THERE GOES THE ELECTORAL NEIGHBORHOOD: LOCAL NETWORKS, ATTRIBUTION OF RESPONSIBILITY, AND THE (UN) FAIRNESS OF ELECTIONS

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dc.contributor.advisorCALVO, ERNESTO Fen_US
dc.contributor.authorTORREALDAY, JERONIMO TORREALDAYen_US
dc.contributor.departmentGovernment and Politicsen_US
dc.contributor.publisherDigital Repository at the University of Marylanden_US
dc.contributor.publisherUniversity of Maryland (College Park, Md.)en_US
dc.date.accessioned2016-09-08T05:30:59Z
dc.date.available2016-09-08T05:30:59Z
dc.date.issued2016en_US
dc.description.abstractDuring the last two decades there have been but a handful of recorded cases of electoral fraud in Latin America. However, survey research consistently shows that often citizens do not trust the integrity of the electoral process. This dissertation addresses the puzzle by explaining the mismatch between how elections are conducted and how the process is perceived. My theoretical contribution provides a double-folded argument. First, voters’ trust in their community members (“the local experience”) impacts their level of confidence in the electoral process. Since voters often find their peers working at polling stations, negative opinions about them translate into negative opinions about the election. Second, perceptions of unfairness of the system (“the global effect”) negatively impact the way people perceive the transparency of the electoral process. When the political system fails to account for social injustice, citizens lose faith in the mechanism designed to elect representatives -and ultimately a set of policies. The fact that certain groups are systematically disregarded by the system triggers the notion that the electoral process is flawed. This is motivated by either egotropic or sociotropic considerations. To test these hypotheses, I employ a survey conducted in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala during May/June 2014, which includes a population-based experiment. I show that Voters who trust their peers consistently have higher confidence in the electoral process. Whereas respondents who were primed about social unfairness (treatment) expressed less confidence in the quality of the election. Finally, I find that the local experience is predominant over the global effect. The treatment has a statistically significant effect only for respondents who trust their community. Attribution of responsibility for voters who are skeptics of their peers is clear and simple, leaving no room for a more diffuse mechanism, the unfairness of the political system. Finally, now I extend analysis to the Latin America region. Using data from LAPOP that comprises four waves of surveys in 22 countries, I confirm the influence of the “local experience” and the “global effect” as determinants of the level of confidence in the electoral process.en_US
dc.identifierhttps://doi.org/10.13016/M2RJ7N
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/18675
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledPolitical scienceen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledELECTIONSen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledINEQUALITYen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledLATIN AMERICAen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledLOCAL NETWORKSen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledSURVEY EXPERIMENTen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledTRUST COMMUNITYen_US
dc.titleTHERE GOES THE ELECTORAL NEIGHBORHOOD: LOCAL NETWORKS, ATTRIBUTION OF RESPONSIBILITY, AND THE (UN) FAIRNESS OF ELECTIONSen_US
dc.typeDissertationen_US

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