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    Promoting Democracy in Fragile States:

    Insights from a Field Experiment in Liberia

    Eric Mvukiyehe & Cyrus Samii

    March 5, 2013

    Version 1.0

    Mvukiyehe is PhD. candidate, Department of Political Science, Columbia University, 420 West 116thStreet, New York, NY 10027; Email: [email protected]. Samii (corresponding author) is AssistantProfessor, Department of Politics, New York University, 19 West 4th Street, New York, NY 10012; Email:[email protected]. The study was generously supported by funds from the Folke Bernadotte Academy(FBA), Sweden, and the New York University Department of Politics. The research comes under ColumbiaUniversity IRB protocol No. AAAI1171. For very helpful feedback, the authors thank Birger Heldt, MacartanHumphreys, Sule Yaylaci, and workshop participants at UBC, Stanford CDDRL, and the FBA PeacekeepingWorking Group.

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    Promoting Democracy in Fragile States:

    Insights from a Field Experiment in Liberia

    Abstract

    We use a cluster-randomized field experiment to study two democracy promotionstrategies among rural voters in Liberias 2011 general election. The context is one ofa fragile state in which destructive legacies of Liberias 1989-2003 civil war continueto dominate peoples lives. A nine-month civic education intervention administeredby Liberian civil society organization partners provided training on ballot proceduresand a forum for monthly deliberation on governance and rights. A nine-month se-curity committee intervention administered in partnership with the United Nationspeacekeeping missing in Liberia provided a forum for villagers and international peace-keepers to discuss security threats and develop violence early warning and reactionprocedures, with the aim of improving citizens perceptions of underlying security con-ditions for the election. Based on official polling-place level vote returns, survey data,and structured behavioral measures, we find that the civic education program had aprofound impact in increasing enthusiasm for participation, reducing the parochialismin voter expression, and increasing voter vigilance and effectiveness, while, in an un-expected manner, also increasing peoples perceptions of the degree of violence andintimidation involved in the electoral process. The security committee interventionhad no substantial impact, and there were no apparent benefits arising from the in-teraction of the two programs. A reason for the differential may be the localizedversus foreign nature of the civic education versus security committee interventions,

    respectively. Based on the impact of the intervention and because such interventionsare unlikely to be sustainable without some external support, we conclude that supportfor localized civic education programming is a worthwhile investment for internationaldemocracy promotion organizations.

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    Introduction

    We use a cluster-randomized field experiment to study the effects of citizen-oriented elec-toral assistance on the quality of electoral participation in Liberia. Democracy promotion isa major component of external aid to fragile states like Liberia. Fragile states are distin-

    guished by having recently endured civil war, violent political transitions, or other forms ofviolent breakdown in governing institutions. The United States has since 2007 spent about$13 billion per year in official development assistance to fragile states, with about 10% ofthis going to democracy promotion programs.1 Such support includes electoral assistance,party professionalization, and media professionalization. The motivation for such supportis based on assumptions about individuals desire for democratic expression combined withthe belief that elections with integrity contribute to the ability of a society to resolveconflicts without violence and therefore that policies and programmes that foster politicalpluralism and competition [may] sustain stability and democracy in the long run (Annanet al., 2012, p. 9).

    Enthusiastic voter participation in externally-assisted elections in fragile states would

    seem to justify such assistance. For example, over the past decade, despite many practi-cal and security-related obstacles, in Afghanistan, Burundi, Iraq, Liberia, Nepal, and SierraLeone, more than 70% of the voting age public found a way to register and make it to pollingbooths in the first elections held after the end of fighting in their respective countries.2 Onthe other hand, legacies of violence and institutional breakdown combined with widespreadpoverty and underdevelopment give reason to question the wisdom or practicality of democ-racy promotion in fragile states. This has led some authors to suggest that the promotion ofsuch goals, at least in the near or medium term after bouts of political violence, are often vainpursuits (Paris, 2004). Even if one thinks that effective democracy promotion is possible andworthwhile, it is not clear that strategies currently pursued are in fact effective (Carothers,

    1999, 15-17). Can we really expect democracy promotion interventions to make a differencein fragile state contexts? Are there particular strategies that might be more effective?We address these questions by examining the results of a cluster-randomized field ex-

    periment in Liberia. The experiment randomly assigned various combinations of monthlyprogramming over the course of nine months prior to the October 2011 elections to 101 ruralvillages, with 41 villages randomly assigned to control. A focus on rural areas is especiallywell motivated in this setting, as it was in rural areas that the various insurgencies that havewracked Liberia since 1989 gained critical momentum. The field experiment was informed bya theory of voter behavior in fragile statesa theory we develop below, synthesizing claimsfrom the voter behavior and conflict literatures. The theory has us focus on two aspects ofthe fragile states setting: (i) ongoing insecurity and (ii) lack of citizen access to coordinating

    1Of court the lions share has gone to programs in Iraq and Afghanistan. These figures come fromexamining United States official development assistance data for congressional years 2007-2010, as posted tohttp://www.usaid.gov/results-and-data/progress-data/data. Fragile states are identified as those that areshown in the UCDP-PRIO Armed Conflicts Database (v.4) as experiencing political violence since 1990.

    2Turnout rates are based on data from the International IDEA turnout database,http://www.idea.int/vt/.

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    election day, if voters are skeptical about the secrecy of their ballot, their vote choices arelikely to be homogenous, reflecting local security monopolies. Given this prevailing equilib-rium, the enhancement of local security guarantees should have the effect of relieving votersfrom concentrating exclusively on the stability dimension. This expectation is captured bythe following hypothesis:

    H1 (security provision hypothesis): Enhancement of local security guaranteesshould reduce levels of intimidation, increase voters enthusiasm for participation,and increase freedom of voter expression from reflecting local security monopolies.

    The methods section below describes how we operationalize this hypothesis.Another feature of fragile states is poor access to information on politics, voting processes,

    and other types of political information that are important for making informed choices inthe voting booth. Poor access to political information is due most immediately to underde-veloped media infrastructure and difficulty accessing available media among the poor. Thisleaves many individuals with few sources from which to draw political information. Word of

    mouth passing of political information is likely to play a much larger role than in settingswhere many independent media sources are present. Voters have little opportunity to reflecton their preferences in light of diverse points of view, deliberate, and potentially coordinatepolitically on the basis of informed opinions and volition (Cox, 1997; Dryzek, 2009). Suchunderdeveloped media infrastructure is itself sustained by the decisions of political leaders,who have few incentives to allow for a more diverse supply of political information.4 To doso would make it more difficult for political leaders to gain advantage by manipulating vot-ers into unknowingly surrendering rightse.g., by convincing those who are not committedsupporters that the costs of registration and voting are higher than they actually are or thatpolitical operatives have a right to intrude on balloting procedures.5 More diversity in sourcesof political information may also introduce national or programmatic platforms as reasoned

    and credible alternatives to parochial or clientelistic appeals, potentially undercutting localpoliticians control (Fujiwara and Wantchekon, 2013). As such, the external provision of po-litical information and opening of deliberative forums for discussing such information shouldhave effects captured by the following hypothesis:

    H2 (curriculum hypothesis): External provision of political information and cre-ation of political forums for discussing such information should increase votersenthusiasm for participation, local campaign vitality, make voters more vigilantand effective in using their voting rights, and reduce receptivity to parochial ap-peals.

    4As a reflection of this, BBC Media Action (2012, 26) finds from case studies in Bangladesh, Cambodia,South Sudan, Syria, and Uganda that innovative, citizen-oriented news outlets are frequently products ofexternal assistance programs.

    5This does not contradict Snyder and Ballentine (1996)s classic analysis of a perverse marketplace ofideas in conflict settings: it is reasonable to assume that each individual politician would prefer monopolycontrol over information. However, were media diversity allowed, as Snyder and Ballentine show, it is notnecessarily the case that the result would be better informed citizenry. This depends on the rules on contentto which the more diverse media is held.

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    The methods section below describes how we operationalize this hypothesis as well.

    Elections in Post-war Liberia

    Liberia (population 4 million ca. 2010) is situated in coastal West Africa, a region that hassuffered enormous violence and political strife in recent decades. The country consistentlyranks at the very bottom of the Human Development Index. Such underdevelopment owesconsiderably to two bouts of brutal civil war that engulfed the country between 1989 and2003, resulting in the death of an estimated 250,000 people and displacement of over onemillion others (Adebajo, 2002; Berkeley, 2001; Ellis, 2006). The first war began with the1989 invasion of Charles Taylors National Patriotic Liberation Front (NPLF) into the easterncounty of Nimba from neighboring Cote dIvoire. The war pitted various Liberian factionsagainst each other as well as an intervening peacekeeping mission launched in 1993 by theEconomic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and spearheaded by Nigeriantroops. The first war animated various clique and ethnic rivalries. This included hostilities

    that pitted members of the Krahn community, of which the ousted dictator Samuel Doeand his officer corps were members, against members of the Gio community, of which NPFLsplinter leader, Prince Johnson, was a member. A faction associated with the erstwhile Doeregime and other displaced elites, the United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy(ULIMO), became active in the conflict but also fractured along ethnic Krahn and Mandingolines. A series of ceasefires finally allowed for elections in 1997, which Taylor won with 75%of the presidential vote. While election day itself was peaceful, commentators acknowledgethat the looming threat of Taylor, were he to lose, returning to arms, as well as other forms oftacit intimidation, heavily influenced the outcome (Ellis, 2006, 108-109; Harris, 1999; Lyons,1999, 59-60; Moran, 2006, 120-123).

    The second civil war broke out in 1999 when dissidents, including some former ULIMOmembers, joined forces under the banner of Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democ-racy (LURD) and invaded the northern county of Lofa from neighboring Guinea. As thefighting continued, another rebel group, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL),invaded the southern counties from neighboring Cote dIvoire. Commentators attribute theemergence of both LURD and MODEL to neighboring countries leaders seeking to reignin Taylor, who was associated with meddlesome activities throughout West Africa (Inter-national Crisis Group, 2003). By 2003, LURD and MODEL controlled some two-thirds ofthe Liberian countryside. International pressure, including from the United States, forcedTaylor to step down and opened the way for a transition process to proceed, building onpeace talks taking place in Accra, Ghana. Peace was finally re-established in July 2003

    with significant involvement of international forces, led initially by regional peacekeepingtroops deployed through ECOWAS, who were then succeeded in 2004 by a deployment ofover 15,000 international peacekeepers operating under the banner of the United NationsMission in Liberia (UNMIL). Taylors Vice-President, Moses Blah, transferred power to theinterim National Transitional Government of Liberia.

    UNMIL established a presence that involved not only peacekeeping troops, but also

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    police units as well as units charged with infrastructural and institutional rehabilitation(Mvukiyehe and Samii, 2010). UNMILs mandate went well beyond monitoring the peaceand included assisting the reintegration of demobilized soldiers, reform of the countryspolice and army, security at important public facilities, protection of civilians from imminentthreats, humanitarian assistance, human rights promotion, reform of justice institutions,

    natural resource management, and, crucially for this study, management of elections (UnitedNations Security Council, 2003). From that point onward and to this day, UNMIL servedas the countrys primary security and infrastructural service guarantor. It provided thefoundation on which the shaky and slow-to-rebuild Liberian state rested. International non-governmental organizations also established a prominent presence, contributing to variousaspects of reconstruction and service provision.

    In this context, in which Liberia resembled an international trusteeship, domestic andinternational agencies mobilized to organize the October 2005 elections. As Harris (2006) dis-cusses, Liberias 2005 elections departed from the pattern of post-conflict elections in Africancountries such as Angola, Burundi, and Mozambique, in that there was no incumbent tryingto cling to power nor were the major contenders leaders of wartime armed factions. In thefirst round of voting, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Taylors primary opponent in the 1997 elections,came in as a close second to George Weah (19.8% to 28.3% of the vote, respectively), butthen succeeded in winning 59.4% of the second-round run-off, winning majority votesharesin ten out of Liberias 15 counties. The 2005 elections were successful in many respects.The campaign period, elections themselves, and post-election period were free of any signif-icant violence. The victor, Sirleaf, was internationally respected and experienced, and evenpledged during the 2005 campaign that she would serve only one term. At the same time, thedramatic turnaround in Sirleafs position from the first to the second round left a lingeringbad taste among supporters of Weahs Congress for Democratic Change (CDC) party, whichfiled claims of fraud against Sirleafs Unity Party (UP) and led a small agitation in Mon-

    rovia. A survey fielded in the Liberian countryside in 2007 asked about security perceptionsand found that about 30% of respondents reported that they were subject to intimidationduring the 2005 polls, with the most common reported source of such intimidation beingparty loyalists (Mvukiyehe and Samii, 2010). Finally, while presidential vote patterns werenot clearly driven by ethnic cleavages,6 local factors such as ethnic allegiances and local elitecapture did seem to drive outcomes for the Senate and House.

    The 2011 election season arrived with the country still depending on UNMIL for security,infrastructure, and other forms of support. Domestic security institutions, and in particularthe Liberian police, provided patchy coverage and were frequently accused of corruption byonlookers and Liberians alike (International Crisis Group, 2012). The national road networkwas still in shambles, with much of the country accessible only via unpaved and deeply

    pocked pathways. Much of the capital, Monrovia, not to mention nearly the entirety ofthe rest of the country lacked access to a reliable electricity grid or piped water. The 2007

    6Although, as Harris (2006) notes, ethnic rivalries do seem to explain the second-round switch in supportby (mainly Gio and Mano) Nimba county voters to Johnson-Sirleaf after a visit by Weah to the home villageof former dictator (and Krahn) Samuel Doe.

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    survey conducted by Mvukiyehe and Samii (2010) found that in rural areas, two-thirds ofrespondents lacked regular radio access, with radio being the primary, and in many instancesthe only, form of media access in the country. Word-of-mouth was thus the primary channelof political information in rural areas.

    International agencies, domestic leaders, and citizens alike worried about the possibility

    that violence might mar the 2011 campaigning and elections season. First there were thelingering resentments of CDC supporters, particularly among their support base in poorneighborhoods of Monrovia. Second was the worry that the horrific 2010-2011 electoralcrisis in neighboring Cote dIvoire might somehow spill-over into Liberia (International CrisisGroup, 2011). A primary concern was that freelance Liberian mercenaries who crossedthe border to fight in Cote dIvoire might return to create havoc. The ongoing political crisisin neighboring Guinea raised similar spill-over concerns. As a reflection of these concerns,Carnegie Mellon Universitys Center for International Policy and Innovation organized aConference to Mitigate Violence in Liberias 2011 Elections in December 2010. Conferenceattendees included President Sirleaf, the UNMIL chief, US Ambassador, and other prominentofficials and civil society figures.

    On the political scene, Sirleaf had decided in late 2010 to break her promise to serveonly one term and announced she would run for re-election.7 This was much to the chagrinof her opposition, and especially the CDC leadership. Sirleafs UP party characterized thedecision to run with the satirical phrase, monkey still working, let baboon wait small,referencing a West African colloquialism of an early-to-rise monkey gathering food only tohave a late-rising baboon wake up and eat it. At the national level, the election pit Sirleafand her UP party against the CDC once again. The CDC still included Weah among itsleaders, but it nominated Winston Tubman, former Liberian justice minister, diplomat, andnephew of former president Winston V.S. Tubman (served 1944-1971), to lead the presiden-tial ticket. Weah stood as Tubmans vice presidential running mate. The decision to have

    Tubman lead the ticket was an attempt, apparently, to balance Sirleafs Harvard-educatedand cosmopolitan image. (Weah was an ex-soccer star with populist appeal, but little in theway of education or other formal credentials.) While the UP and CDC were the primarycontenders at the national level, they still had to seek the support of regional and ethnicleaders. Most prominent among these leaders was warlord-turned-senator Prince Johnson ofNimba county, who himself ran for president as the head of the National Union for Demo-cratic Progress (NUDP) party, banking on the possibility that he could win enough seatsin the first round to be a pivotal kingmaker were there to be a second round. In additionto the UP, CDC and NUDP, the Liberty Party (LP), whose candidate Charles Brumskinehad placed third in the 2005 presidential election, stood to repeat as a likely third or fourthplace finisher.

    The outcome of the 2011 presidential election resembled in many ways that of the 2005election, although a few significant events generated considerable drama in the run-up to thefirst round on October 11 and then the second round on November 9. First was a referendum

    7This section draws largely from the authors own experience and interviews in the country during the2011 campaigning and election season.

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    on amendments to the constitution, which most consequentially changed the legislative andmunicipal election system to one of simple plurality rather than the prevailing majorityrun-off system (majority run-off would be retained for the presidency, however). While theUP supported the amendments, the CDC was opposed, and some tensions ensued as CDCparty members agitated against the manner in which the referendum was handled.8 Then,

    four days prior to the first round elections, the Sirleaf was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.While internationally this contributed to Sirleafs prestige, opposition in Liberia reacted tothis as an intrusion into Liberias domestic politics and even tried to rally opinion aroundthe idea that Sirleaf was more interested in impressing international contacts than ordinaryLiberians (Corey-Boulet, 2011; Reuters, 2011). These events combined with a few isolatedattacks on UP and CDC party affiliates and press facilities to create a charged electoralatmosphere. Voting proceeded peacefully in the first round, with Sirleaf winning 44% of thepresidential vote, Tubman receiving 33%, Prince Johnson 12%, and Brumskine 6%, therebynecessitating a run-off between Sirleaf and Tubman. The CDC protested the first roundresult on the basis of fraud and mishandling by the elections commission. CDC protestorsclashed violently with Liberian police days prior to the run-off. While Sirleaf was able tosecure Johnsons endorsement, Tubman decided to boycott the run-off. Sirleaf thus won91% of the run-off vote, but the number of voters in the second round was only 52% of thenumber from the first round.9

    The 2011 presidential race made it evident again how the strategic logic of Liberias run-off system encourages multitudes of candidates to enter the race by the logic of kingmaking(Wright and Riker, 1989). In addition poor infrastructure and media access make for anextreme localization of politics, as individuals rely extensively on the word of local elitesto keep informed of politics. As such, the presidential contest had candidates from 16 partiessecuring votes. Such localization also played out in the House and Senate races, althoughthe single-round plurality system suggests that the drivers of such localization have more to

    do with the information environment (as captured in hypothesis 2 above) than the electoralsystem. In races for 73 House seats, 27 parties and 131 independents received votes, withmost parties and candidates having geographically-concentrated support bases; House seatallocation rules resulting in eleven parties and nine independents gaining seats. Similarlyfor the 15 county-level Senate seat races, twenty parties and 15 independents secured votes,with seats being distributed across nine parties and one independent.

    Methods

    To test the two hypotheses given above, we worked with a coalition that included Liberia

    Democracy Watch, UNMIL, and the Bong County Youth Association to design and im-plement a field experiment testing security-based and curriculum-based electoral assistance

    8This included accusations that the national elections commission chair was biased in favor of the UPand the fact that passage of the change to legislative election rules came only after judicial intervention.

    9The Liberia National Elections Commission makes all final vote counts publicly available athttp://www.necliberia.org/results2011/.

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    strategies. The security-based strategy involved what we called the security committeeintervention. The curriculum-based strategy involved what we called the civic educationintervention. In both cases, in early 2011, a team of field facilitators was dispatched to com-munities selected for the either of the interventions to discuss the program with chiefs andother responsible parties and to ask for their acceptance to carry out the programming. 10

    Given such acceptance, a program of events was set to roll out over nine months until thedate of the election, with events taking place in each community on a monthly basis. (Thus,each community took part in up to nine project events over the course of 2011 prior to theOctober elections, with fewer activities if weather or other adverse circumstances forced amonths activity to be cancelled altogether.)

    The security committee intervention attempted to create a sub-national violence earlywarning system that brought community members into regular contact with UNMIL peace-keeping deployments.11 The intended effect was boost UNMILs knowledge of local securityissues and then to make community members themselves feel more secure about the possibil-ity that their security interests were being looked-after. This fit in well with UNMILs localsecurity mandate, which included addressing potential threats to the electoral process. Theway the intervention ran was that program facilitators first organized a community meetingat the start of the program period. At this meeting, the goals of the program were explainedand six to eight community members were nominated by the chief or community membersto make up the towns security committee.12 These security committee members wereinstructed methods to monitor various threats to ones community, including threats arisingfrom armed groups, communal or familial violence, or more subtle forms of intimidation.Then, once a month, two members of the security committee were brought to the nearestUNMIL peacekeeping deployment base to participate in an afternoon discussion with peace-keepers and security committee members from other nearby committees. The discussionprovided an opportunity for all involved to exchange ideas and obtain an updated picture of

    the local security situation.The civic education intervention sought to educate voters about proper balloting proce-

    dures and voters rights, discuss the accountability function of elections, and also to generatediscussion of human rights, gender rights, and requirements for sustainable peace in Liberia.The voter education curriculum used the materials developed by the National ElectionsCommission (NEC) outreach office. The NEC conducted voter education programs aroundthe country, however none of the communities in the study were included in such NEC pro-grams because of their remoteness. As such, our civic education intervention expanded the

    10Of the 101 communities selected to host security or civic education interventions, only three refusedparticipation. These were replaced with randomly selected alternatives. Given the very small number, anybiases from replacing these communities will be negligible.

    11A variety of researchers are currently studying mobile-technology-based early warning systems (Meierand Munro, 2010; Pham and Vinck, 2012; Zeitzoff, 2011). For Liberia, poor mobile phone coverage andlimited access to phones prevented us from using such a technology-based approach.

    12We randomly assigned half of the nomination processes to be ballot-based, and the other half to be basedon town chief nominations. Future analyses will look into the consequences of these different nominationprocedures.

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    reach of the NECs voter education programs. The rights and peace education curricula werebased on material developed by Liberia Democracy Watch and UNMIL. The civic educationintervention was not only a unilateral flow of information; rather, it introduced topics fordiscussion that were then taken up in a deliberative, town-forum style format. These eventstook place once a month over nine months until the date of the election.

    A third type of treatment involved a combination of both the security committees andcivic education programming. In these cases, from month to month, the communities wouldparticipate in one or another type of activity, sometimes having to alternate between thetwo because of time and resource constraints.

    The security committee and civic education interventions were randomly assigned ac-cording to a blocked-cluster factorial design (Gerber and Green, 2012, Ch. 4, 9). Resourcesdid not permit that we operate over the entirety of Liberia, and so we focused in the regionalong the central corridor as well as in the north. Liberias lowest tier administrative unit isthe town, which usually consists of a single town or village or, in the case of large towns, asingle quarter within the town. The next stage up is the clan, which is made up of a largecluster of towns and villages, some of which may be quite distant from each other. We firstblocked clans on the basis of geography, forming a set of twelve geographic blocks. Becauseethnicity, political tendencies, war exposure, economic conditions, and other important fac-tors cluster geographically, this geographic blocking allows us to control variation in thesefactors across communities in different treatment conditions. While we were able to conductsecurity committee programming in all twelve blocks, resources limited us to conducting thecivic education in only nine of the blocks. So, we first randomly selected with nine blockswould host civic education programming. We then randomly assigned clans within eachof the blocks to a high-density or low-density security committee condition. This wasin anticipation of the potential for spill-over effects from the security treatment, and thisaspect of the design would provide for exogenous variation in each towns susceptibility to

    spill-over. Then, a simple random sample of towns was taken from each clan, and the se-lected towns were randomly assigned to either control, security committee, civic education,or the combination of security and civic education. As such, the clans themselves representanother level of blocking for the town-level random assignment. In high density securitycommittee clans, the number of towns assigned to receive security committees was higherthan in low density clans (either 4 or 6 towns assigned to security committees versus 2).The number of civic education towns within each clan was always only 2 per clan and sothere is little scope for spill-over for the civic education treatment. The number of townsselected as control was between 1 and 4, depending on the size of the clan and the numberof treated towns.

    Table 1 shows the distribution of towns included in the end line study over the cross

    security committee and civic education treatments. As it turns out, two towns (one civiceducation town and one control town) were dropped from the end line due to access problems,in which case the final tally was 142 rather than 144 towns. Such a low rate of attrition, ifignored, should have negligible consequences for bias.13

    13As for covariate balance, the blocking down to the clan level assures balance for all variables down to the

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    Table 1: Treatment assignment distribution

    No civic education Civic education TotalNo security committee 41 17 58

    Security committee 58 26 84

    Total 99 43 142

    The data that we have available for testing the two hypothesis above include officialpolling-place level election outcome data, survey data, a set of behavioral measures, andqualitative reports by our field facilitators. The polling-place level election outcome datawere obtained from the official results posted by the National Elections Commission to itswebsite (http://www.necliberia.org/results2011/). Each town included in the study wasmatched to its appropriate polling place. These data include party vote shares for president,house, and senate races, as well as invalid vote counts.

    Our resources permitted one round of survey data collection, which we undertook duringthe weeks just after the October 11, 2011 polls and prior to the second round polls onNovember 8, 2011. The survey sample was drawn from lists of adults constructed for eachtown. We sampled 10 individuals per town, stratifying the town level sample so as toensure a 50-50 gender balance.14 We also conducted interviews with each towns chief,although these are analyzed separately from responses of ordinary citizens. The responserate with respect to the names drawn from the town lists was 71% overall, with no evidenceof significant differential response by treatment condition (see appendix). All non-respondingindividuals were replaced by available adults from the same household. The survey includedmodules on contact by politicians and parties, various forms of civic participation, securityconsiderations, and vote choice. For vote choice, we asked both for actual vote choice and,

    to get around the endogeneity of candidate appeals being targeted to voters, we also askedrespondents to comment on who was most appealing in a voting vignette that provided aslate of fictional candidates with appeals that emphasized either regional, ethnic, national,materialist, or religious concerns. Table 2 shows how our data are used to test the twohypotheses.

    We also collected behavioral data from each survey respondent. After the survey moduleson elections and political perceptions were complete, we first presented to the respondent ananti-violence petition organized by the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) with whichwe were working. We asked whether the respondent would be willing to have their nameadded to the petition, which the NGOs intended to circulate among political leaders. Wemade clear that this was totally voluntary. The next thing was to provide each respondentwith an issues card that was addressed to their House representative. The respondent had

    clan level. Town-to-town heterogeneity may still enter the picture, and we are currently compiling relevanttown-level information from the 2008 census to evaluate that possibility.

    14Due to a very minor error in enumerator assignments, we ended up with six extra respondents than wehad intended for a total of 1426 rather than 1420.

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    Table 2: Outcomes from Hypotheses and Associated Measures

    Data Source and Measures

    Outcome Polling place Survey BehavioralEnthusiasm for

    participation (H1 &H2):

    Attend rally; register to

    vote; vote

    Petition; Issues post card

    Voter expressionreflecting local se-curity monopoliesor receptivity toparochial appeals(H1 & H2):

    Diversity of vote choice(party Herfindahl); ma-

    jor versus regional partyvoteshares

    Voting vignette

    Levels of intimida-tion (H1):

    Perception that pro-cess is unfair; Witnessprotests; subject tointimidation; fear beingin trouble for voting the

    way you want to; subjectto threats; witness callsto violence

    Vigiliance and effec-tiveness (H2):

    Valid vote proportions Able to associate sloganswith parties

    Ballot test; News clip-pings offer

    Local campaign vi-tality (H2):

    Contacted by party;Attempted to be per-suaded; Had big or smallgift offered; had offers ofhelp with ballot

    the option to fill out the issues post card, which provided options for them to list whatpolicy issues should be prioritized, and then drop it off in a secure box positioned in thecenter of town. The boxes were then collected by our field facilitators and the cards weredelivered to the respective representatives. Serial codes on the post cards allowed us tolink them back to the surveys. Both the petition and post card were designed to test formotivation and enthusiasm for civic participation. The third activity was a ballot test, wherea mock version of the official ballot was provided to the respondent, and the respondent wasasked to demonstrate what was the appropriate way to fill it out. For the fourth activity, theenumerators presented the opportunity for the respondent to buy a set of news clippings fromrecent news wires. Such clippings are commonly sold in towns in lieu of proper newspapers,

    which are not available outside Monrovia. The ballot test and news clipping offer weremeant to test for capability and motivation for informed, effective civic participation. Thesemeasures are also shown in Table 2.

    To estimate the effects of interventions, we fit the following regression model,

    Yit = 0 + 1Civ. Ed.t + 2Sec. Com.t + 3Civ. Ed. Sec. Com.t + X

    t+ it,

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    where Yit is the outcome for person i in town t (with the polling place data, we simply aggre-gate up to town t), Civ. Ed.t is the indicator for whether the town received civic education,Sec. Com.t is the indicator for whether the town received a security committee, Xt accountfor both blocking and the low- and high-density security conditions by including centeredblock and high density indicators and their interaction with the treatment variables, and

    it is an error term assumed to be clustered at the clan level.15

    All models are fit usingweighted least squares, where the weighting accounts for each towns probability of beingincluded in its treatment condition given varying numbers of towns per clan. Thus, 0 isconsistent for the expected value in the study areas under control, while the coefficients 1and 2 are consistent for the effects of civic education and security committees, respectively,in isolation, while 3 captures the interactive-modification effect. As Table 2 shows, in somecases we have multiple micro-level measures for the same outcome. In these cases, we boostthe power of our tests while also ensuring that we are not led astray by multiple compar-isons problems by using standardized inverse-covariance-weighted averages of the outcomes.Inverse-covariance weighted averaging provides an optimal way to aggregate informationfrom different indicators that all measure a common latent factor (Anderson, 2008).16 Thescale of the resulting indices is in control group standard deviations.

    Impact of the Interventions

    Our effect estimates are presented in Tables 3 to 10. In cases where we constructed aninverse-covariance-weighted average, the resulting index is presented in the first column.The estimates on these indices can be read as the overall effect of the different programson the family of outcomes considered in the table. Then, one may decompose the overalleffect into the constituent effects. Significance levels are report in terms of raw p-values fortwo-way tests.17

    Table 3 shows effects on various forms of civic participation, some of which (e.g., the twobehavioral measures) provide a more compelling measure of enthusiasm of participationthan others (e.g., voting, which may reflect compulsion by local elites). Overall, we find thatthe civic education program significantly boosted participation, with the driving factors

    15These centered block fixed effects and interactions reproduce the stratified sample average treatmenteffect estimator, appropriately accounting for the blocking without introducing any functional form assump-tions (Gerber and Green, 2012, pp. 71-77). For the purposes of this paper, we do not interpret the effects ofthe differing density conditions. As it turns out, there were no significant effects, and so we simply averageover the density conditions to simplify the presentation.

    16For now we ignore any complications due to item-level missing outcome data. In most cases ratesof missingness were quite low, although for one suite of outcomesthose associated with violence and

    intimidationmissingness rates were as high as 13%. To construct the inverse-covariance-weighted averageswhen there was missingness in some outcome items, we simply imputed the expected value based on theregression specification. If missingness is random with respect to outcomes conditional on treatment andblocking strata, then this introduces no bias. Even if this condition does not hold, with missingness rates aslow as they were, the consequences for either bias (or for standard errors) should be negligible.

    17Even though our hypotheses are all directional, we use two-way tests to allow for the possibility thatthe interventions may have detrimental effects.

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    Table 3: Effects of programs on civic participationCiv. Part. Index Attend rally Reg. to Vote Voted Petition Issues Card

    (Control mean) 0.04 0.24 0.97 0.94 0.59 0.64(0.04) (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) (0.02) (0.01)

    Civ. Ed. 0.22 0.12 0.00 0.02 0.19 0.00

    (0.08) (0

    .02) (0

    .01) (0

    .02) (0

    .04) (0

    .03)Sec. Com. 0.07 0.02 0.01 0.00 0.09 0.02

    (0.06) (0.02) (0.01) (0.01) (0.03) (0.02)Civ Ed. X Sec. Com. 0.03 0.09 0.01 0.04 0.15 0.11

    (0.14) (0.05) (0.02) (0.02) (0.06) (0.07)N 1426 1384 1419 1406 1426 1426R2 0.14 0.13 0.05 0.06 0.13 0.08adj. R2 0.11 0.10 0.01 0.03 0.10 0.04Resid. sd 3.98 1.74 0.70 1.05 1.91 1.98WLS estimates account for blocking using centered block interactions (coefficients not reported).The outcome for the first column is the inverse-covariance-weighted average of the other outcomes.Standard errors account for clan-level clustering. significant at p < .10; p < .05; p < .01; p < .001

    Table 4: Effects of programs on diversity of vote choiceHerf. Pres. Herf. Sen. Herf. Hou.

    (Control mean) 0.52 0.37 0.41(0.01) (0.01) (0.01)

    Civ. Ed. 0.00 0.04 0.01(0.02) (0.03) (0.02)

    Sec. Com. 0.04 0.02 0.03(0.02) (0.02) (0.02)

    Civ Ed. X Sec. Com. 0.01 0.07 0.00(0.03) (0.04) (0.04)

    N 142 142 142

    R2

    0.85 0.63 0.80adj. R2 0.76 0.40 0.68Resid. sd 0.35 0.50 0.52WLS estimates accounting for blocking using centered block interactions(coefficients omitted).Herf. stands for Herfindahl index.Pres., Sen., and Hou. stand for president, senate, and house votes.Standard errors account for clan-level clustering. significant at p < .10; p < .05; p < .01; p < .001

    behind this increase being effects on rates of attendance at political rallies and in signingthe anti-violence petition. We see no effects on reported voter registration or turnout, whichis unsurprising given the incredibly high rates of reported registration and turnout undercontrol (97% and 94%, respectively). Overall we find no substantial impact from the securitycommittee intervention nor do the security committees modify in any meaningful way theoverall impact of the civic education programs.

    Tables 4 and 5 show results from official polling place data on indicators for freedom of

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    Table 5: Effects of programs on major party presidential votesharesLP voteshare UP voteshare CDC voteshare

    (Control mean) 0.10 0.32 0.26(0.01) (0.01) (0.01)

    Civ. Ed. 0.01 0.12 0.02

    (0.01) (0

    .02) (0

    .01)Sec. Com. 0.02 0.02 0.01

    (0.01) (0.02) (0.01)Civ Ed. X Sec. Com. 0.02 0.13 0.07

    (0.01) (0.03) (0.02)N 142 142 142R2 0.90 0.88 0.91adj. R2 0.84 0.81 0.86Resid. sd 0.24 0.40 0.35WLS estimates account for blocking using centered block interactions(coefficients omitted).Standard errors account for clan-level clustering. significant at p < .10; p < .05; p < .01; p < .001

    voter expression from local political monopolies or parochial interests. Table 4 shows effectson general diversity of vote choices, measured in terms of the Herfindahl index of partyshares. As such, higher values correspond to less diversity; diversity-promoting effects wouldbe reflected in negative coefficient values. Table 5 shows shares of presidential votes for majorparties, with the residual category in this case being regional or other typically locally-basedmicro-parties. The civic education intervention has no demonstrable impact on diversity ofvote choice. This may be due offsetting effects of information versus deliberation: on theone hand, the information-provision aspect of the intervention may increase the menu ofcredible options that voters have before them, thus boosting potential diversity; on the

    other hand, deliberation may result in persuasion that moves the group toward consensus orstrategic coordination (Cox, 1997). The latter effect would dampen the level of diversity, inwhich case we would find little or no effect. The security committee intervention providesno potential for such coordination effects, and so our expectation is a decided move towardmore diversity. We find some evidence of this, although the effects are small and barelystatistically significant for only one of the three vote types considered. The moderatingeffects of the interaction of the two does not paint a clear picture either way. The effectsshown in Table 5 are much more striking. The civic education intervention, on its own,results in a strong concentration of votes (by 12 percentage points) for the UP; at the sametime, the insubstantial effects on the other two national-level parties voteshares (the LPand CDC) imply that these votes steal almost entirely from regional parties and locally-

    based micro-parties. This provides strong evidence of a move away from parochial appealsto more national-oriented appeals. No such effects are evident for the security committeeintervention, and strangely, the interaction of the two intervention cancels out the effect ofcivic education programming. A possible explanation for this nullifying interaction effect isthat the alternation between security committees and civic education programming resulted

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    Table 6: Effects of programs on voting vignette candidate choicesNone Regional Ethnic National Materialist Religious No resp.

    (Control mean) 0.01 0.08 0.23 0.59 0.02 0.01 0.01(0.00) (0.01) (0.02) (0.02) (0.01) (0.01) (0.01)

    Civ. Ed. 0.00 0.04 0.06 0.09 0.00 0.02 0.02

    (0.00) (0

    .01) (0

    .03) (0

    .03) (0

    .01) (0

    .01) (0

    .02)Sec. Com. 0.01 0.03 0.07 0.06 0.01 0.00 0.02

    (0.01) (0.02) (0.03) (0.04) (0.01) (0.01) (0.01)Civ Ed. X Sec. Com. 0.01 0.01 0.09 0.05 0.00 0.01 0.02

    (0.01) (0.02) (0.04) (0.04) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02)N 1426R2 0.44adj. R2 0.42Resid. sd 1.11WLS estimates accounting for blocking using centered block interactions (coefficients not reported).Standard errors account for clan-level clustering. significant at p < .10; p < .05; p < .01; p < .001

    in too low a dose of civic education for it to be effective.The effects based on the polling place in Table 5 are echoed by results from the voting

    vignette in the survey, as shown in Table 6. We see that the civic education interventioncaused a significant and substantial (9 percentage point) increase in the share won by thefictional candidate making national appeals, with these increases coming at the expenseof votes won by fictional candidates making regional, ethnic, or religious appeals. Similareffects are seen in the voting vignette for the security committee intervention, althoughthe magnitude of the effects is smaller. The interaction term shows that the effects in theplaces with the combined intervention are of the magnitude as those in the civic educationcommunities. These results provide strong corroboration for our interpretation of the civic

    education program as being effective in reducing parochialism, while provide very tepidsupport for the effectiveness of the security committee or combined interventions.

    Table 7 shows effects for outcomes that get at individuals exposure to intimidation orviolence. Here, the estimates are rather puzzling. Focusing on the first column, whichshows effects on the index that aggregates the information from the six outcomes shown incolumns two through seven, we see no overall effect of the security committee intervention inisolation, but a positive effect of the civic education intervention in isolation (.11 standarddeviations). The negative interaction effect implies that the overall effect in the combined-intervention locations is just slightly below zero (-.05 standard deviations, if one adds up thethree relevant coefficients) and insignificant. The positive effects on exposure to intimidationin the civic education communities is due to primarily reports of exposure to intimidation(13 percentage points higher). The reason for this is unclear. One possibility is that thisis picking up on either differential willingness to report intimidation, even if rates of actualintimidation are no higher, or differential tendency to view various forms of intimidationas rights violations rather than normal circumstances, perhaps as a results of the humanrights training. If so, then the higher rates of reported intimidation could, ironically, be

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    Table 7: Effects of programs on exposure to violence or intimidationIntim. Index Unfair Protests Intim. Trouble Threats Call to Viol.

    (Control mean) 0.01 0.09 0.03 0.32 0.19 0.20 0.12(0.03) (0.01) (0.01) (0.02) (0.01) (0.02) (0.01)

    Civ. Ed. 0.11 0.03 0.04 0.13 0.05 0.06 0.00

    (0.06) (0

    .02) (0

    .02) (0

    .03) (0

    .02) (0

    .03) (0

    .02)Sec. Com. 0.04 0.01 0.03 0.02 0.03 0.00 0.01

    (0.05) (0.01) (0.01) (0.03) (0.02) (0.03) (0.02)Civ Ed. X Sec. Com. 0.20 0.01 0.02 0.17 0.06 0.11 0.06

    (0.07) (0.02) (0.02) (0.04) (0.03) (0.05) (0.04)N 1426 1245 1393 1363 1262 1266 1278R2 0.08 0.07 0.07 0.06 0.08 0.08 0.09adj. R2 0.04 0.02 0.03 0.02 0.04 0.04 0.05Resid. sd 3.86 1.04 0.90 1.94 1.48 1.66 1.32WLS estimates account for blocking using centered block interactions (coefficients not reported).The outcome for the first column is the inverse-covariance-weighted average of the other outcomes.Standard errors account for clan-level clustering. significant at p < .10; p < .05; p < .01; p < .001

    indicative of less actual intimidation. On the other hand, it could reflect the possibility thatthe forum that the civic education program created perversely resulted in actual increasesin intimidation, perhaps due to the fact that peoples political positions were made public.This unanticipated result is something that we are currently trying to sort out.

    Tables 8 and 9 show estimates that relate to effects on voter vigilance and effectiveness.We have already seen in tables 5 and 6 a suggestion that voter effectiveness was increasedthrough coordinated shifts in voting behavior. Tables 8 and 9 suggest that the coordinatedshift effects of the civic education intervention come alongside effects that reduced votingbooth errors and increased consumption of political information. The proportion of invalid

    votes is about five percentage points lower in communities receiving the civic educationprogram; this effect is corroborated in the ballot test, for which civic education communitieswere three percentage points less likely to make an error. We also see that in civic educationcommunities, purchase rates for the news clippings was about nine percentage points higher.Effects for the security intervention tend to be similar in magnitude though substantiallyweaker. The combination of the two program shows contributes no significant gains abovethose of the civic education program on its own.

    Table 10 final set of estimates is for local campaign vitality, which we measure in termsof the rate at which politicians or parties sought to influence citizens, as reported by surveyrespondents. Looking at the overall effects (the rightmost column), we see no substantialeffects of either civic education or security committees on their own; the interaction effectsuggests a moderate increase in politician or party targeting. These index effects maskconsiderable heterogeneity in the component effects, however. Indeed, with the exception ofreports of receiving offers with balloting help, the effects on forms of contact or influencetend to be negative, indicating if anything lesscampaign vitality and attempts at persuasion,whether through mere contact, attempts at persuasion, or the offer of small gifts (food

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    Table 8: Effects of programs on invalid vote proportionsInval. Pres. Inval. Sen. Inval. Hou.

    (Control mean) 0.10 0.09 0.09(0.01) (0.01) (0.01)

    Civ. Ed. 0.05 0.05 0.04

    (0.03) (0

    .02) (0

    .02)Sec. Com. 0.02 0.02 0.01

    (0.01) (0.01) (0.01)Civ Ed. X Sec. Com. 0.02 0.02 0.03

    (0.03) (0.02) (0.02)N 142 142 142R2 0.56 0.57 0.52adj. R2 0.29 0.29 0.22Resid. sd 0.24 0.19 0.18OLS estimates accounting for blocking using centered block interactions(coefficients omitted).Inval. stands for proportion of votes that were invalid.Pres., Sen., and Hou. stand for president, senate, and house votes.

    Standard errors account for clan-level clustering. significant at p < .10; p < .05; p < .01; p < .001

    stuffs and the like). The effect are strongest in the civic education-only communities, mutedin the security committee-only communities, and then tend to be quite muted in the combinedintervention communities.

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    Table 9: Effects of programs on political knowledgePol. Know. Index Correct ballot Know slogan Bought news

    (Control mean)

    0.02 0

    .93 0

    .42 0

    .45(0.02) (0.01) (0.02) (0.02)

    Civ. Ed. 0.17 0.03 0.00 0.09

    (0.08) (0.02) (0.05) (0.03)Sec. Com. 0.02 0.01 0.08 0.05

    (0.05) (0.01) (0.03) (0.03)Civ Ed. X Sec. Com. 0.02 0.01 0.11 0.10

    (0.08) (0.02) (0.05) (0.05)N 1426 1359 1426 1368R2 0.10 0.04 0.10 0.15adj. R2 0.06 0.00 0.07 0.11Resid. sd 4.21 1.03 1.97 1.96OLS estimates account for blocking using centered block interactions (coefficients not reported).

    The outcome for the first column is the inverse-covariance-weighted average of the other outcomes.outcomes.Standard errors account for clan-level clustering. significant at p < .10; p < .05; p < .01; p < .001

    Table 10: Effects of programs on exposure to political influence

    Targeted Index Contacted Persuasion Big Gifts Small gifts Ballot help(Control mean) 0.03 0.30 0.24 0.05 0.48 0.05(0.04) (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) (0.02) (0.01)

    Civ. Ed. 0.02 0.05 0.09 0.01 0.06 0.05

    (0.06) (0.02) (0.03) (0.02) (0.02) (0.01)Sec. Com. 0.04 0.02 0.03 0.02 0.02 0.02

    (0.06) (0.03) (0.03) (0.02) (0.03) (0.01)Civ Ed. X Sec. Com. 0.15 0.12 0.11 0.00 0.12 0.05

    (0.08) (0.04) (0.05) (0.03) (0.04) (0.02)N 1426 1413 1407 1405 1401 1300R2 0.05 0.05 0.09 0.07 0.08 0.04adj. R2 0.01 0.01 0.05 0.03 0.05 0.00Resid. sd 4.05 1.83 1.67 0.88 2.01 1.03

    OLS estimates account for blocking using centered block interactions (coefficients not reported).The outcome for the first column is the inverse-covariance-weighted average of the other outcomes.Standard errors account for clan-level clustering. significant at p < .10; p < .05; p < .01; p < .001

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    Discussion

    Our results indicate that the civic education intervention had substantial effects that operatemostly according to expectations. This is true with respect to enthusiasm for participation,less parochial voter expression, and voter vigilance and effectiveness. This suggests that there

    is much scope for information provision and deliberation to enhance democratic expression infragile state settings, where media infrastructure is poor and politicians have few incentivesto provide make information more available. However, we also find puzzling effects withrespect to reported levels of intimidation and unexpectedly depressed rates of contact orattempts to influence voters by parties. These are certainly worthy of further investigationto ensure that no harm was done through the civic education programming. A benigninterpretation of these effects is that higher rates of reported intimidation reflect either agreater willingness to report on an otherwise common baseline level of intimidation or anincrease in the degree to which people view various forms of intimidation as violations ratherthan normal situations. Suppressed levels of attempts at voter persuasion may similarlyreflect empowerment if parties decide that their attempts at persuasion are less likely to

    be effective with more informed voters. However, at present we cannot say for certainwhether these benign interpretations are warranted; we plan to look at ancillary data tounpack this finding. The security committee intervention shows weak effects all around, andthere is nothing from the estimates of the interaction effect that the combination of the twointerventions adds value beyond what the civic education program delivers on its own.

    What might explain the differential results? There are a few possibilities. First, whilemany worried about the possibility that violence and insecurity would affect the 2011 elec-tion, in the event the elections were quite peaceful, with the only exceptions being isolatedincidents that were concentrated in and around the capital, Monrovia. Perhaps securityissues were not a major concern? While this may be the case in terms of major security

    concerns, exposure to lower level threats was not altogether absent. Indeed, in Table 7,rates of reported exposure to threats or intimidation hover around the 20% to 30% level.As such it would seem that there was some scope for making people feel more secure, evenif the margin was not huge. That being the case, a second possibility is that the two pro-grams differed inherently in terms of their efficacy. There are a few reasons that this may bethe case. On the one hand, as discussed above with reference to Autesserre (2010)s work,peacekeeping deployments have a bad record of dealing with local insecurity, due in partfrom incentives and organizational culture that seem to discourage meaningful engagementwith local communities. It is possible that security committee intervention merely revealedthis reality to those community members that participated, disabusing them of the idea thatUNMIL would in fact intervene on their behalf. Related to this is the fact that the civic

    education program was administered by field facilitators who were residents of the regions(though not the towns or clans) where the programming took place. The literature on tech-nology adoption and reform suggests that would-be adopters of new ideas will respond moreto locals or those with stronger co-identity and cultural ties than those coming from faraway or more distant in terms of identity or culture (Rogers, 1995; Isham, 2002; Munshi andMyaux, 2006). Thus, the a reason for the differential may be due to the localized versus

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    foreign nature of the civic education versus security committee interventions, respectively.

    Conclusion

    We used a cluster-randomized field experiment to study the effectiveness of security- andcurriculum-based strategies for electoral assistance in Liberia. The context is one of a fragilestate, and so the expectation was that security and curriculum style assistance might helpto lessen local level vulnerabilities, reveal a broader range of credible political options, andultimately enhance democratic expression. The field experimental interventions ran over ninemonths in the run up to the charged 2011 general elections. Based on official polling-placelevel vote returns, survey data, and a set of behavioral measures, we find that the civic edu-cation program had a profound impact in increasing enthusiasm for participation, reducingthe parochialism in voter expression, and increasing voter vigilance and effectiveness, while,in an unexpected manner, also increasing peoples perceptions of the degree of violence andintimidation involved in the electoral process. The security committee intervention had no

    substantial impacts, and there were no apparent benefits arising from the interaction of thetwo programs.

    These results lead one to consider supply, demand, and sustainability issues in democracypromotion, especially in highly sensitive fragile state contexts. The theory that motivated ourinterventions was based on the assumption that under prevailing conditions, political leadershave few incentives to supply the levels of security or information necessary to permit freedemocratic expression. Civil society actors might be an alternative source of domestic initia-tive for supplying information, if not security, but socio-economic conditions in fragile statessuch as Liberia are such that few if any civil society actors are both insulated from politicalpressures and in a position on their own to organize the necessary resources. Therefore,partnerships between external supporters, internal civil society organizations, and neutralsecurity assistance actors may be crucial for promoting democratic assistance. In this studywe find indication that curriculum-type programming can be effective, and so as a point ofpolicy, it makes sense for external donors interested in democracy promotion to continuesuch programming both on normative and practical grounds. This study does not providesuch evidence for security-based strategies, although it is possible that such a strategy couldbe in a different contexts or with a different design.

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    Promoting Democracy in Fragile States:

    Insights from a Field Experiment in Liberia

    Supplemental Appendix(Not for Publication)

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    A Non-response patterns

    Table 11: Effects of programs on non-response ratesNon-response

    (Control mean) 0.66

    (0.04)Civ. Ed. 0.07

    (0.06)Sec. Com. 0.06

    (0.05)Civ Ed. X Sec. Com. 0.15

    (0.10)N 1414R2 0.35

    adj. R2

    0.33Resid. sd 1.61OLS estimates account for blocking using centered block interactions (coefficients not reported).

    The outcome for the first column is a standardized, covariance-weighted average of the other columns outcomes.

    Standard errors account for clan-level clustering. significant at p < .10; p < .05; p < .01; p < .001

    (For 12 respondents, no information was recorded as to whether the respondent was fromthe original list or not.)

    27