Voter Behavior

JOP — pp. 000-000 2026-04-17 Original Do Voters Value Relief over Preparedness? Evidence from Disaster Policies in Malawi Felix Hartmann Abstract Growing evidence suggests that voters reward politicians for spending on disaster relief but not disaster preparedness. Yet, we know little about the mechanisms that underpin this pattern. Is it because voters generally value relief over preparedness? Or is it because voters expect preparedness policies to be less effective compared to relief policies? I test both mechanisms using a conjoint experiment in rural Malawi in which participants choose between two hypothetical candidates randomly varying attributes about their preparedness and relief policies. I find that respondents reward relief efforts over preparedness efforts, but they value effective preparedness similarly to effective relief. Additionally, respondents are more likely to reward preparedness efforts if they repeatedly observe that they are effective in mitigating disaster damages. Taken together, the evidence suggests that voters have pessimistic expectations about the effectiveness of preparedness policies but would reward preparedness similarly to relief if it is known to be effective.

APSR — pp. 1-20 2026-03-23 Original The Effects of Exposure to New Electoral Rules: Field Experimental Evidence from Sierra Leone AVI AHUJA, GWYNETH MCCLENDON Abstract How do electoral rules influence voters? We build on existing research that has examined voter, rather than elite, reactions to electoral rules and implement a field experiment around a switch from single-member plurality rules to multi-member closed-list proportional rules (PR) in Sierra Leone, expanding the study of electoral rules’ influence on voters further into the Global South. We find that exposure to multimember district/PR increased women’s commitment to voting and decreased both men’s and women’s support for particularistic campaign appeals in this context. These results likely flow from voters’ perceptions of whether politicians are accountable to parties or to voters under different systems, rather than from increased party competition, new party entry, a clear switch to programmatic party competition, or increased trust in elections. We discuss the implications for studying electoral rules in clientelistic democracies.