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Race and Responsiveness: An Experiment with South African Politicians

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  • McClendon, Gwyneth H.

Abstract

Do politicians engage in ethnic and racial favoritism when conducting constituency service? This article presents results from a replication field experiment with local South African politicians that tested for racial bias in responsiveness to requests about public goods provision. The experiment represents an adaptation of similar experiments conducted in the United States, extending the design to a different institutional environment, albeit one with a similar racially-charged history. Although one might suppose that politicians in South Africa would seek to avoid racial bias given the recent transition to full democracy, I find that South African politicians—both black and white—are more responsive to same-race constituents than to other-race constituents. Same-race bias is evident in both the dominant and the main opposition political parties. Moreover, politicians are not particularly responsive to anyone. Implications for the further study of democratic responsiveness are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • McClendon, Gwyneth H., 2016. "Race and Responsiveness: An Experiment with South African Politicians," Journal of Experimental Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 3(1), pages 60-74, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:jexpos:v:3:y:2016:i:01:p:60-74_00
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    Cited by:

    1. Porten, John & Rhee, Inbok & Gibson, Clark, 2022. "Ethnicity is not public service destiny: The political logic of service distribution in South Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    2. Gaddis, S. Michael, 2018. "An Introduction to Audit Studies in the Social Sciences," SocArXiv e5hfc, Center for Open Science.
    3. Qi Wang & Mengdi Liu & Jintao Xu & Bing Zhang, 2023. "Blow the Lid Off: Public Complaints, Bargaining Power, and Government Responsiveness on Social Media," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 85(1), pages 133-166, May.
    4. Crawfurd, Lee & Ramli, Ukasha, 2020. "Discrimination by Politicians against Religious Minorities: Experimental Evidence from the UK," SocArXiv tc42s, Center for Open Science.
    5. Grossman, Shelby & Honig, Dan, 2017. "Evidence from Lagos on Discrimination across Ethnic and Class Identities in Informal Trade," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 520-528.
    6. Benjamin E. Bagozzi & Daniel Berliner & Zack W. Almquist, 2021. "When does open government shut? Predicting government responses to citizen information requests," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 15(2), pages 280-297, April.
    7. Jimenez Mori, Raul, 2021. "Eliciting individual preferences for immigrants in the Dominican Republic. Results from two choice experiments," Journal of choice modelling, Elsevier, vol. 39(C).
    8. Veit, Susanne & Yemane, Ruta, 2018. "The ADIS study: A large-scale correspondence test on labor market discrimination in Germany - Technical Report," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Migration, Integration, Transnationalization SP VI 2018-103, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    9. Wang, Qi & Liu, Mengdi & Xu, Jintao & Zhang, Bing, 2023. "Blow the Lid Off: Public Complaints, Bargaining Power, and Government Responsiveness on Social Media," EfD Discussion Paper 23-5, Environment for Development, University of Gothenburg.

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