Data

Does membership in GAS better explain contacts with members of parliaments than individual characteristic in Africa? Put simply, of individual level variables and community –level variables, which ones better predict the likelihood of contacts between constituents and their representatives in Africa? This question originates from the conventional wisdom that maintains that individual level variables are the primary driving force behind political participation in mature democracies. Yet a closer look at the extant literature shows that theories of political participation in these established democracies may not be vindicated in nascent democracies (Gottlieb et.al. 2015; Dione et al., 2014). To set the record straight, this section compares the effects of individual level variables to community level variables. By community level variables, I mean the two informal associations covered in Afrobarometer surveys: community development or civic voluntary groups and religious groups. Individual level variables are the social economic status and demographics variables. All of the data and variables measurements are drawn from the Afrobarometer round 4 surveys The Afrobarometer is an independent group of academic and professional researchers who run survey of public opinion and attitude in Africa. It started in 1999 with the round 1 covering 12 countries. Eighteen years later, the Afrobarometer has expanded the scope from 12 countries to 37

countries on the African continent. The main topics covered consist of democracy, governance, individual perceptions of corruption, horizontal and vertical accountability, state-society relationship, democratic institutions, and basic living conditions. I justify my choice of the Afrobarometer round 4 on the richness of this round on the two key topics of this chapter: constituents- MP relationship and associational life in Africa. The round 4 was conducted between 2008-2009, nearly two decades after the end of the third wave of democracy and at a time when African political regimes sought to consolidate their democratic changes. The round 4 in particular, probes constituent- representative relationship, asking questions about the rate of interactions between citizens and their members of parliaments(MPs), citizens’ perceptions of their MPs’ roles, motivations, number of MP’s visits, reason for contacting MPs, the fulfillment of MPs’ functions (legislative, representation, oversight, and), keeping campaign promises or lack thereof, and the extent to which there exist a gap of expectations and reality.

2.4.1.1 Dependent Variable 1: Contacts with Formal Office Holders

Representative democracy is premised on the proposition that citizens, as the source of the political authority, choose to entrust this power to representatives. For these "custodians" of people’s power to act fully on the behalf of citizens, there must exist clear channels of communication and constant interactions between constituents and their representatives. Political scientists have dubbed such interactions political participation, a multidimensional concept that takes on multiple meanings. This article focuses on Africans’ specific actions of reaching out to their members of parliament (MPs). According to Bratton and colleagues (2005), contact is an individual or group initiative to connect with office holders (143). Due to pervasive institutional weakness in surveyed countries, direct contacts come as the primary way of conveying meaningful message to representatives during the periods between elections. The same institutional weakness

explains why most of these contacts involve face-to-face and oral rather than written interactions. However, these private and intractable interactions raise the threat of clientelistic or paternalistic behaviors. Admittedly, scholars have acknowledged that one of the particularity of political participation in Africa is that the line between civic oriented and patron-client behavior are blurred (Bratton et.al 2005,144). Altogether, the dearth of formal connections makes contacting of political office holders (local or national) as the surest way to express their preferences (Bratton et.al.2005). In a healthy democratic system, these contacts reflect the primacy of citizens in the state-society relationship. In mature democracies contacts with representatives reveals one of the powerful ways of expressing constituency potency. The United States provides the more telling example of this dyadic relationship. According to the Congressional Management Foundation(CMF), representatives’ decisions are 36% influenced by contact from constituents (CMF,2015,12).

The Afrobarometer enumerates 5 types of contacts: Contacts with members of parliament, members of government agency, members of local government council, traditional rulers, religious leaders and party officials. This chapter concentrates on the three formal office holders: members of parliament, members of government agents, and members of local government council. These variables are captured with the following generic question: “During the past year, how often have you contacted any of the following persons about some important problem or to give them your views:”“Members of parliament;” “Government agency;” “Local councilor.” The answers are captured on an ordinal scale with the following values: never=0; only once=1; a few times= 2; often = 3 don’t know = 9. For convenience, I recode these variables into dichotomous variables by collapsing values from 1,2 and 3 into yes =1 and never = 0.

2.4.1.2 Dependent Variable2: Attending Community Meetings

It has long been established that political participation is a multidimensional concept. This multidimensionality has opened the door to ongoing scholarly debates about whether participation hurts or promotes positive democratic attitudes and a debate about what activities constitute conventional as opposed to unconventional activities of participation. These debates bear heightened implications when applied to the specific settings of African politics. One specific question that comes to mind is: should communal activities be considered as political participatory activities? I side with Bratton et.al. (2005) who advocate for the inclusion of such acts. For Bratton and colleagues, it is important to broaden the definition of political participation in Africa because politics follows two tracks: the formal and informal ways. This makes attending community meeting specifically a key aspect of participation in Africa. Community meeting mostly happen in grassroots associations. By participating in these grassroots activities, citizens gain in democratic attitude dividend. Liz and Zhang (2017) contend that such communal activities promote individual emancipation. In this communal setting, citizens acquire civic mindedness, personal transformation that helps them overcome their fear (12). Communal participation is both instrumental and psychological when it leads to self-realization(UNPD). In the Afrobarometer round 4 datasets, this variable is captured by the following wording: “Here is a list of actions that people sometimes take as citizens. For each of these, please tell me whether you, personally, have done any of these things during the past year. If not, would you do this if you had the chance: Attended a community meeting?”
The responses are distributed in four ascending order categories: no=0, but would do if I had the chance=1; yes, once or twice=2; yes, several times=3; and yes, often=4. I recode this variable into a dichotomous variable by aggregating the value from 1 to 4 into 1.