The Social Calculus of Voting and the Role of Legislatures in Africa's Emerging Democracies

Abstract

I seek funding to work on two collaborative research projects this summer with Professor Robert Mattes at the University of Cape Town (UCT). One project involves the creation and analysis of a dataset on public opinion surveys of nationally representative samples of 6000 respondents in Botswana, Ghana, Mozambique, Namibia and South Africa to clarify the influence of social intermediaries-primary social networks, secondary associations, the media, and values and ideologies- on how voters vote. The other project involves establishing the conceptual framework and research design for, and the organizational structure for the administration of , a comparative study of how the constitutional powers, internal organization and procedure, and constituency linkages affect the lawmaking, oversight and representation functions of democratic legislatures in African Countries. The overall goal of both projects is to advance systematic analysis and understanding of how voting behavior and legislatures foster and sustain successful democracies in Africa and elsewhere.