Scholars and practitioners seek development solutions through the engineering and strengthening o... more Scholars and practitioners seek development solutions through the engineering and strengthening of state institutions. Yet, the state is not the only or the primary arena shaping how citizens, service providers and state officials engage in actions that constitute politics and development. These individuals are members of religious orders, ethnic communities, and other groups that make claims on them, creating incentives that shape their actions. Recognizing how individuals experience these claims and view the choices before them is essential to understanding political processes and development outcomes. This Element establishes a framework elucidating these forces, which is key to knowledge accumulation, designing future research and effective programming. Taking an institutional approach, this Element explains how the salience of arenas of authority associated with various communities and the nature of social institutions within them affect politics and development. This title is ...
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), Oct 3, 2022
P andemics can provide important lessons and foster better practices. The Bubonic Plague in the 1... more P andemics can provide important lessons and foster better practices. The Bubonic Plague in the 1300s led to the establishment of quarantines for patients with contagious diseases (Pearce Rotondi 2020); a Tuberculosis outbreak in the early 20 th century led to the expansion of open-air schools (Blei 2020) and the Spanish Flu of 1918 pushed states to develop public health programs (and fostered the takeoff of the paper dixie cup) (Spinney 2017). Lessons for fieldwork may be less obvious, but they are no less important. The pandemic has highlighted the uncertainty surrounding research risks. As we discuss in Safer Field Research in the Social Sciences (Grimm et al. 2020, 6), fieldwork entails both "the probability that some threat to the research project is realized, and the severity of the impact this threat has on the project." Often, as with the pandemic, there is uncertainty around both the probability and severity of threats, and thus the implications of choices for researchers, their partners, and others. We argue that the pandemic has highlighted the problems of uncertainty and fostered practices that can serve field researchers well. As the pandemic subsides and fieldwork resumes, we should make sure that these practices are kept. Lesson 1: The Importance of Ongoing Risk Assessments The pandemic has fostered a practice of ongoing risk assessments. Before the pandemic, vacation plans were made, wedding and birthday celebrations prepared, and conferences set months in advance, with little consideration of circumstance as the event approached. After more than two years of COVID-19, we have seen plans made and unmade, new opportunities open and others close. We have all become keenly aware that what may be a reasonable plan today may be untenable tomorrow, as the coronavirus variant, vaccine prevalence, travel restrictions or other conditions change. And we have learned to undertake ongoing assessments. The same is true with fieldwork. The traditional approach to fieldwork is to do risk assessments before fieldwork begins. As researchers prepare for a project, they consider risks, file for ethics reviews, receive IRB approval, and begin fieldwork, never looking back. Researchers are aware of risks and engage in
How does the gender composition of deliberative committees affect citizens’ evaluations of decisi... more How does the gender composition of deliberative committees affect citizens’ evaluations of decision-making processes? Do citizens perceive decisions made by gender-balanced, legislative bodies as more legitimate than those made by all-male bodies? Extant work on the link between women’s descriptive representation and perceptions of democratic legitimacy in advanced democracies finds the equal presence of women legitimizes decision-making processes. However, this relationship has not been tested in more patriarchal, less democratic settings. We employ survey experiments in Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia to investigate how citizens respond to gender representation in committees. We find that women’s presence promotes citizens’ perceptions of the legitimacy of committee processes and outcomes, and moreover, that pro-women decisions are associated with higher levels of perceived legitimacy. Thus, this study demonstrates remarkable robustness of findings from theWest regarding gender repres...
Citizens’ political engagement is widely regarded as vital for democracy. In Africa, however, the... more Citizens’ political engagement is widely regarded as vital for democracy. In Africa, however, the assumption has often been that citizens do not engage robustly in many activities such as campaigning or attending community meetings, with political participation primarily limited to voting. Thus, little research explores the drivers of these other vital activities. We aim to fill the gap, using an original survey experiment to explore the drivers of citizen participation in Zambia around the 2021 national elections. Contrary to widely held views in the literature, we find that partisanship is a critical driver of participation, with social incentives and ethnicity also playing important but less significant roles. Finally, we seek to understand the mechanisms underpinning these results, finding that citizens anticipate sanctions if they fail to support a co-partisan but not a co-ethnic candidate. These findings have important implications for understanding political engagement and de...
Why are some leaders more effective in mobilizing citizens than others? We draw on original surve... more Why are some leaders more effective in mobilizing citizens than others? We draw on original survey data and a survey experiment conducted in the run-up to the 2021 Zambian elections to answer this question. The experiment varies the type of authority and the type of activity, as well as whether participation is monitored. The surveys also gathered information on the respondents’ shared identity traits with the leader and their perceptions of the leader’s social influence over (1) the scope of the individual’s life, and (2) the members of the community. This allows us to explore the extent to which it is the leader type or the nature of the relationships between leaders and citizens that drive compliance. We find that leader influence is associated with reported willingness to participate, and leader sanctioning and legitimacy are likely mechanisms. Leader type and identity have no influence on the respondents’ willingness to participate.
How does the gender composition of deliberative committees affect citizens’ evaluations of decisi... more How does the gender composition of deliberative committees affect citizens’ evaluations of decision-making processes? Do citizens perceive decisions made by gender-balanced, legislative bodies as more legitimate than those made by all-male bodies? Extant work on the link between women’s descriptive representation and perceptions of democratic legitimacy in advanced democracies finds the equal presence of women legitimizes decision-making processes. However, this relationship has not been tested in more patriarchal, less democratic settings. We employ survey experiments in Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia to investigate how citizens respond to gender representation in committees. We find that women’s presence promotes citizens’ perceptions of the legitimacy of committee processes and outcomes, and moreover, that pro-women decisions are associated with higher levels of perceived legitimacy. Thus, this study demonstrates remarkable robustness of findings from theWest regarding gender repres...
The Oxford Handbook of Politics in Muslim Societies, 2021
Much has been written on political advantages conferred to Islamist parties. These advantages are... more Much has been written on political advantages conferred to Islamist parties. These advantages are often viewed as resulting from the parties’ organizational strength, their economic policies, or the expected material benefits they award. The role of religion in motivating Islamist support has been largely underplayed, and even less attention has been given to the various dimensions of Islam. This gap in the research remains conspicuous, as evidence from European, African, and American contexts point to a very real relationship between various facets of religion and electoral patterns. This chapter reviews how historical legacies and social conditions in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt have shaped electoral behavior, including the ways in which organizational, economic, or religious factors are associated with Islamist support. Employing original survey data, it investigates the dominant explanations of electoral support as well as the influence of three religious factors—religious identit...
Taking to the Streets: The Transformation of Arab Activism
Taking to the Streets critically examines the conventional wisdom that the 2011 Arab Spring upris... more Taking to the Streets critically examines the conventional wisdom that the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings happened spontaneously and were directed by tech-savvy young revolutionaries. Pairing first-hand observations from activists with the critical perspectives of scholars, the book illuminates the concept of activism as an ongoing process, rather than a sudden burst of defiance. The contributors examine case studies from uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Bahrain, Morocco, Jordan, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, evaluating the various manifestations of political activism within the context of each country's distinct sociopolitical landscape. The chapters include a country-specific timeline of the first year following the uprisings and conclude with lessons learned. First-hand observations include those of Libyan activist Rihab Elhaj, who reflects on how the revolution gave birth to Libyan civil society, as well as Syrian writer and human rights activist Khawla Dunia, who d...
Replication Data for: Multiple Measurements, Elusive Agreement, and Unstable Outcomes in the Study of Regime Change
The replication data contain all files necessary to replicate the empirical analyses and robustne... more The replication data contain all files necessary to replicate the empirical analyses and robustness checks presented in "Multiple Measurements, Elusive Agreement, and Unstable Outcomes in the Study of Regime Change" (Hans Lueders & Ellen Lust): (1) R code file (FH_Polity permutations.R) that computes the number of permutations of Freedom House and Polity subscores, plus the Freedom House (FH_subscores_all years.csv) and Polity data (politydata.csv) required to compute the number of permutations that occur. (2) The regime type dataset used to code regime change (LuedersLust2017_regimetypedata.dta). (3) A STATA do-file that creates indicators of regime change and conducts all analyses reported in the paper and appendix (LuedersLust2017_replication.do). (4) A STATA do-file that conducts the robustness checks of nine published studies of regime change (LuedersLust2017_replication_robustnesschecks.do). (5) The replication data of these nine studies, to which we added the regime change indicators. We obtained permission from the authors of all studies to share their data (nine .dta files)
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Trust, Voice, and Incentives: Learning from Local Success Stories in Service Delivery in the Middle East and North Africa, 2015
Legibility and political authority are often conflated in debates over formalization processes, i... more Legibility and political authority are often conflated in debates over formalization processes, including land titling. This can lead to a fundamental misunderstanding of what it is that citizens anticipate would strengthen their property rights. This study examines the effects of legibility on citizens’ evaluations of property rights in Malawi, a country with limited but increasing land titling. We argue that legibility is a strategic resource for citizens, which has value in itself. To disentangle the effects of legibility and authority on tenure security, we employ a survey experiment. Our findings show that respondents perceived land with written property rights to be more secure and more desirable regardless of whether a state or customary authority granted these land rights. In contrast to scholarship that examines legibility as a technology of state control, this research suggests that legibility can help citizens advance their interests.
Receiving more, expecting less? Social ties, clientelism and the poor’s expectations of future service provision
World Development
Replication Data for: Vote-Buying, Anti-Corruption Campaigns, and Identity in African Elections
This dataset allows one to recreate the analyses run for the paper "Vote-Buying, Anti-Corrup... more This dataset allows one to recreate the analyses run for the paper "Vote-Buying, Anti-Corruption Campaigns, and Identity in African Elections" and its accompanying online appendix included here.
Safer Field Research in the Social Sciences: A Guide to Human and Digital Security in Hostile Environments
Exploring the challenges and risks of social science fieldwork, this book shares best practice fo... more Exploring the challenges and risks of social science fieldwork, this book shares best practice for conducting research in hostile environments and pragmatic advice to help you make good decisions. Drawing on the authors’ experiences in regions of conflict and grounded in real-world examples, the book: - Provides practical guidance on important considerations like choosing a research question in sensitive contexts. - Gives advice on data and digital security to help you minimize fieldwork risk in a contemporary research environment. - Offers tools and templates you can use to develop a tailored security framework. Building your understanding of the challenges of on-the-ground research, this book empowers you to meet the challenges of your research landscape head on.
Leadership, Community Ties, and Participation of the Poor: Evidence from Kenya, Malawi, and Zambia
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2022
The Contingency of Clientelism: Vote Buying and Voting Calculus
Authority and Legitimacy: Evidence from Cross-National Conjoint Endorsement Experiments
Governance and Service Delivery in the Middle East and North Africa
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Papers by Ellen Lust