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ABSTRACT
Can democratic orientations and political participation in fragile democracies be fostered through civic education? Early evaluation work reported generally positive effects, though recent work has been more skeptical, with some studies reporting negative impacts of civic education on political engagement through highlighting the poor performance of incumbents and ongoing political processes. In this article, we report the results of a field experiment using an encouragement design to assess the Voter Opinion and Involvement through Civic Education (VOICE) programme conducted in 2010-2011 in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We adapt Bratton and Mattes’ (2007) “supply and demand” model of democratic support to the case of civic education, and derive hypotheses regarding expected impacts of VOICE on a series of democratic orientations and political participation. The results show that the VOICE programme had negative effects on support for the decentralization process and on individuals’ satisfaction with democracy in the DRC, and positive effects on non-electoral participation as well as on democratic orientations such as knowledge, efficacy, and political tolerance. We suggest that this pattern of effects has positive normative implications, and that civic education programmes continue to have the potential to deepen democratic engagement and values, even in fragile or backsliding democratic settings.
Acknowledgements
We thank Rakesh Sharma and Rola Abdul-Latif of IFES for overseeing the VOICE evaluation, Reynaldo Rojo-Mendoza for his earlier work on the project, and participants at the Ordinary Citizens in Autocracies conference at the University of Nottingham, June 2018, for comments, criticisms, and helpful suggestions.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Classen, “Does Public Support Help Democracy Survive?”
2 Finkel,“Can Democracy be Taught?”; “The Impact of Adult Civic Education Programmes in Developing Democracies”.
3 Lieberman et al., “Does Information Lead to More Active Citizenship?”
4 Gottlieb, “Why Might Information Exacerbate the Gender Gap in Civic Participation?.”
5 Chong et al, “Does Corruption Information Inspire the Right or Quash the Hope?”; Sexton, “The Long Road to Accountable Democracy.”
6 Bratton and Mattes, “Learning About Democracy in Africa.”
7 Mvukiyehe and Samii, “Promoting Democracy in Fragile States.”
8 Azpuru et al., “Trends in Democracy Assistance”; Moehler, “Democracy, Governance, and Randomized Development Assistance.”
9 Many programmes have been conducted among primary and secondary students in the formal school systems of developing democracies; we focus in this article on non-formal civic education programmes aimed at adults.
10 Bratton et al., “The Effects of Civic Education on Political Culture.”
11 Finkel et al., “Civic Education, Civil Society, and Political Mistrust in a Developing Democracy”; “Can Democracy Be Taught?”
12 Finkel and Smith, “Civic Education, Political Discussion.”
13 Finkel, Horowitz, and Rojo-Mendoza, “Civic Education and Democratic Backsliding.”
14 Moehler, Distrusting Democrats; Kuenzi, “Nonformal Education, Political Participation.”
15 Finkel, “Can Democracy Be Taught?”
16 Finkel and Smith, “Civic Education, Political Discussion.”
17 Kuenzi, “Nonformal Education, Political Participation.”
18 Moehler, Distrusting Democrats.
19 Finkel, Horowitz, and Rojo-Mendoza, “Civic Education and Democratic Backsliding.”
20 Gottlieb, “Greater Expectations: A Field Experiment.”
21 Banerjee et al.,“Can Voters Be Primed to Choose Better Legislators?.”
22 Keefer and Khemani, “Do Informed Citizens Receive More … or Pay More?”
23 Vincente, “Is Vote Buying Effective?.”
24 Gine and Mansuri, “Together We Will”; Collier and Vincente, “Votes and Violence”; Mvukiyehe and Samii, “Promoting Democracy in Fragile States.”
25 Chong et al., “Does Corruption Information Inspire?”; Vincente, “Is Vote Buying Effective?.”
26 Gottlieb, “Why Might Information Exacerbate”; John and Sjoberg, "Partisan responses to democracy promotion."
27 Lieberman et al.,"Does Information Lead to More Active Citizenship?"
28 Sexton, “The Long Road to Accountable Democracy.”
29 Bratton and Mattes, “Learning About Democracy in Africa.”
30 Norris, Democratic Deficit: Critical Citizens Revisited; Milner, Civic Literacy: How Informed Citizens.
31 Gottlieb, “Greater Expectations: A Field Experiment.”
32 Sexton, “The Long Road to Accountable Democracy: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Peru.”
33 Finkel et al., “Civic Education, Civil Society, and Political Mistrust in a Developing Democracy: The Case of the Dominican Republic,” 1867-1868.
34 Almond and Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes; Claasen, “Does Public Support Help Democracy Survive?”; Gibson et al., “Democratic Values and the Transformation of the Soviet Union”; Verba et al., Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism.
35 That these outcomes can be affected in the first place by short-term factors such as civic education is no longer controversial, though the relative impact of short-term interventions versus long-term factors such as generational replacement or top-down actions from parties and political elites remains undetermined. See, e.g. Neundorf, “Democracy in Transition: A Micro Perspective on System Change in Post-socialist Societies.”
36 Gine and Mansuri, “Together We Will: Experimental Evidence.”
37 Moehler, Distrusting Democrats.
38 Finkel et al., “Civic Education, Civil Society, and Political Mistrust.”
39 Chong et al., “Does Corruption Information Inspire?”
40 Sexton, “The Long Road to Accountable Democracy.”
41 Reyntjens, “Briefing: Democratic Republic of Congo.”
42 Crawford and Hartmann, Decentralisation in Africa: A Pathway?”; Dizolele, “The Mirage of Democracy in the DRC.”
43 Englebert et al., “Misguided and Misdiagnosed: The Failure of Decentralization Reforms in the DRC.”
44 Ibid.
45 See Appendix (A1) for the exact encouragement script.
46 Random assignment to receive the encouragement was blocked at the village level.
47 Sovey and Green “Instrumental Variables Estimation in Political Science: A Readers’ Guide.”
48 Our dependent variable in all our models (..) is the change in individuals’ attitudes over the two waves (.
.). This applies to the behavioral questions such as political discussion and non-institutional participation as well, so in those models the dependent variable represents the change in the individual’s reported engagement in the various acts between the two waves of interviews.
49 Imai et al., “Unpacking the Black Box of Causality”; Imai et al., “Causal Mediation Analysis Using R.”
50 The first-stage estimates in all of the IV models reported in this section produce F statistics ranging from 41 to 71, well above the generally accepted threshold of 10 for rejecting instruments as “weak”.
51 Croke et al.,“Deliberate Disengagement: How Education Can Decrease Political Participation in Electoral Authoritarian Regimes”; also Chong et al., Does Corruption Information Inspire?”
52 Gibson et al., “Democratic Values and the Transformation of the Soviet Union,” 332.
53 Moehler, Distrusting Democrats.
54 Blair, “Jump-Starting Democracy: Adult Civic”; Milner and Lewis. "It’s What Happens on the Front Lines."
55 Gottlieb, “Why Might Information Exacerbate the Gender”; Johns and Sjoberg, “Partisan Responses to Democracy Promotion.”
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Steven E. Finkel
Steven E. Finkel is the Daniel Wallace Professor of Political Science at the University of Pittsburgh. His areas of expertise include comparative political behaviour, public opinion, democratization, and quantitative methods. He is the author of Causal Analysis with Panel Data (Sage Publications, 1995) as well as numerous articles on political participation, voting behaviour, and civic education in new and established democracies.
Junghyun Lim
Junghyun Lim is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research focuses on globalization politics, international migration, and democratic backsliding. Her research has appeared in Electoral Studies.