Learning About Democracy in Africa

American Journal of Political Science, 2007 (co-authored with Michael Bratton)

Conventional views of African politics imply that Africans’ political opinions are based largely on enduring cultural values or their positions in the social structure.  In contrast, we argue that Africans form attitudes to democracy based upon what they learn about what it is and what it does.  We test this learning hypothesis against competing cultural, institutional and structural theories to explain citizens’ demand for democracy (legitimation) and the perceived supply of democracy (institutionalization) with data from 12 Afrobarometer surveys of nationally representative samples of citizens conducted between 1999 and 2001.  Using multi-level modeling to estimate the separate impacts of both individual and national level factors, we provide evidence of learning from three different sources.  First, people learn about the content of democracy through cognitive awareness of public affairs.  Second, people learn about the consequences of democracy through direct experience of the performance of governments and (to a lesser extent) the economy.  Finally, people also draw lessons about democracy from national political legacies.

The Material and Political Bases of Lived Poverty in Africa: Insights From the Afrobarometer

In Barometers of Quality of Life Around the Globe: How Are We Doing? Edited by Valerie Møller, Dennis Huschka & Alex Michalos, 2008

The Afrobarometer has developed an experiential measure of lived poverty (how frequently people go without basic necessities during the course of a year) that measures a portion of the central core of the concept of poverty not captured by existing objective or subjective measures.  Empirically, the measure has strong individual level construct validity and reliability within any cross national round of surveys.  Yet it also displays inconsistent levels of external validity as a measure of aggregate level poverty when compared to other objective, material measures of poverty or well being.  Surprisingly, however, we find that lived poverty is very strongly related to country level measures of political freedom.  This finding simultaneously supports Sen's (1999) arguments about development as freedom, corroborates Halperin et al’s (2005) arguments about the “democracy advantage” in development, and increases our confidence that we are indeed measuring the experiential core of poverty. 

Support for Economic Reform? Popular Attitudes in Africa

World Development, 2002 (co-authored with Michael Bratton)

Do ordinary people support programs of economic reform?  If so, why?  If not, why not?  This article breaks new ground by reporting and comparing public opinion from seven Southern African countries based on systematic Afrobarometer surveys.  It finds that people support some adjustment policies (such as price reforms) but oppose others (such as institutional reforms).  An eclectic explanation is offered for these attitudes that draws on structural factors (especially poverty), cultural values (such as self-reliance), and exposure to mass media.  The most formative influence on mass economic opinion in Southern Africa, however, is the institutional legacy of settler colonialism as expressed through race and nation.

Public Opinion Research in Emerging Democracies

In Handbook of Public Opinion Reearch.  Edited by Wolfgang Donsback & Michael Traugott

Thie proliferation of acadamic survey research to the developing, democratizing world represents more than the simple spread of Western social science paradigms and technologies to new areas and the accumulation of new knowledge about heretofore understudied subjects. Rather, it portends important shifts in the way we study public opinion, democracy, and comparative politics. While the actual tool of the survey appears the same in form, social conditions often mean that its application differs from the Western standard in important ways, and may produce some important alternatives to the normal Western textbook methods. Moreover, the political and social context of transition means that the content of questionnaires as well as the purpose of systematic public opinion research also differs quite substantially from the standard academic survey research paradigm in Western democracies, producing as many political impacts as scientific ones.

Democracy Without the People: Economics, Governance and Representation in South Africa

Journal of Democracy, 2002

Perhaps more than any other democratizing country, South Africa generates widely differing assessments of the present state and likely future prospects of its democracy. If one takes the long view—comparing South Africa today to where it was just 12 years ago—it is difficult not to be enthusiastic about its accomplishments and its future. South Africa successfully emerged from the shadow of apparently irreconcilable conflict and unavoidable racial civil war to create a common nation. It has negotiated two democratic constitutions and has held four successful nationwide elections for national and local government. On the economic front, it has avoided the triple-digit inflation that many feared would accompany a populist economic strategy of redistribution and government intervention. It has stabilized the expanding debt and reversed the double-digit inflation inherited from the apartheid-era government. There have been impressive gains in employment opportunities and income for the growing black middle class, and poor blacks have seen unprecedented improvements in access to basic necessities.

Yet if one looks at South Africa’s new democracy in a comparative perspective, one’s enthusiasm is greatly tempered, if not altogether removed. Cross-national analysis has highlighted three broad sets of factors crucial to democratic consolidation: a growing economy that steadily reduces inequality; stable and predictable political institutions; and a supportive political culture. In terms of these factors, an analysis of South Africa yields, at best, some reasons for guarded optimism and, at worst, many grounds for serious concern.

Popular Attitudes Toward the South African Electoral System

Democratization, 2004 (co-authored with Roger Southall)

Restless Minds: South African Students and the Brain Drain

Development Southern Africa, 2007

We report the results of a specially designed 2002 survey of emigration potential among a representative sample of 4784 post-graduate and final year undergraduate students at South Africa’s tertiary educational institutions.  We created a valid and reliable index of emigration potential and found slightly higher levels than those measured by identical questions in previous surveys of skilled adult South Africans.  Multivariate regression analysis revealed that the most important factors that increase emigration potential amongst South Africa’s future skills base are logistical ones, including family encouragement and financial resources.  The second most important set of factors consist of students’ prospects of an improved quality of life for their families and themselves in their target countries relative to South Africa.  Finally, values of national identity and patriotism decrease emigration potential while previous travel abroad and access to information about life abroad increases it.  We also found that a range of possible government attempts to make emigration more difficult would only increase students’ probability of leaving the country.

Good News and Bad: Public Perceptions of Crime, Corruption and Government

SA Crime Quarterly, 2006

Official police statistics attempt to provide an objective picture of the extent of crime.  But public opinion surveys can provide an important complement to official statistics by both assessing people’s reported experiences with both crime and the police, as well as their subjective (in)security and evaluations of the police and government efforts to reduce crime.  And when these “snapshot” surveys are regularly repeated, they can create a “moving picture” of the critical trends. 
A review of Idasa and Afrobarometer surveys conducted in South Africa since 1994 reveals several important long term trends.  In contrast to what might be inferred from the noise of partisan debate and expert commentary, these trends show that levels of reported experiences with crime are unchanged over the past six years, though at apparently far higher levels than what is reported to the police and thus included in the official crime statistics.  Furthermore, public perceptions of overall safety and the performance of the police are actually improving, albeit from a fairly dismal base.  At the same time, these surveys also demonstrate that almost half of all citizens think that most police officials are involved in corruption, that most find it difficult to get help from the police and that some even have to pay bribes to get this help.

How Does South Africa Compare? Experiences of Crime and Policing in an African Context

SA Crime Quarterly, 2006

Since its transition to democracy, South Africa has gained the reputation as a dangerous country with one of the highest rates of violent crime in the world.  The most recent series of nationally representative data consists of 22 countries surveyed as far apart as 1991 and 2003 of which South Africa is the only non western country.

The Afrobarometer, a regular survey of public attitudes toward governance, democracy and economics in 18 African countries, offers a useful alternative with which to begin to place South Africa in a more meaningful African context (see www.afrobarometer.org).  When we carry out these cross-African comparisons, we see that levels of reported experience with crime and concerns over safety in South Africa are indeed quite high, but are by no means exceptional.  People in some African countries are as, or even more fearful and more likely to see crime as a major problem than South Africans.  And there are several countries in Africa in which people confront crime as or even more frequently than do South Africans. 

However, the Afrobarometer results demonstrates that while the South African Police Service is embedded within a relatively wealthy and modern state infrastructure and may have far higher levels of physical and human capital than its counterparts to the north, it often lags well behind many of them in terms of transparency and community relations, as well as other key but less tangible assets of popular trust and legitimacy. 

Finally, the overtime trends revealed by responses in those countries that have had three Afrobarometer surveys suggests that any positive trends in South Africa may be less a result of improved policing by the SAPS, as a function of the much broader dynamics of a society moving beyond the massive social dislocations associated with political democratization and economic liberalization.