Together We Will: Evidence from a Field Experiment on Female Voter

Turnout in Pakistan

Xavier Gine & Ghazala MansuriDECRG, World Bank

Motivation• Over the 20th century, women have acquired de jure rights to participate in

democratic institutions– Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)– Convention on the Political Rights of Women (1952)– International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966)– Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination

against Women (1979)

• However, barriers to effective participation by women both as voters and as legislators remain significant

• Number of efforts to introduce quotas for women legislators. Results suggest some impact on policy choices as well as perceptions (Chattopadhyay & Duflo (2004); Bardhan et al (2005, 2008); Ban and Rao (2008))

• But women also have: » Lower participation rates as voters» They are also more likely to vote in accordance with the

preference of male clan and household heads (family voting)– unlike men of all ages

Why should we care?

• Good governance and development viewed as intrinsically linked (Sen 1999); World Bank (2005)

• Voting is essential for electoral accountability: Basic premise of representative democracy is that those who are subject to policy

should have a voice in its making. • Preference Heterogeneity: Women have different preferences so

their participation could lead to different policy choices

• Human Rights/Equity

Potential barriers to female participation in the electoral process

• Information:– Women have fewer and poorer sources of information about the

significance of political participation and/or the balloting process, in part due to illiteracy

• Costs of Participation:– Social constraints may restrict choices and/or restrict women’s freedom of

movement

– Traditions, social and cultural stereotypes may lead to a sense of disempowerment and discourage women from participation in electoral processes or exercising their own preferences

– Concerns about security in conflict environments may have a greater impact on female participation

What we assess1. How important is information for turnout and candidate choice?

– Why?• Attitudes change slowly but information can be provided quickly and may

serve to – enhance equity– induce a change in attitudes (Beaman et al (2007)) – be habit forming (Gerber, Green, Shachar (2003)) – change policy (Edlund & Pande (2002); Lott & Kenny (1999))

2. Are there significant peer effects?– Why? – Is this a cost effective way to boost participation?

– Evidence of spillovers (Duflo & Saez (2003); Kremer & Miguel (2004 & 2007))

– Evidence of contagion within family (Nickerson(2008))

3. Does information matter more/less when an election takes place in a politically volatile environment and is highly contested?

Context

• Rural Pakistan

• According to the 1998 Human Development Report, Pakistan ranked– 138 out of 174 on the Human Development Index (HDI)– 131 out of 163 on the Gender Development Index (GDI) – 100 out of 102 on the Gender Empowerment Measure(GEM)

• “Political parties, by and large, tend to view women as a passive vote bank, following the dictates of men within their families or clans. Even within their own parties, they treat them largely as followers to be strategically used for election canvassing and public campaigns. Thus, most parties do not even have lists of female members.”

“ Aurat Foundation, 2004 6

What we do

• Conduct a door to door voter information campaign directed at rural women just before the February 2008 national elections in Pakistan

• Two “treatments”

– The importance of voting (T1)

– T1 plus the significance of secret balloting: Ability to vote in accordance with one’s own preferences without external pressure (T2)

– The information campaign was developed as a set of simple visual messages

Study Design-1• Two districts in Sindh, Sukkur and Khairpur, selected because sharp electoral

competition between two major political parties

– Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) (secular-left leaning)

and

– Pakistan Muslim League (F) (allied with the military, led by large landlords and “pirs”).

• 6 villages selected from each district, where an NGO, MRDO, which mobilizes

women using a CBD approach was either working (or about to start work)

• 3 villages in Khairpur dropped just before the elections due to security

concerns. These had more contested polling stations relative to our sample

villages

• Final sample has 9 villages and 21 polling stations

• Average village population: approx 300 households

Study Design-2• Variation in treatment type (T1 or T2) as well as treatment

intensity to look at peer effects – Village divided into geographical clusters

– Clusters randomly assigned to get T1, T2 or nothing as follows: – start in a random cluster, deliver T1– leave a gap cluster– in the next cluster, deliver either T2 or nothing using a coin flip– leave a gap cluster– deliver either T2 or nothing depending on prior coin toss result– process repeated till all clusters in village covered

– Households within clusters selected as follows:– starting from any one end, every fourth household selected until up to

18 households covered– In T1 and T2 clusters every 5th selected household left as a control. So

2 to 4 control households in treated clusters. – In controls clusters, all selected household left as controls.

Timeline

HH visits and Pre-Election Survey

Voting Verification

Post-Election Survey

National Elections

Feb 18 Feb 18-19Feb 5 -15 March 5-25

Data I

• Pre-Election Visit (information intervention): – Household location (GIS); basic roster of all adult women, plus

past voting record and the name and address of closest friend/confidant in the village

– No refusals, so we have 100% compliance

• Post-election verification: – Self report and verification by checking ink stain– One friend per household, randomly selected from among

women “eligible” to vote (had NIC or claimed to be on the voter list)

11

Data II• Post election survey

– Household demographics, including zaat/caste – Intervention checks– Mobility constraints– Access to media– Knowledge of location of polling station and the protocol for

casting a vote– Election day environment– Knowledge of: candidates, party platforms, recent political events,

election outcomes– Knowledge of whether other household members voted and for

whom

• Polling Station data– Electoral results by gender and by candidate/party 12

Final Sample• Pre-election visit:

– 64 clusters– 1019 households– 2735 women– 2735 friends

• Post-election verification visit:– 64 clusters– 992 households– 2637 women– 727 friends

• 98 women (27 households) lost because of temporary or permanent household migration. Friends of women in lost households not verified.

• Attrition is orthogonal to treatment

• Ink mark was missing for 135 women who claimed to have cast a vote. Err on the safe side by treating these women as not having voted

Household Characteristics by Treatment Status

14

Woman Characteristics by Treatment Status

Summary Statistics• Treatment households appear to be somewhat richer than

control households in some comparisons

• Maybe as a result, treatment women are more likely to have voted in the past

• Past voting is correlated with having an NIC and the number of women registered to vote in the polling station to which the household is mapped.

• Treatment women more likely to have kids under the age of 5 years and access to cable TV in some comparisons

• In the analysis, we control for the household and woman characteristics that we lack balance on. We also control for the total number of women registered to vote in a polling station.

Regression specification-Woman Level

Average Effect• For woman i in household h in village v:

Yihv = bThv + fXihv + uv + εihv

– Yihv = Women voted (1=Yes) based on verification

– Thv = treatment indicator

– Xihv = vector of control variables

– uv = village fixed effect

• Standard errors clustered at geographic cluster level

20

Regression Specification-Peer effects-II

• Similar to Kremer and Miguel (2004). For woman i in household h in village v:

Yihv = bThv + ∑dD (gdD NTdD + kdD NdD ) + fXihv + uv + εihv

– Yihv = Women voted (1=Yes) based on verification

– Thv = treatment indicator

– NTdD = number of treated households between distance d and D from household

– NdD = number of households between distance d and D from household

– Xihv = vector of control variables

– uv = village fixed effect

• Standard errors clustered at geographic cluster level

22

Regression SpecificationPolling Station Level

• For polling station p in village v:

Ypv = bNTpv + fXpv + εpv

– Ypv = Number of valid votes cast by women

– NTpv = Number of women treated in polling station

– Xpv = Vector of polling station control variables, including the number of registered women

25

28

Summing up

• Substantial peer effects

– Spillovers double the impact of the information campaign on turnout among sample women to about 12 %

– Comparable with turnout rates reported by experimental studies in the US Gerber, Green and Nickerson (2003); Nickerson (2008) also finds effects among households members

• Information campaigns appears to be an effective way of reaching poor rural women

– Polling station level effects are even larger. For every 10 women (or about 4 households) treated, there are almost 7 additional votes

• Information campaigns can affect not just turnout but also independence in candidate choice

– T2 seems to have a larger effect than T1 on voter turnout and candidate choice, but we cannot detect a significant difference

• Information on electoral rights may be more valuable where differences in preferences over candidates are larger

– The information campaign increased turnout in more contested areas, and in areas where PML-F had a significant vote share, although both tended to depress turnout among sample women

Typical village

Typical street

Communication is easy …

Communication is easy …

Visual Aids for Treatments

Visual Aids for Presentation

Visual Aids for Presentation

Visual Aids for Presentation

Visual Aids for Presentation

Visual Aids for Presentation

Visual Aids for Presentation – Secrecy of Ballot

Visual Aids for Presentation

Visual Aids for Presentation

Visual Aids for Presentation