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Electoral fraud is a common problem in young democracies. Election observers constitute one possible remedy. Yet, quantitative evidence of the causal effects of different types of observers is scarce. Data on the random assignment of observers during Mozambique's 2009 general elections are used to estimate the impact that observers have on electoral results. We are able to distinguish between domestic observers that stayed in the same ballot table for the whole of the election day, who were deployed countrywide, and international observers that circulated across a number of ballot locations, assigned within selected districts. We show that the presence of domestic observers reduced voter turnout and increased the share of blank votes countrywide. This suggests a reduction of ballot fraud activities. For the selected districts in which international observers were active findings are less clear, as we do not find ballot fraud-reducing effects for any of the two types of observers. A possible interpretation is that local politicians anticipate the presence of international electoral observers in convenient districts or use different fraudulent strategies. ; authorsversion ; published

Post-Soviet African democratization has introduced elections into contexts that often lack restraints upon the behavior of candidates, resulting in the emergence of voter intimidation, vote-buying, and ballot fraud. We propose a model of electoral competition where, although some voters oppose violence, it is effective in intimidating swing voters. We show that in equilibrium a weak challenger will use violence, which corresponds to a terrorism strategy. Similarly, a nationally weak incumbent will use repression. However, a stronger incumbent facing local competition will prefer to use bribery or ballot fraud. We discuss the applicability of the model to several African elections. Adapted from the source document.

We challenge the conventional definition of corruption through the analysis of legal forms of corruption, and by devoting special attention to influence induced by the private sector. This paper studies the determinants of the world pattern of legal and illegal corruption by proposing a simple theoretical model of endogenous corruption and related legal framework, and its thorough empirical test. Three types of equilibrium outcomes are identified: one based on illegal corruption, where the elite does not face any binding incentives to limit corruption; one centered around legal corruption, where the elite must incur a cost to legally protect corruption; and finally a no-corruption outcome, where the population is able to effectively react to corruption. Testable implications from the model are derived based on country-wide parameters. Crucially, we use a rich corporate survey, including 8,279 firms in 104 countries, tailored for this research, and featuring measures of legal corruption that are novel to the literature. The microdimension of the database enables improving on familiar shortcomings associated with the use of endogeneity-prone, country-wide indices of perceived corruption. The empirical results, making use of a broad range of proxies and sources, generally validate the model's explanations. Adapted from the source document.

Can international migration promote better institutions at home by raising the demand for political accountability? A behavioral measure of the population's desire for better governance was designed to examine this question. A postcard was distributed to households promising that if enough postcards were mailed back, results from a survey module on perceived corruption would be published in the national media. Data from a tailored household survey were used to examine the determinants of this behavioral measure of demand for political accountability (undertaking the costly action of mailing the postcard) and to isolate the positive effect of international emigration using locality-level variation. The estimated effects are robust to the use of instrumental variables, including past migration and macro shocks in the destination countries. The estimated effects can be attributed mainly to migrants who emigrated to countries with better governance, especially migrants who return home.

This paper tests the hypothesis that international migration experiences may promote better institutions at home by raising the demand for political accountability. In order to examine this question, we use a simple postcard voting experiment designed to capture the population's desire for better governance. Using data from a tailored household survey, we examine the determinants of voting behavior in our experiment, and isolate the positive effect of international emigration on the demand for political accountability. We find that this effect can be mainly attributed to the presence of return migrants, particularly to those who emigrated to countries with better governance.