Elite Manipulation Research Articles

Patterns of Electoral Violence During Côte D’Ivoire’s Third-Term Crisis

Abstract Almost a decade after the 2011 post-electoral crisis, Côte d’Ivoire once again held elections marred by widespread violence. The third-term crisis revolved around President Alassane Ouattara’s controversial third-term bid and left at least 83 people dead and 633 people injured. This briefing draws on a new electoral violence dataset and field research to unpack patterns of violence during the crisis, and disentangles disruptive electoral violence related to the opposition’s campaign to thwart the election from incidental electoral violence related to the overall electoral tension. The findings show that incidental violence was far deadlier than disruptive violence, yet only tenuously related to the national political divide. This incidental violence was often driven by pre-existing local resource conflicts, revenge, rumours and disinformation, and elite manipulation. The briefing contributes new knowledge on the local drivers of electoral violence in Côte d’Ivoire, and cautions that viewing local communities only as victims of elite rivalries can make decision-makers overlook important risk factors.

Anchoring Political Preferences: The Psychological Foundations of Status Quo Bias and the Boundaries of Elite Manipulation

Public policy is often about numbers that affect people’s lives in fundamental ways. Given the central importance of numbers, we examine anchoring, a heuristic in which people are influenced by an initial number in expressing a preference. Across a series of experiments and three unique surveys, we find evidence of anchoring effects, but not uniformly so. In contrast to experiments in psychology and behavioral economics, we find no evidence that irrelevant or arbitrary anchors shape policy preferences. Yet, when provided politically relevant anchors that clearly correspond to the policy proposal, we find evidence of strong effects, even in the face of party cues or in the absence of a status quo policy point. Taken together, our results demonstrate that there is a psychological explanation for why the status quo occupies a powerful position in policy debates as well as why agenda setting is so influential.

Electoral Process and National Integration in Nigeria: An Analysis of 2019 General Election

The study examined electoral process and national integration in Nigeria taking cognize of the 2019 general election. The main objectives of the study were; to investigate the link between the outcome of the 2019 general elections and national integration in Nigeria; to examine the influence of ethnic nationalities in the political mobilization and conduct and outcome of the 2019 general elections; and to establish the relationship between voting pattern and regional inclinations. The study adopted the Elite theoretical framework because issues of elections, political parties and governance are decided, dominated and championed by the elites. Furthermore, this paper employed the Ex Post Facto research design, using data gathered from secondary sources. By this, data was surveyed from scholarly journals, texts, periodicals, newspapers, magazines, internet website and other published materials. It was analyzed via content and historical analysis which helped to make deductions leading to findings which amongst others revealed that the electoral process in Nigeria has been characterized by elite manipulation of the process, ballot snatching, and late arrival of electoral material, severe operational and transparency shortcomings, and electoral security problems. The study recommends among others that there should be a formulation of policies and programmes to re-orientate those that are divided along ethnic lines in order to promote good relations among the different ethnic groups in Nigeria.

Sortition as Anti‐Corruption: Popular Oversight against Elite Capture

AbstractRandom selection for political office—or “sortition”—is increasingly seen as a promising tool for democratic renewal. Critics worry, however, that replacing elected and appointed officials with randomly selected citizens would only exacerbate elite manipulation of political processes. This article argues that sortitioncancontribute to democratic renewal, but that its genuine promise is obscured by the excessive ambition and misplaced focus of prevailing models. Casting random selection as a route to accurate representation of the popular will, most contemporary proposals require randomly selected citizens to perform legislative tasks, whose open‐endedness grants substantial discretion to elite agenda setters and facilitators. The real democratic promise of sortition‐based reforms, I argue, lies in obstructing elite capture at critical junctures: a narrower task of oversight that creates fewer opportunities for elite manipulation. In such contexts, the benefits of empowering ordinary people—resulting from their immunity to certain distorting influences on career officials—plausibly outweigh the risks.

The origins of the Cold War in Southeast Asia: Pre-Second World War Siamese cooperation with foreign powers against communism

The origins of the Cold War in Southeast Asia are most often located in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, in the late 1940s. Historians sometimes trace its origins to Japan's expansionist phase in the 1930s, which accelerated the decline of the European and American colonial order in this part of Asia. However, the necessity of the fight against communism appeared very clearly in the minds of the leaders of the major colonial powers well before the 1930s. Focused on the case of Siam, this article aims to show that the origins of the Cold War in Southeast Asia dated back to as early as the 1920s with the emergence of international cooperation in the fight against communism and the Thai elite's manipulation of imperialist powers to further their own political agenda and support their dominance in the domestic political arena. The Cold War in Southeast Asia was not only about the postwar fight against the spread of communism, but also closely intertwined with the decolonisation and nation-building efforts of every country in the region — including of the so-called un-colonised Thailand.

Emerging Trends and Persistence of Inter-Ethnic Conflicts in Kenya

Ethnic conflicts remain the biggest setback to the development of many African nations today, Kenya included. This study analysed the emerging trends and reasons for the persistence of inter-ethnic conflicts in Kenya. It was undertaken in the context of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa (PCEA) and was done in inter-ethnic prone Counties in Kenya including Nakuru, Eldoret, Laikipia and Mombasa. The study population was 1,624,345 PCEA members drawn from Nakuru west, Nakuru East, Njoro, Elburgon, Laikipia, Eldoret and Mombasa Presbyteries which are perceived as inter-ethnic conflicts dominant. A sample size of 384 respondents obtained through random sampling was selected from the presbyteries in the study locale. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design employing mixed methods of data collection. The instruments for data collection were questionnaires for the Church elders and members, structured interview guide for Church ministers and Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) for victims. The study established that the major reasons for the persistence of inter-ethnic conflicts in Kenya are radicalization, economic imperialism, elite manipulation, deep-rooted cultural practices and language prejudices. These are the vices that must be eradicated if at all the inter-ethnic conflicts which have been the major hiccups to the socio-political and economic development of Kenya will be effectively addressed. Key Words : Kenya; inter-ethnic conflicts, Presbyterian Church of East Africa DOI : 10.7176/RHSS/9-16-05 Publication date : August 31 st 2019

Contesting the nation: negotiating national narratives and the Jewish settlements

AbstractWhy and how does national identity reopen for contestation? Existing theories argue that institutional design, social ties or elite manipulation alter the saliency and nature of national identity. These theories view the ethno‐nation as homogenous and shaped vis‐à‐vis other groups. However, I argue that we should examine the re‐emergence of nationalism as an intra‐national struggle between groups with different saliency and understandings of national identity: new issues can raise the importance of national identity for some members of the group but not others. Moreover, members develop diverging understandings of fundamentals of national identity such as citizenship, borders and the role of religion. To support the theory, the paper utilises original not yet studied archival materials to show that struggle over Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories led to contestation of the saliency and meaning of Jewish Israeli national identity. Specifically, I analyse letters individuals sent to leading government officials in the early days of the settlements and show that settlement supporters tied the issue to Zionist ethos, injecting new content into Zionist identity. Meanwhile, national identity did not rise in importance or alter in meaning for settlement opposition. The method reveals individual understandings of national identity and points at broader societal divisions.

Hall of Mirrors: Media, Democratization, and the Public Sphere in Maranhão, Brazil

Freedom of expression and access to diverse sources of information are seen as critical elements of democracy, although their concretization on the ground is subject to strong interference. Recent regime change in Maranhão, one of Brazil’s poorest states, has led to the emergence of new media and some expansion of the public sphere. The traditional oligarchy continues to dominate the media, however, and the opposition media replicate its exclusion of nonelite actors. The Maranhão experience confirms that normative approaches to the media either as automatic contributors to democracy or as instruments of elite manipulation have little value for understanding media dynamics. Liberdade de expressão, bem como o acesso a diversas fontes de informação, são considerados elementos críticos da democracia, ainda que a concretização desses fatores esteja sujeita a forte interferência. A recente troca de regime no Maranhão, um dos estados mais pobres do Brasil, tem levado ao surgimento de uma nova mídia e a uma certa expansão da esfera pública. Contudo, a oligarquia continua dominando a mídia tradicional e a mídia alternativa imita a prática de exclusão de atores não pertencentes à elite. A experiência do Maranhão confirma que tratamentos normativos que veem a mídia como contribuinte automática do processo democrático, ou como instrumento de manipulação da elite, teem pouco valor para se entender a dinâmica da mídia.

Education and intimate war of position: The National Security League's Committee on Patriotism through Education, 1917–1919

The National Security League was an elite private lobbying group in the World War I preparedness movement in the United States. Its educational wing was a group consisting mostly of college professors called the Committee on Patriotism through Education, which sought to use education to promote a militaristic brand of patriotism. This paper adds to our knowledge of the geopolitics of the period by critically reviewing the Committee's propaganda efforts, as organized into its Patriotism through Education Series. More importantly, this paper theorizes this propaganda by engaging with two literatures that seldom cross paths: emerging interest in intimacy-geopolitics and Gramsci's concept of war of position. Intimacy-geopolitics is used to highlight the performative edge of war propaganda, as it directs desire and affect to toward geopolitical visions which accord with elite visions of the good life. Intimacy-geopolitics as an analytical framework helps connect affect and war in a way that avoids scalar hierarchies of violence. The Committee deliberately sought to direct emotion toward militaristic ends, and saw teachers as foot soldiers in that effort. Understanding how war propaganda works through affect, that is, how it positions country as an object of affection, also qualifies and dovetails with an understanding of war propaganda as elemental to the Gramscian war of position. Quite apart from accusations of war-profiteering, elite manipulation of desire and affect toward the war effort also worked to obfuscate class interest in favor of gender and other social roles.

Governing Unclear Lines: Local Boundaries as a (Re)source of Conflict in South Sudan

ABSTRACTSouth Sudan’s administrative boundaries stem from the colonial period. Since it gained independence in 2011, subsequent rounds of reshuffling of the political system, internal borders, and power relations have been a source of confusion, elite manipulation, and conflict throughout the country. This paper explores the impact of this confusion by focusing on multiple shifting linkages between administrative boundaries and identities and shows how the mobilization of ethnic identities has become central to territorial claims and creating territorial borders. We use three local conflicts in Central Equatoria State to illustrate how claims of belonging and entitlement are being used by elites for economic, political, and socio-cultural gains. The three cases also show how such manipulation increases the likelihood of ethnic division and conflict. Following the decision by the government in 2015 to increase the number of states from 10 to 28 in October 2015, further manipulation of borders and identities is likely to occur and could result in more violence, ethnic-based conflict, and human suffering.

Legitimating Social Inequality: Political Elites, Ethnic Peddling and Dislocated Constituencies

Political cronyism has been flagged up as a trigger for state dysfunction in post-independence Africa, resulting in escalating social inequality. This paper lays out elite (mostly elderly) dislocation of political space; polarizing communities with constituents feeling distant from governmental machinery with constituency representation under siege. Using case studies, backed up with documentary analysis, framed in conjunction with the conceptual thinking of deliberative democracy; this study engages with the elements of dislocation. Constituency misrepresentation is laid out through a triangulation of case study material drawn from newspaper reports, discourses and counter narratives, amplified by process tracing and inferential analysis. Elite manipulation of political spaces exacerbates social inequality, creates fractured communities; undermines democratic mandate, social advancement and broad citizen consensus. From media coverage of glib slogans, elite pledge generic support for the regime in place whilst constituents are giving false expectations that seldom materialize into concrete development. There are no clear-cut manifestos that reflect the voices of constituents against bogus claims to state institutions with the political elite purportedly speaking on behalf of their constituents -‘the people’. The ensuing inertia creates a false sense of representative governance as projects promised are rarely delivered. Slogans should usefully channel the development needs of constituents, permitting government to calibrate a robust development portfolio and citizen assemblies factored into policy design and service delivery. Developing a stakeholder approach and building the capability of social development professionals, in order to filter through pressing concerns with measurable outcomes, bolstering youth employment and fostering social protection would remove the lock jams in constituencies. Strategic spending in public services and essential infrastructure such as health, roads, transport, water, power supply and education are crucial in reducing inequality.

Restoration Constitution-Making

Abstract This Article will examine an important - but largely ignored - approach to constitution- making: The use of restored constitutional orders as the basis for the creation of a new constitutional order. Looking at this ‘restoration constitution-making’ in post-communist constitutional transition, it will describe how restoration held both advantages and disadvantages. On one hand, restoration improved the politics of constitution-making by helping to avoid the elite manipulation of extraordinary institutions during constitutional drafting. On the other hand, the restoration of decades-old constitutions also led to restored laws that privileged past generations and undermined broad popular participation. Finally, restoration was an important part of gaining international recognition for independence. This international component suggests that constitution-making is about more than just domestic politics. These findings are an important first step in understanding the potential of restoration to ensure a successful constitutional transition.

Is Fairness Enough? The Politics of Regulating Elections in a New Democracy

Establishing an effective legal framework for regulating elections is widely considered a priority for new democracies. Electoral regulation, though, can be profoundly political. Writing on democratization has given scant attention to the tension between the establishment of proper procedures and regulation itself becoming a means of contestation. I address this gap by examining the transformation of electoral regulation from authoritarianism to democracy in South Korea, a country widely considered a successful new democracy. I argue that South Korea’s national party leaders and other state actors have used regulation to fight potential rivals, and I offer an explanation for why they have been able to do so. My explanation begins with the premise that political struggles over electoral regulation in a new democracy depend on the ways regulatory institutions operated under authoritarianism and on the interests of powerful actors in reforming those institutions. I show how the democratic bargain of fairness between South Korea’s major parties served as the basis for cooperation among elites within those parties to adapt authoritarian-era regulatory institutions for the purpose of diminishing the electoral chances of other political actors. This study questions the conventional wisdom that a democratic transition necessarily wipes away elite manipulation of elections.

After the Nicaraguan Non‐Payment Crisis: Alternatives to Microfinance Narcissism

ABSTRACTThis article argues against ‘microfinance narcissism’ and calls for a re‐politicization of the microfinance paradigm. The dominant verdict on microcredit has undergone a damning transformation, from ‘magic bullet for poverty reduction’ to ‘cause of suicide’. Nowadays, both radical critics and mainstream voices deplore microcredit's negative impact on micro‐entrepreneurs. They argue for a reorientation where credit is targeted at established small and medium‐sized enterprises, particularly in rural areas. The crisis in microfinance worldwide, including burgeoning protests, are viewed as proof of the commercial derailment and/or misplaced faith in microfinance's positive social and economic impact on the poor. This article engages with this debate through a study of the Nicaraguan micro‐finance crisis. It challenges existing analyses that pin the crisis on agricultural over‐indebtedness, lack of due diligence, or Sandinista populist politics. Illustrating the dangers of neglecting the diverse nature of microfinance, it reveals the paradoxical outcomes of the crisis: a refocus on the urban at the expense of agricultural credit for small and medium enterprises and a consolidation of the power of national processing elites. Nicaragua's Non‐Payment Movement is also shown to be both a product of elite manipulation and an expression of legitimate resistance to an industry that turns a blind eye to the manner in which markets and politics constrain clients’ potential.

Socialist Popular Literature and the Czech-German Split in Austrian Social Democracy, 1890-1914

By 1911 it was clear that multiethnic Austrian Social Democracy could no longer resist the currents of ethnic nationalism that had already fragmented most of the late Habsburg political scene. The exit that year of most Czech Social Democrats to form their own party, along with Austrian Germans’ insensitive reactions, signaled that workers were not immune to nationalism. The relevant historical literature has either viewed workers’ nationalism as the product of elite manipulation and “bourgeois” influence, or, more recently, has questioned the extent to which nationalism actually resonated with ordinary people at society's grassroots. Jakub Benes'š article attempts to avoid the oversimplifications of both approaches and calls for more precise engagement with workers’ own discourse. To this end, it highlights an important dimension of working-class political culture—socialist popular literature—in which proletarian authors articulated increasingly ethnic nationalist positions of a class-specific sort. Examining this influential but neglected genre illuminates how and under what circumstances workers found meaning in nationalism.

Ethnicity, violence, and the immigrant-guest metaphor in Kenya

Kenya's enduring ethnic violence is frequently explained with reference to the mobilization of ethnicity from above, and relatively little attention has been paid to the participation of ordinary people. Focusing on the violence that followed the 2007 general elections, this article explores how bottom-up processes of identification and violence interacted with incitement from above. It argues that autochthonous discourses of belonging and exclusion engendered an understanding of ethnic others as ‘immigrants’ and ‘guests’, and these narratives of territorialized identity both reinforced elite manipulation and operated independently of it. Kenya's post-election violence can thus be understood as a bottom-up performance of narratives of ethnic territorial exclusion operating alongside more direct elite involvement, organization, and incitement. The durability of these narratives, as well as their inherent plasticity, has significant implications for the potential for further violence and the prospects for democratization.

The Evolution of Environmental Policy in the People's Republic of China

This paper outlines how the evolution of China's policy and study of the environment are reflected in the scholarly literature, paying special attention to the impact of the country's environmental developments on international relations. In particular, it examines accounts of how China has moved from an isolated national scientific and environmental control infrastructure into the centre of international environmental debates as its society has opened and the geographical scale of ecological problems has expanded. The paper also identifies the continuing inhibitors to China's ability to control environmental degradation -including lack of transparency, elite manipulation, and bureaucratic weaknesses – despite the opening of China's system to limited participation of civil society in its environmental debates.

The 2005 and 2009 Referenda on Voting System Change in British Columbia

British Columbia’s two referenda on its voting system produced dramatically different results. Conventional accounts of the events tend to rely on populism to explain the surprisingly high vote for the single transferable vote option in 2005 and public concern about the workings of this proposed alternative to explain the decline in its support in 2009. But as public knowledge about the referendum choices remained low in both cases it is hard to credit public reactions to the voting system options as a key factor influencing the results. A more critical reading of the events and existing academic survey work on both referenda suggest that elite manipulation of the process and changing levels of partisan insecurity between the two votes were more influential in producing these different outcomes.

Clashing Claims: Neopatrimonial Governance, Land Tenure Transformation, and Violence at Enoosupukia, Kenya

This article revisits a case of violent conflict at Enoosupukia, Kenya, in October 1993, that has previously been analyzed as a clear example of top-down, elite manipulation of neopatrimonial domination. Drawing on stories collected during more than eighteen months of fieldwork, I produce an ethnohistorical account of the interrelated processes of formal tenure change and informalization through which neopatrimonial governance of land was established at Enoosupukia. Focusing on the participation in and instrumental use of formal and informal institutions by the current inhabitants of the area, I argue that clients in neopatrimonial political systems are neither mere pawns nor passive victims, but rather active, even if often marginal, participants. Applying this framework to explaining the genesis of violent conflict at Enoosupukia, I show that violence was not produced through top-down incitement, but rather through a convergence of patron and client interests in the context of a significant shift in the networks through which rights in land are claimed, challenged, and protected. The point is not to shift the blame for violence from the elite to the marginalized, but rather to show that manipulation of disorder is multidimensional. Further, while clients may benefit from neopatrimonial connection to instruments of state power through elite patrons, they remain insecure and subject to disconnection. Thus the security of rights depends as much on maintenance of connection as reference to formal law. This paper shows that while neopatrimonial governance may “work,” it is fragile.

Introduction: Kenya – A democracy in retreat?

The post-election crisis of January 2008 brought Kenya close to collapse and the status of a failed state. Following the abrupt proclamation of Mwai Kibaki, the incumbent president, as victor in a highly contentious presidential election, peace was disrupted by severe ethnic violence between supporters of the opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) and the Party of National Unity (PNU). This saw up to 2,000 people killed and as many as 300,000 displaced from their homes. This analysis locates the origin of the crisis in, variously, a background of population growth and extensive poverty; and ethnic disputes relating to land going back to colonial times (notably between Kalenjin and Kikuyu in the Rift Valley). More immediately, what stoked the conflict is the construction of political coalitions around Kenya's 42 ethnic groups, although the 2007 election campaign was critically shaped by ODM's rhetoric of ‘41 against one’ (the Kikuyu); and not least, this survey records the diffusion of violence as a result of elite manipulation of armed militias which, since 1992, have steadily eroded the state's monopoly of violence. While summarising how external mediation and the elite interest in political stability prevented the country falling apart, and led to the formation of a power-sharing government, the analysis proposes that a reluctance by the Grand Coalition partners to undertake fundamental reform of the constitution means that Kenya remains a ‘democracy at risk’, and faces a real possibility of slipping into state failure.