Reducing or Reinforcing In-Group Preferences? An Experiment on Information and Ethnic Voting

We thank EGAP for generous funding. The study is part of a larger Metaketa, a regranting initiative organized and administered by EGAP to accumulate knowledge about the relationship between information and accountability across country contexts. The registered preanalysis plan for the Metaketa can be found at: http://egap.org/registration/736. The registered preanalysis plan for this particular study can be found at: http://egap.org/registration/735. We thank Amanda Pinkston for sharing 2011 legislative election data and Ana Quiroz for excellent research assistance. We thank participants at Cornell University, George Washington University, Georgetown University, Harvard University, MPSA, Princeton University, University of Virgina, WGAPE, and Yale University, as well as Jake Bowers, Thad Dunning, Karen Ferree, Guy Grossman, Nahomi Ichino, Janet Lewis, Dan Nielsen, Ken Opalo, Betsy Paluck, Dan Posner, Leonard Wantchekon, Kadir Yildirim, the Editors of QJPS, and several anonymous reviewers for helpful comments. This research was conducted in collaboration with the Centre de Promotion de la Démocratie et du Développement (CEPRODE), and we thank Adam Chabi Bouko for leading the implementation effort. Our project received ethics approval from UCSD, Texas A&M, GWU, and Harvard University. We also obtained permission to conduct the study from the President of the National Assembly of Benin. In each study village, permission to conduct research was obtained from the chief and consent was obtained from each surveyed participant in the study.