citizens’ access to information, opportunities to coordinate, and vulnerability to intimidation by patrons of political factions. We develop these ideas theoretically and then use a field experiment to study the effects of strategies to improve voter information, coordination, and security on electoral quality in post-war Liberia.

Our study is motivated by the fact that citizen-oriented democracy promotion is a major component of external aid to “fragile” states like Liberia, where institutional weakness is either a pre-cursor or product of violent conflict (OECD, 2011). The United States has since 2007 spent about $13 billion per year in official development assistance to fragile and confict-affected states, with about 10% of this going to citizen-oriented governance and democracy promotion programs.<sup>1</sup> Based on OECD accounting, about 12% of the $127 billion dollars in 2012 development aid went to governance programming.<sup>2</sup> Such programs are based on assumptions about individuals’ desire for democratic expression combined with the belief that “elections with integrity” contribute to “the ability of a society to resolve

> 1Of course the lion’s share has gone to programs in Iraq and Afghanistan. These figures come from examining United States official development assistance data for congressional years 2007-2010, as posted to http://www.usaid.gov/results-and-data/progress-data/data. Fragile states are identified as those that are shown in the UCDP-PRIO Armed Conflicts Database (v.4) as experiencing political violence since 1990.

2From http://www.oecd.org/statistics/.
Promoting Democracy in Fragile States conflicts without violence” and therefore that “policies and programmes that foster political pluralism and competition [may] sustain stability and democracy in the long run” (Annan et al., 2012, p. 9).

Violence and institutional dysfunction, combined with widespread poverty and underdevelopment, give reason to question the wisdom or practicality of democracy promotion in fragile states (Paris, 2004). Given decades of cynical assistance to dictatorial regimes, democracy assistance from Western powers is often met with skepticism in recipient countries (Hennemeyer, 2011, 54-55). Even if one thinks that effective democracy promotion is possible and worthwhile, it is not clear that strategies currently pursued are in fact effective (Carothers, 1999, 15-17). Can we really expect democracy promotion interventions to make a difference in fragile state contexts?

This paper addresses this question in two ways. First, we develop a theoretical framework for understanding strategic dilemmas that voters face in fragile state contexts. This helps us to hypothesize what kinds of interventions could be effective and why. The framework builds on the observation that fragile states are marked by political fragmentation and local patron-client systems (North, Wallis and Weingast, 2009). Patrons possess advantages in their ability to control political information and issue costs or benefits on the basis of voters’ choices. Voters face a coordination problem such that even if a majority of voters prefers some outside candidate to the patron’s preferred candidate, they may nonetheless feel pressure to vote for the patron’s preferred candidate. As a result, elections may be of poor quality, failing as mechanisms for conveying of policy preferences of voters. Third party actors may have a role to play in removing two key barriers to political expression: (i) insecurity that voters face locally and (ii) lack of citizen access to coordinating information due to a poor media environment and patrons’ incentives to hoard information.

techniques to estimate effects of strategies of democracy promotion that aim to improve 2
Promoting Democracy in Fragile States access to information, voter coordination, and voter security. The experiment randomly assigned combinations of a monthly civic education and town hall program and a security committee program over the course of nine months prior to the October 2011 elections. Programs were assigned to 101 villages, with 41 villages randomly assigned to control. The civic education and town hall program used a curriculum developed by the National Elections Commission and facilitated town hall discussions in communities. The security committee program linked communities to the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping mission. Outcomes were measured using polling place data on votes, a voter survey, and a set of novel behavioral measures.

The results show pronounced effects of the civic education and town hall program but negligible effects from the security committee program. The civic education and town hall program substantially increased enthusiasm for civic participation and preferences for national versus parochial candidates. This is consistent with the type of “coordinated shift” that our theory proposes can occur when third parties introduce new information and coordination opportunities in otherwise remote communities. The civic education program also increased sensitivity to voter intimidation. The security monitoring program only had a weak effect on increasing preferences for national versus parochial candidates.

We begin with our theoretical framework. This is followed by a discussion of the interventions and the context. Following that is a discussion of our experimental design, how we operationalize outcomes, and our estimation methods. We then present our main results, followed by an exploration of reasons for some of the unexpected findings. A conclusion draws out implications.

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Promoting Democracy in Fragile States

# **2 Theoretical Framework**

A fragile state is one in which coercive authority is not consolidated under either the rule of law or an encompassing system of clientelism (North, Wallis and Weingast, 2009).<sup>3</sup> Rather, coercive authority is dispersed among elites who lead localized clientelistic systems. Such elites use their coercive power to guard their exclusive control over productive resources and expropriate from other networks. Fragility characterizes many societies recovering from civil war (Rotberg, 2003). Fragility results from violence through the death, displacement, or submission of those needed for collective institutions for managing conflicts peacefully. Fragility may lead to new violence due to the lack of such collective institutions. We would expect party systems to reflect this fragmented and localized distribution of power.<sup>4</sup> Such conditions are reinforced when local factions are institutionally unconstrained in their ability to coerce citizens, whether through overt violence or subtler forms

> 3The current literature on democracy promotion has given extensive consideration to elections under authoritarian rule. While both authoritarian and fragile states contexts are marked by weak democratic institutions (Acemoglu, Robinson and Verdier, 2004; Pande, 2011; Simpser, 2013), the two contexts differ in how power is distributed societally, with fragile states exhibiting dispersed rather than concentrated power. Other literature has focused on causes of outright violence surrounding elections in fragile states (Arriola and Johnson, 2012; Bracati and Snyder, 2013; Cederman, Gleditsch and Hug, 2012; Collier and Vincente, 2014; Flores and Nooruddin, 2012; Hafner-Burton, Hyde and Jablonski, 2013; Hoglund, 2009; Straus and Taylor, 2009; Weidmann and Callen, 2012; Wilkinson, 2004) Institutional weakness and fragmented power can undermine the quality of elections in more subtle ways too.

> 4The logic we present here is similar to what Ziblatt (2009) characterizes as local cooptation of electoral institutions via loyalty networks. But, in a manner similar to Weid-

4
Promoting Democracy in Fragile States

# of intimidation (Weidmann and Callen, 2012).

By this account, elections in fragile states take place in a landscape of localized patronclient systems. Here, we develop an analytical framework that incorporates ideas from the literature on clientelism, in particular the idea that local patrons have advantages that allow them to bring voters into line despite their policy preferences (Fernando-Medina, 2007, Ch. 5; Stokes et al., 2013; Stokes, 2005). Suppose in a community, we have _N_ (odd) voters indexed by _i_ , and the election determined by simple majority.<sup>5</sup> At the ballot box, voter _i_ may choose between a patron candidate, _P_ , and an outsider candidate, _O_ . If elected to office, each candidate produces public goods that the voter values as _Vi_<sup>_P_</sup> or _Vi_<sup>_O_</sup> under the patron or outsider candidate, respectively. Voters differ in their preferences over the public goods that each candidate has to offer. Those who prefer the patron candidate’s public goods policies have _Vi_<sup>_P_</sup> _> Vi_<sup>_O_,andviceversaforthosewhoprefertheoutsider.</sup> This captures the idea that candidates are associated with policies that voters may each evaluate differently. In addition, each voter receives an expressive benefit, _ei_ , for voting for the candidate that they favor on policy grounds. We also assume that the patron candidate has an advantage over the outsider candidate: if the patron candidate wins, he can impose a cost, _ki_ , on anyone who voted against him. This assumes that the patron can observe votes, but the logic carries through if we merely assume that voters believe that the patron candidate has some ability to reward or punish on the basis of individuals’ vote choices.<sup>6</sup> mann and Callen (2012)’s analysis of Afghanistan, in the situation we consider the institutions themselves play a secondary role to direct intimidation via loyalty networks.

> 5The logic carries through to situations of multiple candidates in a plurality contests if we can assume that support for the two front-running candidates is substantially higher than any other candidates.

> 6Patrons may even cultivate in-group favoritism and other psychological costs to de-

5
Promoting Democracy in Fragile States Suppose that these costs are greater than the expressive benefit of voting, _ki > ei_ , in which case voters do in fact take them seriously. A voter’s payoff from voting for the patron _P_ instead of outsider _O_ is while the payoff from voting for the outsider is where _I_ ( _._ ) refers to the indicator function. We consider pure strategy Nash equilibria.

Under these assumptions, the community level election is a coordination problem in which the patron candidate enjoys an advantage. Voters can be distinguished in terms of whether they believe that the patron candidate is positioned to win in the absence of their vote, whether they are pivotal, and whether they prefer the patron or outsider candidate.<sup>7</sup> Because of the patron candidate’s advantage, there is always an equilibrium where everyone votes for the patron, regardless of the preference profile. Such equilibria rest on each voter believing that the patron is poised to win and that the voter is not pivotal. In such cases, voters do not believe they can change the policy outcome and, because _ki > ei_ , find it in their interest to vote for the patron candidate. This is how the “patron’s advantage” could allow him to induce conformity even if there is a majority that opposes his policies.<sup>8</sup> When the patron’s policies are preferred by a majority, unanimous voting for the patron is the fecting from the patron’s network (Padro-I-Miquel, 2007).

7Because these are relatively small elections and because voters often act in blocs, pivotally is assumed to matter.

8 Similarly, Ellman and Wantchekon (2000) and Wantchekon (1999 _a_ , _b_ ) show that vul6
Promoting Democracy in Fragile States unique equilibrium. Voters who prefer the patron candidate and are pivotal will vote for the patron candidate so as to secure the policy and expressive benefits. Non-pivotal voters who prefer the patron candidate will vote for the patron so as to secure the expressive benefit (and avoid and costs of betraying the patron candidate). The outsider candidate only wins in equilibrium if there is a majority preferring the outsider _and such voters can coordinate_ . Even in such cases, the outsider does not command unanimity: even if those who prefer the patron candidate are not pivotal, they can still vote for the patron candidate to obtain an expressive benefit, knowing that the outsider candidate is not positioned to impose costs for doing so.

This analysis has implications for the types of interventions that could change election behavior. First, at the most basic level, votes against the patron candidate requires that voters view outsider candidates as preferable (note that the same is not true for votes _for_ the patron candidate). Preferences will be a function of the information to which voters have access. Voters may have access only to biased and highly limited information about the choices available to them at the ballot box (Snyder, 2000). Patrons would presumably prevent the inflow of information that may increase accountability (Besley and Burgess, 2002; Bratton et al., 1999; Djankov et al., 2010). In fragile states, poor access to information via the media is due not only to poverty, but also such strategic incentives.<sup>9</sup> Biased and restricted electoral information limits voters’ ability to reflect on their preferences in light of diverse points of view and credible alternatives to a patron’s parochial appeals (Fujiwara nerability to coercion causes electoral outcomes to depart from the policy preferences of the electoral majority.

9For example, BBC Media Action (2012) finds that citizen-oriented media innovations in fragile states are typically initiated by externally supported NGOs or international organizations, despite their wide popularity.

7
Promoting Democracy in Fragile States and Wantchekon, 2013). As such, voters may be more likely to vote in a “parochial” (often, ethnically parochial) manner than would be the case were information on competing alternatives more readily available (Casey, 2012). Voters may also be more vulnerable to manipulation and unknowingly surrendering rights. Faction leaders may have considerable leeway in convincing non-supporters that costs of registration and voting are higher than they actually are or that political operatives have a right to intrude on balloting procedures.<sup>10</sup> Second, voting against the patron candidate requires that voters can either coordinate against the patron or are shielded from potential consequences that the patron can impose. This means that new information, on its own, _will probably have no effect_ on vote choices, since the patron can induce votes in his favor despite policy preferences. What would be needed are safe space for public deliberation.<sup>11</sup> Threats of patron reprisals could be removed with the introduction of third party security providers. Their effectiveness would depend, however, on the extent to which the patron’s advantage comes in his ability to inflict harm as opposed to offering rewards (Baldwin, 2013).

If voters feel they have no option but to surrender their policy-preferred vote to the patron, this would dampen citizens’ enthusiasm for electoral participation (Birch, 2010). Voter turnout may still be high if voters feel that they must turn out to avoid punishment by local factions (Acemoglu, Reed and Robinson, 2013), and so assessing whether interventions allow for more free voter expression would require examining subtler aspects of participation behavior. This includes studying broader forms of participation and whether 10Daniels (2010) provides a comprehensive discussion of these and other voter deception tactics as they have been applied in the United States.

11Collier and Vincente (2014) examine an intervention motivated by a similar logic and helped to coordinate communities against violent party activities in Nigeria’s 2007 elections.

8
Promoting Democracy in Fragile States This analysis suggests that interventions that substantially increase _voter information about electoral choices_ , _opportunities for voters to coordinate_ , or _secure voters against being punished for their vote choices_ could change electoral participation in important ways, including increasing enthusiasm for voters to participate and reducing parochial voting. The field experiment that we describe next was motivated on these grounds.

# **3 Interventions and Hypotheses**

Our study is based on a cluster-randomized field experiment with two democracy promotion programs—one that introduced civic education and town halls, and another that promoted security by connecting communities to United Nations peacekeepers. The programs were applied in villages over the nine months preceding the 2011 general elections. The content of the programs emerged from discussions between Liberian civil society organizations, the civil-military cooperation unit of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Liberia (UNMIL, by it’s official acronym), the National Elections Commission public outreach office, and the authors.<sup>12</sup> The programs occurred in rural communities. In addition to being underserved by infrastructure and social programs, sources of political instability have been rooted in rural areas since the onset of the first civil war in 1989 (Ellis, 2006). We collaborated with a coalition of civil society organizations and the UNMIL civil-military relations unit to implement the programs. We briefly describe each program below.

> 12United Nations Security Council resolution _S/Res/1938_ (September 2010) authorized UNMIL to assist with the 2011 general election, with a particular emphasis on support for remote areas.

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Promoting Democracy in Fragile States

# **3.1 The civic education program**

For the civic education and town hall intervention, ten members of local civil society organization chapters were hired as program facilitators for both programs. The facilitators included seven men and three women who were civil society organization staff or professional teachers from the counties or adjacent counties of the villages in which they worked. For villages assigned to receive a program (randomization is discussed below), facilitators traveled via motorbike to the villages and met with the town chief to discuss the intended program and seek their consent to work in the village. Of all the villages approached, consent was denied in only one instance (in Lofa county) and it was in association with the security program.

Program facilitators administered a civics and elections curriculum combined with either a gender rights or peace education curriculum in program villages. Then at least an hour, and often more, was devoted to town hall style discussion of electoral procedures, candidates, and rights issues. All communities received the same civic education curriculum, while the complementary gender rights or peace education curriculum was randomly assigned. The curriculum was administered in nine monthly open meetings taking place inside participating villages on weekends. The civic education and elections components of the curriculum were based on Liberian National Elections Commission civic education outreach materials and provided instruction on the structure of Liberian government, including distribution of powers and office-holder duties; the candidates, parties, and offices for which votes were being cast; and rules for legal campaigning and election-day balloting. (Examples of outreach materials are displayed in the supplemental appendix.) During the meetings, the facilitators would begin a lesson plan based on the outreach materials. When discussing candidates and parties, the facilitators were strictly instructed to avoid trying to persuade villagers to favor one or another candidate. At the same time, the facil10
Promoting Democracy in Fragile States itators were able to provide clarifying information or correct facts known to be incorrect about candidates or parties.

We expected that the intervention would help to clarify candidate options available and clear misconceptions that may have arisen from biased information that favored parochial (that is, co-ethnic or otherwise local) candidates. We also expected that opportunities to discuss candidates in town hall settings would allow voters to coordinate and possibly shift away from parochial candidates. Both of these factors were expected to increase voters’ enthusiasm for participation. Based on the theoretical discussion in the preceding section and the content of the civic education we hypothesize that: _H1 (civic education and coordination hypothesis): the civic education and town hall intervention should increase the quality of electoral participation in program communities,_ where electoral quality is measured in terms of higher enthusiasm for voter participation, less receptivity to parochial appeals or voting that reflects local security monopolies, and reduced voter manipulation or surrendering of electoral rights.

# **3.2 The security program**

The security-oriented program was a pilot of a community-based electoral “early warning” program. It sought to enhance UNMIL’s visibility in rural areas during the election season as a third party security guarantor (Doyle and Sambanis, 2006; Fortna, 2008; Walter, 2001). The program institutionalized exchange of insecurity-related information between rural Liberian communities and UNMIL.

The program was implemented in each village through nine monthly events in the period leading up to the elections. The first event was a village-wide meeting during which the facilitator worked from a script to explain UNMIL’s assistance role with respect to the 11
Promoting Democracy in Fragile States elections and how a coalition of civil society organizations, UNMIL’s civil-military relations unit, and the researchers were testing a program to bring communities into closer contact with UNMIL to help ensure peaceful elections. Then, the facilitator worked with those attending the meeting to assemble a village “security committee” of 10 people. We randomly assigned half of the villages to have the committee selected through nomination by the chief, while in the other half, the facilitators organized a ballot process in which those attending the meetings listed up to 10 people that they thought should be on the committee, with the top 10 vote earners being appointed. Members of the security committee were tasked with keeping a monthly log of insecurity related events, including violent disputes or aggressive actions by political actors. Once a month for each of the subsequent eight months, our facilitators arranged for two out of the 10 members of the security committee to be brought to the nearest UNMIL deployment base for an afternoon discussion of security related issues. The two that were chosen to participate were to rotate through all 10 members over the months of the program. The discussion sessions would include security committee members from between five to eight of the program villages. The sessions would lead off with a presentation by the UNMIL troops on recent patrolling activities, followed by presentations by each of the village security committee delegations, and then discussion. Finally, security committee members were to report back to their villages on the results of the discussion session at regular community meetings.

The goal of the security committee intervention was two-fold. On the one hand, it served as an information system for UNMIL as it sought to implement its electoral assistance and security mandate in the countryside. Indeed, our interviews with members of the UNMIL civil-military relations unit indicated that the program was quite useful in that regard.<sup>13</sup> On the other hand, and more relevant for the present discussion, our expectation was 13Author interviews, UNMIL headquarters CIMIC unit, Monrovia, November 2011.

12
Promoting Democracy in Fragile States that the program would also increase the sense of security among villagers in the program communities. With more accurate information about the nature of threats that villagers faced and with channels of communication established, our expectation was that villagers would find UNMIL more credible in protecting them against victimization by local party patrons. This sense of security was expected to create the feeling among participants that they had freedom to vote for whomever they wanted. Based on the theoretical discussion in the preceding section and the content of the security intervention, we posit the following hypothesis: _H2 (security hypothesis): the security committee intervention should increase the quality of electoral participation in program communities,_ where electoral quality is measured as described above.

# **3.3 Synergies between security and civic education programs**

We also consider possible synergy across the two programs. The theoretical discussion above suggests that it may be the _combination_ of security assistance, town hall discussion, and civic education that generates improvements in the quality of electoral participation. As such, we also included a treatment condition that combined the two programs, alternating from month to month as to whether the activity was a security committee meeting or a community meeting, where for the latter a shortened version of the curriculum was administered.<sup>14</sup> For this combined program we hypothesize the following:

> 14Because of the alternation between programs (which was a practical necessity), the communities assigned to the combined condition received a “lighter” version of each of the constituent programs. This will be important for understanding some of the results below.

13
Promoting Democracy in Fragile States _H3 (combination hypothesis): the combination of security committee and civic education programs should increase the quality of electoral participation in program communities above and beyond any of the individual programs on their own_ .

Our study goes beyond what existing research has shown about electoral assistance in fragile states and transitional regimess. By looking at various aspects of voter behavior, our analysis goes beyond research suggesting that civic education programs increase pro-democratic attitudes (Bratton et al., 1999; Finkel, Horowitz and Rojo-Mendoza, 2012; Finkel and Smith, 2011), which may be confounded by self-presentation biases among program participants. While similar in spirit to research by Fujiwara and Wantchekon (2013), our study examines the effects of third-party interventions on voter parochialism, rather than campaign restrictions, which may be difficult to enforce. By examining potential synergies between civic education, town hall discussion, and security enhancements, our study also goes beyond Collier and Vincente (2014) work on how anti-violence campaigns help to increase perceived security among voters.

# **4 Context**

The study region includes rural villages in Liberian counties: Bong, Grand Bassa, Grand Gedeh, Lofa, and Nimba, with a combined population of about 1.4 million out of the country’s total of 4 million (ca. 2010). These are areas that were hit hard during the two bouts of brutal civil war the engulfed the country between 1989 and 2003.<sup>15</sup> Liberia 15Detailed accounts of the conflict, which claimed some 250,000 lives and displaced over one million people, are available in Adebajo (2002), Berkeley (2001), and Ellis (2006). Narrative accounts of the post-conflict period and elections since 2003 are given in Harris 14
Promoting Democracy in Fragile States constantly ranks at the very bottom of the United Nations Human Development Index, and the study areas were especially poor and underserved by infrastructure.

The 2011 election season arrived with much reason to worry about the quality of electoral participation in the countryside. The country still relied on UNMIL as the primary security and infrastructure provider. The Liberian national police, for example, provided very patchy coverage and were frequently accused of corruption by watchdog organizations and ordinary Liberians (International Crisis Group, 2012). UNMIL was limited in the extent to which its mandate permitted its engagement in the countryside, however, leaving much of rural Liberia completely uncovered by state level institutions. In a 2011 survey, Sandefur and Siddiqi (2013) found that only four percent of crimes and disputes in rural Liberia were taken to the formal justice system. In a 2008-2010 panel study in rural areas Blair, Blattman and Hartman (2012) found that while overt collective violence was rare, property disputes were pervasive, indicators of intra-communal cohesion were deteriorating, and inter-tribal biases and perceptions of inter-ethnic inequity remained endemic. Blair et al. found that key correlates of violence included factors related to ethnic diversity, a legacy of the ethnically charged war (Boas and Utas, 2014). Much of the country remained accessible only via unpaved pathways, and nearly the entirety of the country outside the capital of Monrovia lacked access to a reliable electricity grid or piped water. A 2007 survey conducted by the authors found that in rural areas, two-thirds of respondents lacked regular access to radio, the primary form of media access in the country. Wordof-mouth was the primary channel of political information in rural areas. These logistical and communication challenges greatly hampered voter registration efforts (Look, 2011). Liberians and international onlookers worried about regional crises in neighboring Cote d’Ivoire and Guinea spilling over into Liberia (International Crisis Group, 2011).

(2011), Lyons (1999), and Moran (2006).

15
Promoting Democracy in Fragile States Institutionally, the 2011 general elections featured ballots for three offices: the national president, elected directly through two-round run-off voting; senators, with two elected in each of 15 counties via block voting; and members of the house of representatives, with one elected via plurality in each of 73 constituencies. Liberia’s run-off system encouraged multitudes of candidates to enter the race by the logic of “king making” (Wright and Riker, 1989), resulting in a presidential ballot with sixteen candidates. House and Senate races reflected the political fragmentation anticipated by the theoretical discussion above: in the house races, candidates from 27 parties and 131 independents received votes, with most parties and candidates having geographically-concentrated (and typically ethnically defined) support bases; for the Senate, candidates from twenty parties and 15 independents secured votes. Given low rates of adult literacy (43% in 2012, according to UNESCO, and certainly lower in rural areas) most voters relied on candidate photographs and party pictograms to identify candidates, making the issue of ballot complexity especially salient (Fujiwara, 2011; Gingerich, 2012).<sup>16</sup> Politically, the 2011 elections were informed by the previous elections in 2005. The 2005 elections were successful in many respects, being free of any significant violence. Nonetheless, the run-off election of the Unity Party’s Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf to the presidency involved overcoming a ten percentage point deficit in the first round against Congress for Democratic Change (CDC) candidate, George Weah. This dramatic turnaround, which involved a coordinated switch in allegiance by ethnic blocs (Harris, 2006), left a lingering bad taste among CDC supporters. In 2010, Sirleaf announced that she would run for re-election, breaking a promise to serve only one term. This was much to the chagrin of her opposition and especially the CDC. The CDC still included Weah among its leaders, but it nominated Winston Tubman, former Liberian justice minister, diplomat, and nephew 16See the supplemental appendix for an example presidential ballot.

16
Promoting Democracy in Fragile States of former president Winston V.S. Tubman (served 1944-1971), to lead the 2011 presidential ticket. Aside from the UP and CDC, the Liberty Party (LP), whose candidate Charles Brumskine had placed third in the 2005 presidential election, stood to repeat as a likely third or fourth place finisher. While the UP, CDC, and LP were the primary national contenders, they had to seek the support of regional and ethnic leaders. Most prominent among these was warlord-turned-senator Prince Johnson of Nimba county, who ran for president with the National Union for Democratic Progress (NUDP) party, banking on playing kingmaker in a run-off.

A few events surrounded the October-November elections. First was an significant August referendum on amendments to the constitution, which changed the legislative and municipal election system to one of simple plurality rather than the prevailing run-off system (run-off was retained for the presidency). While the UP supported the amendments, the CDC was opposed, and some tensions ensued as CDC party members agitated against the referendum. Four days prior to the October first round, Sirleaf was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Liberian opposition reacted to this as an intrusion and tried to rally opinion around the idea that Sirleaf was more interested in impressing international contacts than ordinary Liberians (Corey-Boulet, 2011; Reuters, 2011). A few isolated attacks targted UP and CDC party affiliates and press facilities. Then, voting proceeded peacefully in the first round, with Sirleaf winning 44% of the presidential vote, Tubman receiving 33%, Prince Johnson 12%, and Brumskine 6%, thereby necessitating a run-off between Sirleaf and Tubman. The CDC protested the first round result on the basis of fraud and elections commission malfeasance. CDC protestors clashed violently with Liberian police days prior to the run-off. While Sirleaf secured Johnson’s endorsement, Tubman boycotted the runoff. Sirleaf thus won 91% of the run-off vote, but the number of voters in the second round 17
Promoting Democracy in Fragile States was only 52% of the number from the first round.<sup>17</sup>

# **5 Methods**

In this section we describe the design and analysis of the experiment, including treatment assignment, covariate balance, outcome measures, and estimation methods.

## **5.1 Treatment Assignment**

The civic education and town hall, security committee, and combined interventions were randomly assigned according to a blocked-cluster design (Gerber and Green, 2012, Ch. 4). Random assignment was at the level of the “town,” Liberia’s lowest tier geographical administrative unit. Despite the suggestion of the word “town,” in fact towns can be either rural or urban areas. Towns consist of either a village or small group of hamlets in rural areas or a cluster of quarters in urban areas. We stratified our towns by the “clans” within which they were embedded. Clans are the next higher level of geographical administration in Liberia, and they are made up of a large cluster of towns, some of which may be very distant from each other. The blocking strategy first grouped clans together on the basis of geography, forming a set of twelve geographic blocks. Because ethnicity, political tendencies, war exposure, economic conditions, and other important factors cluster geographically, this geographic blocking allows us to control variation in these factors across communities in different treatment conditions. More details on the randomization procedure are given in Section C of the supporting information.

Table 1 shows the distribution of towns included in the study based on whether they re17The Liberia National Elections Commission makes all final vote counts publicly available at http://www.necliberia.org/results2011/.

18
Promoting Democracy in Fragile States ceived any security committee and civic education programming (the 26 toward the bottom right are thus in the “combined” condition). Figure 1 shows their geographic distribution. As it turns out, two towns (one civic education town and one control town) were dropped from the end line due to access problems, in which case the final tally was 142 rather than 144 towns. Such a low rate of attrition, if ignored, should have negligible consequences for bias. The imbalanced distribution across the cells is attributable to the fact that we were able to operate more security committee programs and the variation in the density of the security committee programs across clans (see Section C of the supporting information).

# **5.2 Covariate Balance**

Section D of the supporting information displays results from an analysis of pre-treatment covariates using data from the 2008 Liberian national census. We summarize the findings. Inhabitants are predominately agricultural (around three quarters) and quite poor, as evidenced by a very low proportion of households with domiciles built out of durable walls (about five percent) or that own mobile phones or radios (two percent and five percent, respectively). Formal educational attainment is extremely low, with about two-thirds of adults not having completed primary education. There is a slight imbalance in these education and literacy indicators as well, with civic education and security committee communities exhibiting slightly lower levels of literacy on average than the control communities. The communities (that is, the “towns”) have population sizes that vary considerably, ranging from as few as 60 members to as many as about 8000, with an average of about 700-800; these population sizes are in good balance across treatment conditions. Just over half of these communities’ members are under the age of 20, nearly half of households were displaced at some point during the war, and they are predominately (over ninety percent) Christian. The main ethnic groups represented in the sample include (in order of 19
Promoting Democracy in Fragile States Table 1: Treatment assignment distribution

||No civic education|Civic education|Total|
|---|---|---|---|
|No securitycommittee|41|17|58|
|Securitycommittee|58|26|84|
|Total|99|43|142|

Figure 1: Field locations in Liberia <!-- Start of picture text --> ● ●●<br>●● ● ●●●<br>●<br>●<br>● ●● ● ● ●● ● ●<br>● ● ●● ●● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●● ●●<br>●<br>●● ●<br>●<br>● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●●<br>Monrovia ●<br>●<br>● ●● ●<br>Control<br>Civ. Ed.<br>● Sec. Com.<br>Combined<br>National boundary<br>County boundary 0 25km 50km 100km<br><!-- End of picture text --> their degree of representation) Kpelle, Bassa, Gio, Mano, and Kissi. The ethnic composition of the combined-treatment communities differs somewhat, with a higher share coming from ethnic groups other than these five. Our analysis checks robustness of our findings to controlling for any unbalanced covariates.

# **5.3 Outcome variables and data**

Our aim in this study is to investigate systematically the effects of two democracy-promotion strategies on the quality of electoral participation. We conceptualize this outcome in terms 20
Promoting Democracy in Fragile States of (formal) political participation broadly defined as “those activities by private citizens that are more or less directly aimed at influencing the selection of governmental personnel and/or the action they take” (Verba and Nie, 1987, p. 2). This definition encompasses a wide range of political acts and behaviors such as turning out to vote, participating in political campaigns, in which ordinary citizens engage in order express their policy preference and influence politicians’ behaviors. The quality of participation is also based on whether votes convey policy preferences. Here our outcome measurement strategy is based on the implications of our theory, which suggest that obstacles to expression will tend to bias electoral outcomes in favor of parochial candidates—that is, local candidates who operate on an ethnic or region-specific appeals as opposed to national-level appeals. Finally, voters’ ability to express their preferences are a function of their sense that they will face little harm in doing so. To test whether such a mechanism is operating, we also consider outcomes related to voters’ exposure to intimidation or undue influence on their vote choices.

The outcome data that we have available for testing our hypotheses include official polling-place level election outcome data, survey data, a set of behavioral measures, and qualitative reports by our field facilitators. Table 2 shows how our data are used to test the hypotheses and Section F of the supporting information provide details on how the data were gathered. The polling place data include official party vote shares for president, house, and senate races, as well as invalid vote counts. Each town included in the study was matched to its appropriate polling place. The survey data were collected during the weeks just after the October 11, 2011 first-round polls and prior to the second-round polls on November 8, 2011. The survey included modules on contact by politicians and parties, various forms of civic participation, security considerations, and vote choice. For vote choice, we asked both for actual vote choice and, to get around the endogeneity of candidate appeals being targeted to voters, we also asked respondents to comment on who was most appealing in a voting vignette that provided a slate of fictional candidates with 21
Promoting Democracy in Fragile States Table 2: Outcomes from Hypotheses and Associated Measures

|**Outcome**|**Measure**|**Source**|
|---|---|---|
|Enthusiasm for<br>participation|Attended rallies<br>Registered to vote<br>Turned out to vote<br>Able to associate slogans to parties<br>Purchased news clipping<br>Signed petition<br>Submitted issuespost card|Survey<br>Survey<br>Survey<br>Survey<br>Behavioral activities<br>Behavioral activities<br>Behavioral activities|
|Parochial voting|Diversity of vote choice (Herfindahl index)<br>Actual vote for national versus local candidates<br>Vignette vote for national versusparochial candidates|Polling place results<br>Polling place results<br>Survey|
|Manipulation and<br>surrendering of<br>rights|Perception that process was unfair<br>Exposure to intimidation<br>Fear of being in trouble if vote "the wrong way"<br>Exposure to threats<br>Witnessed calls to violence<br>Exposed to offers of gifts<br>Exposed to offers of ballot "help"<br>Passed ballot test<br>Valid voteproportions|Survey<br>Survey<br>Survey<br>Survey<br>Survey<br>Survey<br>Survey<br>Behavioral activities<br>Polling place results|

appeals that emphasized either regional, ethnic, national, materialist, or religious concerns. The behavioral activities include a suite of activities meant to gauge enthusiasm for participation as well as empowerment against intimidation. Respondents had the opportunity to purchase news clippings, sign petitions for clean elections, and submit postcards (to be submitted after enumerators left the village), providing a set of costly signals of interest in politics. Respondents were also issued a test on filling out a ballot, to examine effects on vulnerability to manipulation through lack of voter knowledge. Section G in the supporting information shows sample summary statistics for all of the outcomes.

# **5.4 Estimating Effects**

cation of which is derived from our study design: 22
Promoting Democracy in Fragile States where _Yit_ is the outcome for person _i_ in town _t_ (with the polling place data, we simply aggregate up to town _t_ ), Civ. Ed. _t_ is the indicator for whether the town received civic education, Sec. Com. _t_ is the indicator for whether the town received a security committee, Combined _t_ is the indicator for whether the town received the combined treatment, _Xt_ accounts for both blocking and the low- and high-density security conditions by including centered block and high density indicators and their interaction with the treatment variables, and _✏it_ is an error term assumed to be clustered at the clan level.<sup>18</sup> All models are fit using weighted least squares, where the weighting accounts for each town’s probability of being included in its treatment condition given varying numbers of towns per clan. Thus, our weighted least squares estimate of _β_ 0 is consistent for the expected value in the study areas under control, while the estimates for _β_ 1, _β_ 2, and _β_ 3 are consistent for the average treatment effects (ATEs) of civic education, security committees, and combined programs, respectively. Section H in the supporting information presents results that control for pre-treatment education levels, literacy rates, and ethnic group composition, as these were found to be out of balance in our analysis of covariate data.

As Table 2 shows, we have multiple measures for each of the outcomes. Following Anderson (2008), whenever possible we boost the power of our tests while also ensuring that we are not led astray by multiple comparisons problems by constructing indices in the

> 18Centered block fixed effects with interactions estimates the stratified sample average treatment effect, appropriately accounting for the blocking without introducing any functional form assumptions (Gerber and Green, 2012; Lin, 2013, pp. 71-77). For the purposes of this paper, we do not interpret the effects of the differing density conditions. As it turns out, there were no significant effects, and so we simply average over the density conditions to simplify the presentation.

23
Promoting Democracy in Fragile States form of standardized inverse-covariance-weighted averages of the outcomes.<sup>19</sup> Inversecovariance weighted averaging provides an optimal way to construct a linear index of different indicators that all measure a common latent factor.<sup>20</sup> The scale of the resulting indices is in pooled outcome standard deviations (Cohen’s _d_ ).

Compositional outcomes, such as party vote proportions, are restricted in that they must sum to one. To estimate effects on compositional outcomes, we use a weighted least squares method that amounts to the first stage of a seemingly-unrelated regression.<sup>21</sup> The estimator is consistent, provides estimates that are readily interpretable as differences-in-mean proportions, and makes fewer modeling assumptions (e.g., independence of irrelevant alternatives) than parametric methods such as multinomial logistic regression, although at

> 19A similar approach is used by Casey, Glennerster and Miguel (2012) and Clingingsmith, Khwaja and Kremer (2009).

> 20For now we ignore any complications due to item-level missing outcome data. In most cases rates of missingness were quite low, although for one suite of outcomes—those associated with violence and intimidation—missingness rates were as high as 13%. To construct the inverse-covariance-weighted averages when there was missingness in some outcome items, we simply imputed the expected value based on the regression specification. If missingness is random with respect to outcomes conditional on treatment and blocking strata, then this introduces no bias. Even if this condition does not hold, with missingness rates as low as they were, the consequences for either bias (or for standard errors) should be negligible.

21Some minor efficiency gains are possible by running a second stage with feasible generalized least squares, however this requires that one assumes restrictions on the error terms. Our approach is equivalent to estimates that make no such restrictions beyond the clustering that is implied by the experimental design.

24
Promoting Democracy in Fragile States

# **6 Empirical Results**

Our theoretical discussion proposed that interventions that increase voters’ information about electoral choices, opportunities for discussion and coordination, or security vis-avis political patrons should result in higher “quality” electoral participation. We define quality in terms of the ability to express policy preferences in a manner that is free from pressures of local factions. As such, we expect such interventions to produce increased enthusiasm for participation, less parochial voting, and less manipulation and surrendering of electoral rights. Tables 3 through 8 display estimates of the average effects for the three different program varieties in association with these classes of outcomes. Each of the tables shows the estimated control group mean toward the top. For tables 3, 4, 7, and 8, the first column of estimates (marked “Index”) shows results for the inverse-covariance weighted indices described in the previous section. These index results provide an omnibus test of the effects of the different programs on the entire set of outcomes items that appear in the other columns. Section H in the supporting information displays effect estimates after controlling for pre-treatment education levels, literacy rates, and ethnic group composition—covariates that were found to be somewhat out of balance. None of the conclusions of the analysis change when we control for these covariates, and so our interpretations will focus on the per-design analyses presented in Tables 3 through 8.

Table 3 displays results for effects on enthusiasm for participation, which should increase if voters indeed feel freer to express themselves in the elections. As discussed in the theory section, measuring enthusiasm for participation requires going beyond turnout, given that turnout can easily be manipulated to produce a semblance of enthusiasm. For this reason we use seven participation-related variables that tap into various types of partic25
Promoting Democracy in Fragile States ipation. The results show that the civic education/town halls and combined programs significantly increased enthusiasm for participation—leading to about a quarter of a standard deviation increase based on the index that combines information from the seven indicators (first column of estimates, Table 3). The difference between the average treatments effects (ATEs) for the civic education and combined programs is not statistically significant. The security committee program registers no such aggregate effect, leading one to infer that it is probably the civic education elements of the combined program that generated the positive effect in the combined program. The indicators that contribute most to the observed effect include rally participation, the purchasing of news clippings, and petition signatures. Rally attendance and news purchases increased by about 10 percentage points and petition signature rates by about 15 percentage points where civic education programs took place. The security committee communities did show gains in news purchases and petition signatures, but the effects are much smaller. By contrast, the voter registration and turnout estimates suggest a ceiling effect: these are both self-reported measures, and what we see is that in the control group, 97% and 94% of respondents indicate that they were registered and then turned out, respectively, leaving little room for any increases. It is quite possible that these self-reported turnout rates are biased by respondents indicating that they registered and turned out when they in fact did not. Such reporting bias is another reason that it is important to use alternative participation measures.

Tables 4, 5, and 6 display results for effects on parochial voting, which should be lower if voters can coordinate or are shielded from the pressures of local faction patrons. We use three types of outcomes to assess this. In Table 4 the outcomes are measures of diversity of vote choice based on Herfindahl index measures for presidential, senate, and house vote tallies the program communities’ polling places. The Herfindahl index ranges from 0 to 1, with higher values indicating more homogeneity in vote shares or monopolization of votes by a single actor in each location. If a program increases diversity, this should result in a 26
Promoting Democracy in Fragile States Table 3: Effects of programs on enthusiasm for participation

||Index<sup>_‡_</sup>|Rally|Register|Voted|Slogan|Bought news|Petition<br>|Issues card|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|(Control mean)|_−_0_._05|0_._24|0_._97|0_._94|0_._42|0_._45|0_._58|0_._64|
||(0_._04)|(0_._01)|(0_._01)|(0_._01)|(0_._02)|(0_._02)|(0_._02)|(0_._01)|
|Civ. Ed. ATE|0_._22<sup>_⇤⇤_</sup>|0_._11<sup>_⇤⇤⇤_</sup>|0_._00|_−_0_._03|_−_0_._01|0_._09<sup>_⇤⇤_</sup>|0_._17<sup>_⇤⇤⇤_</sup>|_−_0_._01|
||(0_._07)|(0_._02)|(0_._01)|(0_._02)|(0_._05)|(0_._03)|(0_._03)|(0_._02)|
|Sec. Com. ATE|0_._03|0_._02|0_._01|_−_0_._00|_−_0_._08<sup>_⇤_</sup>|0_._05<sup>_†_</sup>|0_._09<sup>_⇤⇤_</sup>|_−_0_._02|
||(0_._05)|(0_._02)|(0_._01)|(0_._01)|(0_._03)|(0_._03)|(0_._03)|(0_._02)|
|Combined ATE|0_._28<sup>_⇤⇤⇤_</sup>|0_._09<sup>_⇤⇤⇤_</sup>|0_._01|0_._02|0_._01|0_._07<sup>_⇤_</sup>|0_._15<sup>_⇤⇤⇤_</sup>|0_._09<sup>_⇤⇤_</sup>|
||(0_._06)|(0_._02)|(0_._01)|(0_._01)|(0_._03)|(0_._03)|(0_._04)|(0_._03)|
|_N_|1426<br>|1384|1419|1406|1426|1368|1426|1426|
|_R_<sup>2</sup>|0_._10|0_._14|0_._05|0_._06|0_._11|0_._15|0_._14|0_._08|

> _‡_ First column outcome is a standardized, inverse-covariance-weighted average of the other columns’ outcomes. Standard errors account for clan-level clustering.

> _†_ significant at _p < ._ 10; _⇤p < ._ 05; _⇤⇤p < ._ 01; _⇤⇤⇤p < ._ 001

_negative_ effect on the Herfindahl index. In Table 5, the outcomes are vote shares for the three national-level party candidates (the LP, UP, and CDC) as well as for parochial candidates (“Other”) from the polling place data. Less parochial voting would be reflected by decreases in voting for the “Other” candidates in favor of a national party candidate. In Table 6 the outcomes are voteshares for the different types of candidates presented as part of the voting vignette exercise in the survey. Again, less parochial voting should be associated with increased voteshares for candidates that make national appeals over regional, ethnic, or religious appeals. The results agree in part with our hypothesized effects, but not completely. With respect to diversity of vote choice, we see that the control group levels of voter homogeneity are quite high: Herfindahl indices of circa 0.4 to 0.5 are consistent with votes going predominately to two or three candidates. There is noisy indication that the civic education program caused such homogeneity to _increase_ , contrary to the expected effect. When we look at the changes in party voteshares in Table 5, this concentration appears to have been due to a coordinated shift (of about 10 percentage points) in votes away from the “parochial” candidates toward the UP. For the security committee and combined interventions, there is some suggestion of increases in voter diversity (that is, decreases in 27
Promoting Democracy in Fragile States Table 4: Effects of programs on diversity of vote choice (

||Index<sup>_‡_</sup>|Herf. Pres.|Herf. Sen.|Herf. Hou.|
|---|---|---|---|---|
|(Control mean)|0_._16|0_._53|0_._37|0_._41|
||(0_._08)|(0_._01)|(0_._01)|(0_._01)|
|Civ. Ed. ATE|0_._26<sup>_†_</sup>|0_._01|0_._05<sup>_⇤_</sup>|0_._02|
||(0_._15)|(0_._02)|(0_._02)|(0_._02)|
|Sec. Com. ATE|_−_0_._20|_−_0_._04<sup>_†_</sup>|_−_0_._02|_−_0_._03|
||(0_._17)|(0_._02)|(0_._03)|(0_._02)|
|Combined ATE|_−_0_._11|_−_0_._02|_−_0_._04<sup>_⇤_</sup>|0_._02|
||(0_._10)|(0_._02)|(0_._02)|(0_._03)|
|_N_|142|142|142|142|
|_R_<sup>2</sup>|0_._71|0_._86|0_._65|0_._80|

WLS estimates accounting for blocking using centered block interactions (coefficients omitted). _‡_ First column outcome is a standardized, inverse-covariance-weighted average of the other columns outcomes. “Herf.” stands for Herfindahl index. “Pres.”, “Sen.”, and “Hou.” stand for president, senate, and house votes. Standard errors account for clan-level clustering. _†_ significant at _p < ._ 10; _⇤p < ._ 05; _⇤⇤p < ._ 01; _⇤⇤⇤p < ._ 001 the Herfindahl index measures), with votes from parochial candidates being reduced again, but then being more evenly spread across the national party candidates. The increased appeal of national-level candidates above parochial candidates (and in particular, regional and ethnic candidates) is also apparent in the results for Table 6. Thus, while the effects on vote diversity are mixed and quite noisy, we see rather compelling evidence that all types of programs induced a shift toward national level candidates away from parochial candidates.

Tables 7 and 8 display results related to manipulation and surrendering of rights, which we expect to be lower to the extent that voters are better able to coordinate and are shielded from local factions. Table 7 includes nine indicators based on the survey data, capturing various forms of manipulation, while Table 8 shows effects on invalid vote counts based on the polling place data. At first glance, the effects for the civic education program appear puzzling: based on the index measure, we find a 0.11 standard deviation _increase_ in the index of manipulation and surrendering of rights. No such aggregate effects are apparent for the other two programs. The effect for the civic education program is driven primarily 28
Promoting Democracy in Fragile States Table 5: Effects of programs on actual vote for national versus parochial candidates

|L|P voteshare|UP voteshare|CDC voteshare|Other voteshare|
|---|---|---|---|---|
|(Control mean)|0_._10|0_._32|0_._26|0_._33|
||(0_._01)|(0_._01)|(0_._01)|(0_._01)|
|Civ. Ed. ATE|_−_0_._01|0_._11<sup>_⇤⇤_</sup>|<sup>_⇤_</sup><br>_−_0_._02|_−_0_._09<sup>_⇤⇤⇤_</sup>|
||(0_._01)|(0_._03)|(0_._02)|(0_._02)|
|Sec. Com. ATE|0_._02|0_._02|0_._01|_−_0_._04<sup>_⇤_</sup>|
||(0_._01)|(0_._02)|(0_._01)|(0_._02)|
|Combined ATE|_−_0_._02|0_._03|0_._04<sup>_⇤⇤_</sup>|_−_0_._05<sup>_⇤_</sup>|
||(0_._01)|(0_._03)|(0_._01)|(0_._02)|
|_N_|142|142|142|142|
|_R_<sup>2</sup>|0_._90|0_._88|0_._91|0_._95|

WLS estimates account for blocking using centered block interactions (coefficients omitted). Party share outcomes are compositional and sum to one. Standard errors account for clan-level clustering. _†_ significant at _p < ._ 10; _⇤p < ._ 05; _⇤⇤p < ._ 01; _⇤⇤⇤p < ._ 001 Table 6: Effects of programs on vignette vote for national versus parochial candidates

||None|Regional|Ethnic|National|Materialist|Religious|No resp.|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|(Control mean)|0_._01|0_._08|0_._23|0_._59|0_._02|0_._01|0_._01|
||(0_._00)|(0_._01)|(0_._02)|(0_._02)|(0_._00)|(0_._01)|(0_._01)|
|Civ. Ed. ATE|0_._00|_−_0_._04<sup>_⇤⇤⇤_</sup>|_−_0_._06|0_._08<sup>_⇤_</sup>|_−_0_._00|_−_0_._02<sup>_†_</sup>|0_._02|
||(0_._00)|(0_._01)<br>|(0_._04)|(0_._04)<br>|(0_._01)|(0_._01)|(0_._02)|
|Sec. Com. ATE|0_._01|_−_0_._03<sup>_†_</sup>|_−_0_._07<sup>_⇤_</sup>|0_._06<sup>_†_</sup>|0_._01|_−_0_._00|_−_0_._02|
||(0_._01)|(0_._02)|(0_._03)|(0_._04)|(0_._01)|(0_._01)|(0_._01)|
|Combined ATE|0_._01|_−_0_._06<sup>_⇤⇤⇤_</sup>|_−_0_._06<sup>_⇤_</sup>|0_._10<sup>_⇤_</sup>|_−_0_._00|_−_0_._01|0_._00|
||(0_._00)|(0_._01)|(0_._03)|(0_._04)|(0_._01)|(0_._01)|(0_._01)|
|_N_|1426|1426<br>|1426|1426|1426|1426|1426|
|_R_<sup>2</sup>|0_._44|0_._44|0_._44|0_._44|0_._44|0_._44|0_._44|

Outcomes are compositional and sums to one. Standard errors account for clan-level clustering. _†_ significant at _p < ._ 10; _⇤p < ._ 05; _⇤⇤p < ._ 01; _⇤⇤⇤p < ._ 001 by respondents reporting that they witnessed voter intimidation and threats and that they received help in filling election day ballots. At the same time, we see that the positive aggregate effect masks the fact that for some items, such as whether respondents thought that they would get in trouble for voting the “wrong” way or whether or not respondents reported receiving gifts, we estimate substantial _negative_ effects. The civic education program and the combined program are also associated with substantial reductions in invalid votes recorded in the polling place results; no such pronounced effect was evident for the 29
Promoting Democracy in Fragile States Table 7: Effects of programs on manipulation and surrendering of rights

||Index<sup>_‡_</sup>|Unfair|Intim.|Trouble|Threats|Call to Viol.|BigGifts|Small Gifts|Bal. Help|Bal. Test|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|(Control mean)|0_._01|0_._09|0_._33|0_._19|0_._20|0_._12|0_._06|0_._48|0_._05|0_._93|
||(0_._03)|(0_._01)|(0_._02)|(0_._01)|(0_._02)|(0_._01)|(0_._01)|(0_._02)|(0_._01)|(0_._01)|
|Civ. Ed.|0_._11<sup>_†_</sup>|_−_0_._03|0_._14<sup>_⇤⇤⇤_</sup>|_−_0_._05<sup>_⇤_</sup>|0_._06<sup>_†_</sup>|_−_0_._01|0_._02|_−_0_._06<sup>_⇤⇤⇤_</sup>|0_._05<sup>_⇤⇤_</sup>|<sup>_⇤_</sup><br>0_._02|
||(0_._06)|(0_._02)|(0_._03)|(0_._03)|(0_._03)|(0_._02)|(0_._02)|(0_._02)|(0_._01)|(0_._02)|
|Sec. Com.|_−_0_._02|_−_0_._01|0_._02|_−_0_._03|0_._00|0_._01|_−_0_._02|_−_0_._02|0_._02<sup>_⇤_</sup>|0_._01|
||(0_._06)|(0_._01)|(0_._03)|(0_._02)|(0_._03)|(0_._02)|(0_._01)|(0_._03)|(0_._01)|(0_._01)|
|Combined|_−_0_._02|_−_0_._02|_−_0_._02|_−_0_._06<sup>_⇤⇤_</sup>|_−_0_._02|_−_0_._03<sup>_⇤_</sup>|_−_0_._01|0_._01|0_._03<sup>_⇤_</sup>|0_._03<sup>_⇤_</sup>|
||(0_._06)|(0_._02)|(0_._03)|(0_._02)|(0_._03)|(0_._02)|(0_._02)|(0_._02)|(0_._01)|(0_._01)|
|_N_|1426|1245|1363|1262|1266|1278|1405|1401|1300|1359|
|_R_<sup>2</sup>|0_._07|0_._07|0_._06|0_._08|0_._08|0_._09|0_._08|0_._08|0_._05|0_._04|

~~WLS estimates account for blocking using centered block interactions (coeffcients not reported).~~ _‡_ First column outcome is a standardized, inverse-covariance-weighted average of the other columns’ outcomes. Standard errors account for clan-level clustering. _†_ significant at _p < ._ 10; _⇤p < ._ 05; _⇤⇤p < ._ 01; _⇤⇤⇤p < ._ 001 Table 8: Effects of programs on invalid vote proportions

||Index<sup>_‡_</sup>|Inval. Pres.|Inval. Sen.|Inval.|Hou.|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|(Control mean)|0_._39|0_._10|0_._09||0_._09|
||(0_._17)|(0_._01)|(0_._01)||(0_._01)|
|Civ. Ed. ATE|_−_1_._04<sup>_⇤⇤_</sup>|_−_0_._05<sup>_†_</sup>|_−_0_._05<sup>_⇤_</sup>||_−_0_._04<sup>_⇤⇤_</sup>|
||(0_._39)|(0_._03)|(0_._02)||(0_._02)|
|Sec. Com. ATE|_−_0_._31|_−_0_._02<sup>_†_</sup>|_−_0_._02||_−_0_._01|
||(0_._24)|(0_._01)|(0_._01)||(0_._01)|
|Combined ATE|_−_0_._78<sup>_†_</sup>|_−_0_._04<sup>_⇤_</sup>|_−_0_._04<sup>_†_</sup>||_−_0_._03<sup>_⇤_</sup>|
||(0_._43)|(0_._02)|(0_._02)||(0_._02)|
|_N_|142|142|142||142|
|_R_<sup>2</sup>|0_._51|0_._57|0_._57||0_._52|

WLS estimates accounting for blocking using centered block interactions (coefficients omitted).

“Inval.” stands for proportion of votes that were invalid.

“Pres.”, “Sen.”, and “Hou.” stand for president, senate, and house votes. _‡_ First column outcome is a standardized, inverse-covariance-weighted average of the other columns outcomes. Standard errors account for clan-level clustering. _†_ significant at _p < ._ 10; _⇤p < ._ 05; _⇤⇤p < ._ 01; _⇤⇤⇤p < ._ 001 security committee program. Thus, the results for these outcomes are not quite in line with our expectations. In the discussion below we present results of some auxiliary analyses that help to make sense of these findings.

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Promoting Democracy in Fragile States

# **7 Discussion**

The results suggest that the civic education and town hall discussions had pronounced effects on participation, vote choices, and the experiences of voters as they pertain to questions of voting rights. The combined program appears to have had similar but somewhat less pronounced effects as compared to the civic education program. The security committee program, which had communities regularly liaise with UN peacekeepers, appears only to have reduced the extent of support for parochial candidates, but in a way that was much less pronounced than for with the civic education/town hall and combined programs. In this section we take up two questions that arise from these findings. First, why was the security committee intervention so ineffective, particularly in comparison to the civic education and town halls intervention? Second, how should we interpret the unexpected effects of the civic education and town halls program on diversity of vote choice and manipulation and surrendering of rights?

That the security committee program was so ineffective warrants some reflection. Our expectation was that the civic education and security committee programs would be complementary, an expectation that we crystalized in our combination hypothesis ( _H3_ ). The study was designed to test for a synergy between them. We found no evidence of such synergy. Two possibilities may help to explain the non-results for the security committees. The first explanation derives from our theory. The fragmentation of the party system, the extreme number of parochial candidates, and the relatively high vote shares for such candidates are indicative of the extent to which local patron-client systems define political choices in rural Liberia. In our theory, the “patron’s advantage” comes from the patron’s ability to impose costs conditional on voter behavior. Such costs could come in the form of threats of physical punishment. But they could also come in the form of denying benefits. There are various ways through which local patron-client systems are enforced, and it is 31
Promoting Democracy in Fragile States not clear that the relevant mechanisms are those that rely on threats of physical endangerment. The non-effectiveness of security committee intervention suggests such may be the case. Moreover, the very fact that community leaders overwhelmingly accepted to host the security committee intervention may speak to this point.

A second explanation is not informed by our theory but rather by our observations in the field about the way the programs ran. At the most basic level, the monthly civic education meetings involved broad participation from all segments of the community, whereas direct participation in the security committees was, by design, very limited to those few individuals selected for the committee and to attend the monthly meeting (cf. the photographs in section B of the supporting information). The two programs also differed markedly in the “messengers” that conveyed the content of the programs. In the civic education/town halls program, the curriculum was taught by a local civil society organization facilitator. In the security committee program, the security committee members were exchanging information with foreign peacekeepers. A basic result from the literature on diffusion of ideas is that the credibility and therefore the impact of information introduced by a change agent decreases in social distance between the change agent and the subjects (Rogers, 1995, pp. 18-19).

The first unanticipated effect of the civic education and town halls program was the fact that it reduced heterogeneity of vote choice and rather induced a “coordinated shift” from a mix of parochial and national candidates to somewhat more homogenous preference for national level candidates. The fact that the shift was almost entirely in favor of incumbent UP is noteworthy. Along the lines of our theoretical discussion, this could represent citizens updating their party preferences: by learning more about how governance institutions work via the civic education program, citizens’ confidence in the state may have increased. Then, the most natural way for citizens to express is new confidence and to “vote for the state” as opposed to voting parochially would be to switch from parochial candidates to 32
Promoting Democracy in Fragile States the incumbent UP. Our theory suggests that such a coordinated shift away from parochial candidates would have been facilitated by the deliberation and reflection on political alternatives that the town halls allowed. Voters in a community may have sought to coordinate their votes to maximize strategic impact (Cox, 1997; Dryzek, 2009).

The second unanticipated effect was in how the civic education and town halls program increased reports of exposure to some forms of intimidation. We consider a few possible explanations. First, we wanted to be sure that we were not being misled by differential non-response. The non-response rates for the items that appear in Table 7 are considerably higher than for the other outcomes (see the row labeled _N_ ). If it were the case that non-response rates were higher in the control areas, and that non-response tends to be associated with experience of manipulation or surrendering of rights, then this would result in a biased ATE estimate for the civic education program. However an analysis of non-response patterns does not show that they can explain the counterintuitive findings (see section I in the supporting information).

Second possibility, the fact that the outcome used in Table 7 are based on survey selfreports mean that they combine two types of effects: (i) effects on actual levels of manipulation and surrendering of rights and (ii) willingness to _report_ such manipulation and surrendering of rights. With respect to actual levels of threats, at a theoretical level, it is when citizens’ actions disturb an equilibrium favorable to incumbent elites that you would expect to see an attempts at intimidation. Such intimidation may be wielded in attempts to prevent the change. No meaningful political change comes without some degree of conflict. But it is also possible that the civic education and town halls program increased people’s _willingness_ to report threats, even if the level of threats did not change appreciably. We investigated these possibilities as best we could. As part of our project implementation, we had project monitors (who, for the program communities were the same as the field facilitators, and for the control communities were different) collect community-level indicators 33
Promoting Democracy in Fragile States at baseline and then again at endline. Among the endline indicators collected were reports on incidents of voter intimidation, politically-motivated attacks on community members, disputes between the chief and the national elections commission (NEC), disputes between residents and the NEC, and any inter-group violence within the community. The incident reports suggest that such instances of overt intimidation or election-related conflict were extremely rare: for these five indicators over the 126 communities in which the indicators were collected,<sup>22</sup> we received word of only 6 incidents. In the civic education communities, there were _no incidents recorded at all_ (see section J in the supporting information). The survey responses about perceptions of unfairness or whether respondents thoughts they would be in trouble for voting the “wrong” way are not confounded in the same way as the reports on witnessing intimidation and threats, and for both of these we see _beneficial_ effects; these are also consistent with the results for the more objective invalid vote counts and even the ballot test. The most compelling interpretation of these results is that the civic education/town halls program may have introduced some degree of local political conflict and increased people’s willingness to report on threats, but avoiding creating generating any instances of violence.

# **8 Conclusion**

in war-affected rural Liberia are undermined by lack of access to information about institutions and politics, few opportunities to coordinate, or insecurity vis-a-vis local political factions, and whether such barriers can be overcome through civic education and town hall 22We were unable to collect incident reports in eight control towns, one civic education town, and seven security committee towns.

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Promoting Democracy in Fragile States or third-party security programs. We used a combination of surveys, behavioral activities, and electoral returns to measure the effects of these programs. We found that the civic education and town halls program increased enthusiasm for electoral participation and generated a coordinated shift from parochial to national candidates, while possibly increasing levels of contestation within communities and heightening citizens’ willingness to report on intimidation. The security committee program had only a weak effect on preferences for national versus parochial candidates. We found no evidence of synergy between the programs.

Relating these results to our theoretical discussion, the experiment provides insights on barriers to citizens’ ability to express policy preferences with their votes, and therefore the quality of elections, in fragile states. The substantial effects of the civic education and town hall program is evidence in itself of barriers to information and opportunities to coordinate for citizens in rural Liberia. This raises questions as to why such information and coordination opportunities are lacking. One reason for the lack of information is of course material: census data show that only about five percent of households possess a radio, indicative of the extent to which individuals rely on word-of-mouth, and therefore locally mediated, transmission of political information. But this lack of media access likely interacts with strategic factors to leave voters with access only to biased and limited information. Parochial patrons have incentive to monopolize what constituents hear to secure their positions. Similarly, parochial patrons have every incentive to limit opportunities for citizens to discuss and coordinate politically. In the absence of third parties that might intervene, these strategies allow patron’s to sustain their parochial advantage, potentially preventing citizens from expressing their policy preferences through the elections. By intervening in such settings, third party actors such as civil society organizations or even foreign donors could help to remove such barriers to political expression.

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