Partisan Effects of Information Campaigns in Competitive Authoritarian Elections: Evidence from Bangladesh

Firoz Ahmed, Roland Hodler and Asad Islam

The Economic Journal, 2024, vol. 134, issue 660, 1303-1330

Abstract: To study the effects of non-partisan information and get-out-the-vote campaigns on the partisan composition of the voting population in competitive authoritarian elections, we conducted a large-scale field experiment prior to the 2018 Bangladeshi general election. Our two treatments highlight that high turnout increases the winning party’s legitimacy and that election outcomes matter for policy outcomes. Both treatments increase turnout (measured by ink marks) in government strongholds, but decrease turnout in opposition strongholds. We explain the withdrawal of treated opposition supporters and conclude that non-partisan information and get-out-the-vote campaigns can further tilt the uneven playing field in competitive authoritarian elections.

Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ej/uead115 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:econjl:v:134:y:2024:i:660:p:1303-1330.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Economic Journal is currently edited by Francesco Lippi

More articles in The Economic Journal from Royal Economic Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press () and ().