Population-Based Survey Experiments in the Middle East
Panel 136, 2015 Annual Meeting
On Monday, November 23 at 2:30 pm
Panel Description
The four papers on this panel analyze new trends and developments in population-based survey experiments in the Middle East, focusing on how this methodological approach can be deployed in societies with a limited history and culture of survey research. The papers are thematically and geographically diverse, covering a range of substantive topics in numerous Arab countries, including Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, and Jordan. The papers find common ground, however, in their chosen methodological tool of investigation--the population-based survey experiment.
The papers focused on Egypt and Morocco deploy list experiments to probe citizen attitudes regarding topics of a controversial or socially undesirable nature. The first paper looks, specifically, at concealed citizen attitudes towards military rule in Egypt in summer 2014, one year after the military coup that overthrew democratically-elected president Mohammed Morsi. The second paper examines Morocco's court system, probing citizen attitudes about how bribery, personal connections ('wasta'), and class-status can affect decision-making of judges at trials.
The third and fourth papers use survey experiments to examine issues of gender in the relationship between candidates and citizens during elections. The third paper includes new survey data from Tunisia, and the fourth incorporates data from Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Jordan. The third paper analyzes whether Tunisian citizens are more likely to contact male or female elected representatives with information regarding problems they face. The results of the study will assess Tunisians' beliefs about female politicians' effectiveness, their ability to provide patronage, and their qualifications as candidates. Analyzing data from four different Arab states, the fourth paper analyzes how candidates' gender affects their electability, especially when other intersecting identities, such as religion and tribe come into play. The results of the study carry implications for understanding the disadvantages women and other marginalized groups face at the polls and the ways gender quotas and electoral strategies may help level the playing field.
These papers hope to contribute to the limited non-experimental and experimental survey research that has been conducted in the Middle East over the last ten years, notably the Arab Barometer project led by Professors Mark Tessler and Amaney Jamal, and Professor Daniel Corstange's survey experiments related to vote-buying and foreign embassy survey sponsorship in Lebanon (with Nikolay Marinov). With the proposed panel's wide geographic scope and thematic diversity, it aims to present papers that will attract an audience of scholars from a diverse range of academic disciplines.
Traditional studies of democratization in both the Middle East and beyond identify an efficient, neutral judiciary as a key contributor to greater democratic governance. Since the early 2000s, many regimes in the Middle East have implemented new reforms to their judicial systems, while they have maintained their authoritarian rule and resisted pressures for democratization. One exemplary case of this trend is Morocco, whose judiciary was historically known for its corruption and inequity. Indeed, even in the era that preceded French colonialism, the use of bribes and personal connections (known as wasta in Arabic) to influence judicial decisions was so widespread that it was considered “the norm in legal matters” according to one early study. To combat these practices and increase its support among citizens, Morocco’s regime introduced a series of judicial reforms beginning in the 2000s: These included a new code of family laws in 2004, a new constitution in 2011, and a judicial reform package in 2013. Although scholars have analyzed the content and implementation of these legal reforms, they have done less work analyzing citizen attitudes toward them. Under what conditions do citizens come to view the judiciary as equitable, accessible, and efficient, or, alternatively, perceive it as corrupt, arbitrary, and mismanaged?
To answer this question, I have launched a population based survey experiment in Morocco in collaboration with a non-governmental organization, Droit et Justice, which will be completed in winter 2014. The results of this survey experiment are important because they will help both scholars and policymakers identify specific social groups and geographic regions in Morocco that continue to feel marginalized and underserved by a corrupt judicial system, despite the country’s significant progress in implementing a number of judicial reforms since the early 2000s.
Specifically, I am conducting a nationally-representative survey experiment that will use a series of list experiment questions (i.e. item count technique) to reveal citizen attitudes of judicial corruption. In particular, the survey deploys the item count technique to investigate how much citizens believe judicial decisions are driven by either (1) the paying of bribes to judges or (2) the leveraging of personal ‘connections’ (i.e. wasta) at the courthouse, or (3) membership in a local influential or aristocratic family. Approximately 1,200 respondents will be included within the survey, which will be conducted in all 16 provinces of Morocco.
Does fear of official sanction or public opprobrium cause citizens living under authoritarian regimes to strategically inflate their public satisfaction with those regimes? Prominent theories suggest that this type of behavior is both widespread and a key link in the causal chain of revolution and regime change. Yet practical barriers, including the difficulties of survey research in authoritarian regimes and the very nature of preference falsification, hamper attempts to measure citizen attitudes towards the authoritarian regimes that rule them. This paper reports the results of an original nationwide list experiment carried out in Egypt in the summer of 2014, one year after the Egyptian military overthrew the elected president and instituted authoritarian rule. Not only does the survey allow us to measure citizen dissatisfaction with the military regime in real time, the list format offers the ability to discern exactly the types of hidden attitudes that scholars of revolution have identified as key prerequisites of upheaval. Among our findings is that, when granted anonymity, 35% of the sample expresses opposition to military rule. This is a significantly larger percentage than those who registered dissent when asked outright. By extending the experimental turn in political science to authoritarian regimes, this paper contributes new insights into the stability of one of the Middle East’s most volatile governments.
Gender is a hot button issue, particularly after the Arab spring, when Islamist parties achieved electoral successes and parliamentary gender quotas were adopted in many countries in the region. At the same time, little is known about how candidate gender and other intersecting identities—religion, tribe, and age—affect electability. Using data from four original survey experiments conducted among 2400 Tunisians, 1200 Libyans, 1600 Egyptians, and 1500 Jordanians between 2012 and 2014, this paper tests competing hypotheses drawn from cultural, economic modernization, and role congruity theories to understand whether and why stereotyped traits, competencies, policy signals—and expectations of wasta—affect support for candidates. Respondents were presented at random with a candidate photo and asked how likely they would be to vote for him or her. To tease out the mechanisms explaining candidate electability, the study asks respondents to judge the candidates’ traits (e.g. decisive, emotional), competencies (e.g. improve education, fight terrorism), policy positions (e.g. supports women’s rights, the role of religion), and ability to provide clientelism. Overall gender-based biases were strongest in Libya and smallest in Tunisia, due to historical differences in women’s presence in the labor force and politics. Across the four countries, the analysis found weak support for cultural and economic modernization theories and strong support for role congruity theory. The candidate who looks most similar to leaders of the past—generally a secular appearing male, and of higher socioeconomic status—is equally popular across all segments of the population. The electability of under-represented candidates depends on stereotypes about their traits and competencies, as well as voters’ expectations of policy and clientelistic provision. Women are more electable among voters who support liberal gender policies, but less popular among those who see female politicians as lacking stereotypically male traits (e.g. decisiveness). The results have implications for understanding the disadvantages women and other marginalized groups face at the polls and the ways gender quotas and electoral strategies may help level the playing field.
