The Political Economy of Information Provision in Developing Democracies

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-07

Political public opinion polling has quickly spread across the world into many developing democratic contexts. However, little research to date has either sought to probe this explosion in public opinion information cross-nationally or examine how this information is used by political elites, particularly during electoral cycles. This project develops a framework to examine political public opinion data and how elites react to them, particularly in developing democracies. The project examines the correlates of the presence of public opinion polling on a macro level, drawing on cross-national data, and probes what impact these data have on a micro level, drawing on elite interviews with a sample of over 100 candidates who ran for elected office in Georgia and the coding of newspapers and of elite interviews in Kenya and Georgia.