IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v115y2021i1p82-96_7.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Emigrant Inclusion in Home Country Elections: Theory and Evidence from sub-Saharan Africa

Author

Listed:
  • WELLMAN, ELIZABETH IAMS

Abstract

Since 1990, nearly 100 countries extended voting rights to citizens living abroad, including 32 in sub-Saharan Africa. However, the actual ability for emigrants to vote in subsequent elections varies widely. Whereas others view diaspora enfranchisement as a signal to emigrant and international audiences, I argue that incumbent parties expand or restrict emigrant voter access depending on party perceptions of political support abroad. I first leverage the multiple reversals over emigrant inclusion in South African elections since 1994 to illuminate how changing dynamics between an incumbent party and citizens abroad shape emigrant voter access. I further test my argument with an original dataset covering multiple dimensions of external voting in every African election where emigrants had voting rights from 1990 to 2015. I find a robust relationship between emigrant voter access and diaspora support for the incumbent party.

Suggested Citation

  • Wellman, Elizabeth Iams, 2021. "Emigrant Inclusion in Home Country Elections: Theory and Evidence from sub-Saharan Africa," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 115(1), pages 82-96, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:115:y:2021:i:1:p:82-96_7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055420000866/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Giesing, Yvonne & Schikora, Felicitas, 2023. "Emigrants’ missing votes," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    2. Anna Kyriazi & Mariana S. Mendes & Julia Rone & Manès Weisskircher, 2023. "The Politics of Emigration in Europe: A Research Agenda," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(2), pages 563-575, March.
    3. Sebastián Umpierrez de Reguero & Patricio Navia, 2024. "Why Do Non‐Resident Citizens Get Elected? Candidates' Electoral Success in Ecuadorian Extraterritorial Districts," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 12.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:115:y:2021:i:1:p:82-96_7. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.