Election fairness and government legitimacy in Afghanistan

Eli Berman, Mike Callen, Clark C. Gibson, James D. Long and Arman Rezaee

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Elections can enhance state legitimacy. One way is by improving citizens’ attitudes toward government, thereby increasing their willingness to comply with rules and regulations. We investigate whether reducing fraud in elections improves attitudes toward government in a fragile state. A large, randomly assigned fraud-reducing intervention in Afghan elections leads to improvement in two indices, one measuring attitudes toward their government, and another measuring stated willingness to comply with governance. Thus, reducing electoral fraud may offer a practical, cost-effective method of enhancing governance in a fragile state.

Keywords: election fraud; democracy; legitimacy; development; experiment; Afghanistan (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H41 O10 O17 O53 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2019-12-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-pol
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 1, December, 2019, 168, pp. 292 - 317. ISSN: 0167-2681

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:102986

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