Click HEletsa_cv_jan_21.pdfRE for my CV.
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Published Articles
“Expressive Voting in Autocracies: A Theory of Non-Economic Participation with Evidence from Cameroon.” 2020. Perspectives on Politics, 18 (2), 439-453. “The Mechanisms of Direct and Indirect Rule: Colonialism and Economic Development in Africa” (with Martha Wilfahrt). 2020. Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 15 (4), 539-577. “The Political Geography of Electoral Autocracies: The Influence of Party Strongholds on Political Beliefs in Africa.” 2019. Electoral Studies, Volume 60. “Popular Support for Democracy in Autocratic Regimes: A Micro-Level Analysis of Preferences” (with Martha Wilfahrt). 2018. Comparative Politics, 50 (2), 231-250. “‘The People’s Choice’: Popular (Il)Legitimacy in Autocratic Cameroon.” 2017. Journal of Modern African Studies, 55 (4), 647-679. “Voting for Peace, Mobilizing for War: Post-Conflict Voter Turnout and Civil War Recurrence.” 2017. Democratization, 24 (3), p. 425-443. |
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Book Manuscript in Progress
The Autocratic Citizen: Partisanship and Electoral Behavior under Dictatorship
Citizens living under authoritarianism face considerably more constrained choices when it comes to participating in political life than citizens of democracies. Given that democracy is a near-universal value and autocratic regimes usually face harsh criticisms of human rights abuses, corruption, and repression, why would an ordinary citizen choose to support the regime in power? Given the danger of supporting the opposition and the unlikelihood of its success, why would an ordinary citizen ever choose to join the opposition? Based on extensive multi-method fieldwork in Cameroon, this book project seeks to challenge traditional assumptions in the literature in order to better understand the different ways in which citizens form their preferences for the regime in power, why they sometimes act on these preferences (either in support or defection), and the effect this collective behavior has on political outcomes in autocratic regimes. More precisely, the manuscript seeks to understand the structural, social, and affective differences between, first, people who choose to support a party (partisans) and those who do not (nonpartisans), and, second, citizens who participate in politics to support the incumbent (ruling party partisans) and those who instead support the opposition (opposition partisans). I argue that instead of focusing primarily on regime tactics such as patronage and repression, we must instead understand the social networks in which people are embedded and processes of life-long political socialization in order to best understand why some people support the regime in power while others support the opposition.
The Autocratic Citizen: Partisanship and Electoral Behavior under Dictatorship
Citizens living under authoritarianism face considerably more constrained choices when it comes to participating in political life than citizens of democracies. Given that democracy is a near-universal value and autocratic regimes usually face harsh criticisms of human rights abuses, corruption, and repression, why would an ordinary citizen choose to support the regime in power? Given the danger of supporting the opposition and the unlikelihood of its success, why would an ordinary citizen ever choose to join the opposition? Based on extensive multi-method fieldwork in Cameroon, this book project seeks to challenge traditional assumptions in the literature in order to better understand the different ways in which citizens form their preferences for the regime in power, why they sometimes act on these preferences (either in support or defection), and the effect this collective behavior has on political outcomes in autocratic regimes. More precisely, the manuscript seeks to understand the structural, social, and affective differences between, first, people who choose to support a party (partisans) and those who do not (nonpartisans), and, second, citizens who participate in politics to support the incumbent (ruling party partisans) and those who instead support the opposition (opposition partisans). I argue that instead of focusing primarily on regime tactics such as patronage and repression, we must instead understand the social networks in which people are embedded and processes of life-long political socialization in order to best understand why some people support the regime in power while others support the opposition.
