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The Effects of Exposure to New Electoral Rules: Field Experimental Evidence from Sierra Leone

Avi Ahuja & Gwyneth McClendon

American Political Science Review2026https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003055426101518article
AJG 4*ABDC A*
Weight
0.50

What the paper says

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.

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003055426101518

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@article{avi2026,
  title        = {{The Effects of Exposure to New Electoral Rules: Field Experimental Evidence from Sierra Leone}},
  author       = {Avi Ahuja & Gwyneth McClendon},
  journal      = {American Political Science Review},
  year         = {2026},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003055426101518},
}

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The Effects of Exposure to New Electoral Rules: Field Experimental Evidence from Sierra Leone

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Evidence weight

0.50

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20
M · momentum0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.