Civic education and voting under authoritarianism

Why do citizens vote in authoritarian elections? New research co-authored by Edmund Malesky examines whether authoritarian regimes can use civic education to motivate electoral participation.

While early scholarship emphasized economic incentives and clientelistic payoffs as drivers of voter turnout, Malesky and his co-authors – Trung-Anh Nguyen, a PhD candidate at Duke University; Hoang Phan Dung, Fulbright University of Vietnam; Khuu Dang Tien, Ho Chi Minh City School of Economics; and Ky Nam Nguyen, Fulbright University of Vietnam – tested the role of civic education by conducting a field experiment leveraging Vietnam’s state-led efforts to engage youth voters during the 2021 Vietnamese National Assembly (VNA) election.

The authors amplified a government-approved civic education treatment that explained the VNA's role and citizens' electoral responsibilities.

While the civic education treatment did not increase voter turnout, the results showed the efforts meaningfully increased interest in the VNA and may have reduced illegal proxy voting—a common practice in Vietnam in which individuals cast ballots on behalf of absent family members.

"Civic Education and Voting under Authoritarianism: A Field Experiment during the 2021 Vietnamese National Assembly Election" is forthcoming in the Journal of Politics.

Edmund Malesky, professor of political economy and director of the Duke Center for International Development, is a specialist on Southeast Asia, particularly Vietnam. His research agenda lies at the intersection of comparative and international political economy, falling into three major categories: 1) Authoritarian political institutions and their consequences; 2) The political influence of foreign direct investment and multinational corporations; and 3) Political institutions, private business development, and formalization.

Trung-Anh Nguyen is a PhD candidate in Duke's Department of Political Science. With interests in authoritarian politics, single-party regimes, and Southeast Asia, her research projects explore how institutional arrangements have shaped political behaviors and the variation in state capacity among autocracies.