Paper short abstract:

This paper uses cross-national parliamentary election data and Afrobarometer surveys to investigate how constituency characteristics relate to patterns of clientelism. We investigate how electorate size is associated with MP-citizen contact and the implications of this for democratic beliefs.

Paper long abstract:

Small country and district sizes have long been assumed to foster clientelistic relations between politicians and voters. In this paper we test this long held assumptions in the African context by analyzing whether district size (i.e., number of registered voters) positively affects interpersonal contact between Members of Parliament (MPs) and voters. We also investigate whether smaller district size and closer interpersonal contact influences voters’ democratic beliefs, including beliefs about the responsibilities of politicians (taking care of personal problems of citizens), support for democracy, and trust in politicians. We use lower chamber parliamentary election data and match districts to respondents from the Afrobarometer Round 6 survey. While clientelism is generally believed to be widespread in Africa, this study stresses its variation as well as determinants. In addition, we also assess the nature of clientelism. In particular, we investigate whether MP-voter contact can be viewed as non-party-based constituency service or rather clientelism based on political affiliation.

Paper short abstract:

What drives legislators’ constituency focus under closed list proportional representation (CLPR) systems? Using an original dataset of over 20,000 questions between 2006 and 2022, we test three hypotheses concerning electoral vulnerability, seniority legislators, and localness.

Paper long abstract:

What drives legislators’ constituency focus under closed list proportional representation (CLPR) systems?

CLPR systems are said to offer fewer incentives for legislators to cultivate the personal vote and cater to

district interests. We argue that legislators will have electoral and career-shaped predispositions to perform

constituency-focused activities, as they seek to pursue their goals and satisfy their principals. Drawing on an

original dataset of 20,293 questions submitted to the Parliament of South Africa between 2006 and 2022 and

on legislators’ biographic data, we test three hypotheses, namely that more electorally vulnerable legislators,

junior legislators, and those with prior political experience in the district will have more incentives to perform

constituency based activities. Our results lend support to the hypotheses on electoral vulnerability and

localness but run counter to most studies as we show that seniority fosters rather than diminishes

constituency focus. These findings clarify the importance of individual level factors beyond institutional

constraints. They also nuance existing studies that downplay the role of constituency service in

party-controlled assemblies in Africa.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how changes in candidate selection impacts role orientations in an authoritarian legislature. Using original data from Cameroon, decentralizing candidate selection pushes legislators towards the constituency, creating possible hazard for authoritarian regime stability.

Paper long abstract:

Comparatively less is known about individual legislators in authoritarian settings. Do they respond similarly to the institutional features of political competition as do their parallels in established democracies? Can factors like district magnitude or the candidate selection process impact whether they are more accountable to the constituency rather than the party? This paper examines these questions with an original survey of members of Cameroon’s 9th National Assembly. The survey uses multidimensional ranked-choice questions to measure a key concept from the comparative literature on legislatures – legislative role orientations. Cameroon, a longstanding electoral authoritarian regime, also provides unique leverage since it has strategically altered district magnitudes and experimented for a time with local primaries. The results show that, controlling for other factors, the district magnitude has little impact on legislative role orientations. However, decentralized candidate selection processes do push legislators to orient more strongly with the interest of the constituency. These findings provide novel views into the inner workings of authoritarian legislatures, and suggest that certain institutional changes that might appear necessary to autocrats to cope with challenges like multiparty elections also create their own kinds of hazard.

Paper short abstract:

Using constituency service as both a means of facilitating public connection with legislative institutions, and as an end for elite-citizen linkages, the paper explores how legislators shape public knowledge, understanding, and (dis)connection with legislatures in Nigeria.

Paper long abstract:

The question of how legislatures develop and implement public engagement is fast becoming a key element of political representation theory and practice. In Africa, research in this area has focussed largely on individual legislators, interrogating how their constituency engagements - as ends in themselves - are interpreted by constituents; and how these relate to public perceptions, trusts, and expectations. Constituency service, particularly in terms of how it serves as means to influence or mediate citizens’ knowledge, understanding and (dis)connection with legislative institutions, is grossly underexplored. This leaves significant gaps in knowledge of how the institutional representative roles of legislatures have evolved, and how these play out in the milieu of the institutions’ public engagement activities. This paper thus uses a multilevel governance approach to explore the roles of legislators’ constituency service in the institutional dimension of public engagement. It draws on months of doctoral fieldwork about legislative public engagement (LPE) at the national and subnational levels in Nigeria, involving interviews, observations, and surveys. It problematises how elements of constituency service, such as constituency offices, as well as informal and formal interactions with constituents serve as channels of citizens’ connection with the institutions, and what factors influence these. This paper argues that the nature of politics in Africa provides both opportunities and constraints for legislature-public connections. It enlightens theoretical understanding about how constituency service provides a means of facilitating public connections with legislatures, and how peculiarities of legislatures at different levels, in turn, influence constituency service towards advancing democratic development.

Paper short abstract:

There is a need for a more accurate description and comparison of the scope and variety of services performed by legislators. The consequence of such variations in constituency service according to findings most times negatively impacts trust-building and constituency accountability mechanisms.

Paper long abstract:

There is a need for a more accurate description and comparison of the scope and variety of services performed by legislators. Where there are great variations among legislators in these activities, we need to know why as well as the consequences of such variation on legislator-constituency relations. We need to know at a micro level how much legislators' efforts influence the distribution of services to constituents and how they could be hampered by what the study conceptualised as black holes of constituency service. Based on an ethnographic account as an intern during Yiaga Africa’s constituency office programme in Ife Federal Constituency in Nigeria, and a series of semi-structured interviews with two legislators, four legislative aid, and 40 constituents drawn from eight communities in Ife Central and Ife East Constituencies of the Osun State House of Assembly, the study identified how the scope and varying non-institutional incentives such as legislator’s priorities on social events, burial ceremonies, sports events, etc., differentiate and describes efforts and impact on constituency service. The reason for such variations was the legislator’s weak prioritisation of core imperatives surrounding casework, outreaches, information provision and parliamentary initiatives. The consequence of these varying non-institutional incentives according to findings are mostly encouraged by non-evaluative and unsustainable approaches. This negatively impacts trust-building and constituency accountability mechanisms which are further aggravated by middlemen (legislative aids and party loyalists) who form black holes (blurred practices) of constituency service. The study unpacks the importance of a legislator’s prioritisation of service, allocation, policy and symbolic responsiveness.

Paper short abstract:

The paper focuses on how Members of County Assembly (MCA) in Kenya used their offices in response to citizens’ expectations of their roles. It reveals how the complex demands of political accountability shape the wider political system, connecting the centre and the grassroots.

Paper long abstract:

Members of County Assembly (MCA), the lowest elected rung of Kenya’s political system, receive scant attention in scholarship focused on the country’s ambitious devolution reform (Cheeseman, Lynch and Willis, 2016). To many Kenyans, however, they are the most visible elected politicians, and on the frontline of popular expectations that devolution would ‘bring the government closer to the people’. Much scholarship on decentralisation tends to focus on the extent to which such reforms meet their intended goals – of ‘development’ or ‘democracy’. Shifting away from normative questions, this paper explores how MCAs used their offices in response to citizens’ expectations of their roles. It shows that a critical part of this was to negotiate relationships with higher-up politicians, making MCAs the lowest-rung cog in Kenya’s wider political system. By looking at how popular expectations shaped MCAs’ practices and relationships, the paper reveals a powerful form of politics that challenges a fundamental rationale behind devolution reforms in Kenya and elsewhere: that politics will work in ‘different’, ‘better’ and more liberally accountable ways if government is closer to ‘the people’. By contrast, forms of ethnic and patronage politics seen as pathologies of an unaccountable ‘centre’ – and which devolution could stamp out – find resonance at the grassroots, and help to explain why devolution as a system became so quickly embedded in Kenya. The paper shows how local politicians like MCAs seek to navigate the complex demands of political accountability amidst limited state capacity, in a job that may provide social mobility.

Paper short abstract:

The paper characterizes the opposition MPs in the Angolan parliament and explores how the opposition political elite mobilize their constituencies' interests. This paper contributes to the literature on opposition elite formation in resilient authoritarian regimes with a dominant party system.

Paper long abstract:

Multiparty parliaments in authoritarian regimes are believed to have limited policy influence and to be privileged floors for co-optation strategies of the autocrat or the dominant party. The Angolan National Assembly fits this model. Angola is a presidential system with a closed-list proportional representation electoral system and a weakly institutionalized parliament where the legislative performance has been limited to the dominant party (People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola, MPLA). However, the National Assembly is the only institution in which opposition parties can publicly perform their top-rank political tasks due to their absence in executive power. Who composes the opposition political elite in Angola? How does the opposition political elite behave in the parliament and mobilize their constituencies' interests at the parliamentary level? To answer these questions, we combine novel biographical data on the opposition parties’ candidates with parliamentary activity data focusing on the post-civil war legislatures (2008, 2012, 2017 and 2022). During this period, newcomers (such as the Broad Convergence for the Salvation of Angola – Electoral Coalition, CASA-CE) burst onto the political scene and joined historical opposition parties (such as the National Unit for the Total Independence of Angola, UNITA) in parliament. The data allow us to explore MPs biographic background, and how connected they are with their constituencies, over time and across electoral cycles. This paper contributes to the literature on MPs' behaviour and opposition elite formation in resilient authoritarian regimes with a dominant party system.