Noncoercive Mobilization in State-Controlled Elections: An Experimental Study in Beijing

The experimental intervention consisted of door-to-door canvassing by undergraduate students in Peking University dorms encouraging fellow students to vote by delivering one of two messages: (1) emphasizing civic duty and the importance of voting for democracy in China or (2) same prologue as message 1 but added that there were a number of self-nominated candidates including students from Peking University. At the end of the message, canvassers mentioned the time and polling location and left a leaflet with the same message as the verbal script. If no one was available in the dorm room the leaflet was slipped under the door. Control dorm rooms received neither canvassing nor leaflet.

2003-12-01

2003-12-10

Voter turnout

Voter turnout was assessed by watching voters sign in at the polling places on election day. The sign-in sheets served as the basis for coding each person’s participation.

Peking University constitutes three precincts of Beijing, and voters are made of up faculty, student and staff of the university. The election results for one of the precincts are used in this experiment. A list of all registered voters in the precinct was collected and the names of non-students were removed, leaving a sample of 4,034 undergraduate and master’s students. Typically four to six students share a dorm room in Peking University. Treatment was clustered at the dorm room level since a canvassing message delivered to one student in a room would likely be passed on to the non-treated students as well. Thus all students in a single room are exposed to the same treatment. Rooms were randomly assigned to one of three groups: control or one of two treatments. The canvassing was done only two days before the election to minimize infiltration of the message to control voters.

Conducted by computer generated random numbers

Dorm room

Yes

1004 dorm rooms

4,024 students

Treatment 1: 337 dorm rooms, 1340 students
Treatment 2: 333 dorm rooms, 1350 students
Control: 334 dorm rooms, 1334 students

NONCOERCIVE MOBILIZATION IN STATE-CONTROLLED ELECTIONS: AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY IN BEIJING

China has gradually introduced a limited degree of democratization to its system of local governance, permitting self-nominated candidates for People’s Congress to campaign on their own behalf. Liberalization of elections has also meant that voters are less likely to be coerced into voting by their work groups. What are the likely consequences of liberalization for voter turnout rates in the future? The authors examine the effects of a noncoercive get-out-the-vote drive in one of the most highly liberalized electoral districts in China. A field experiment was conducted in a Peking University precinct during the 2003 election. Thousands of student voters were randomly assigned to control and treatment groups, the latter receiving encouragement to participate through door-to-door canvassing. These noncoercive mobilization efforts are found to be highly effective in raising voter turnout, suggesting that tactics used in open electoral systems may buoy voter turnout rates even as coercive mobilization tactics disappear.

Guan, Mei, and Donald P. Green. 2006. "Non-Coercive Mobilization in State-Controlled Elections: An Experimental Study in Beijing." Comparative Political Studies 39(10): 1175-1193.

http://cps.sagepub.com/content/39/10/1175.full.pdf