Robert Mattes

University of Strathclyde · School of Government and Public Policy

At a time when George Gallup described public opinion polls as “just out of their swaddling clothes”, Geoffrey Pyke’s 1939 attempt to gauge what ordinary Germans thought about the Nazis – and the prospect of war with Britain, France and Russia – was unprecedented. Without the support or backing of officials in Whitehall, Pyke concocted an ambitious...

At a time when George Gallup described public opinion polls as “just out of their swaddling clothes”, Geoffrey Pyke’s 1939 attempt to gauge what ordinary Germans thought about the Nazis – and the prospect of war with Britain, France and Russia – was unprecedented. Without the support or backing of officials in Whitehall, Pyke concocted an elaborate...

Much of what we know about public support for democracy is based on survey questions about “democracy,” a term that varies in meaning across countries and likely prompts uncritically supportive responses. This paper proposes a new approach to measuring support for democracy. We develop a battery of 17 survey questions that cover all eight component...

In South Africa, demand for housing close to viable/sustained sources of employment has far outstripped supply; and the size of the population living in temporary structures/shacks (and in poorly serviced informal settlements) has continued to increase. While such dwellings and settlements pose a number of established risks to the health of their r...

In South Africa, demand for housing close to viable/sustained sources of employment has far outstripped supply; and the size of the population living in temporary structures/shacks (and in poorly serviced informal settlements) has continued to increase. While such dwellings and settlements pose a number of established risks to the health of their r...

Whether depicted as bloated, extractive, or remote from the lives of ordinary citizens, the African state is widely seen to lack the necessary capacity to provide for the physical and material security of its citizens or to command legitimacy. Yet scholars have rarely attempted to assess the performance of the African state through the prism of the...

Aims: We examined whether first-hand experience of ill-health and economic hardship during the COVID-19 pandemic might strengthen public support for vaccination, and for the reallocation of health sector funding towards health emergency preparedness in South Africa - a country in which high rates of vaccine hesitancy go hand in hand with widespread...

Political parties are a vital element in the quality of representative democracy, playing a crucial role in mobilization, competition, governance, and accountability. Despite their importance, however, we currently know relatively little about how political parties in Africa are organized, with most evidence restricted to journalistic accounts or c...

The conventional view of Africa’s political parties holds that they are organizationally weak, with little presence at the grass roots. Yet, few studies are based on systematically collected data about more than a handful of parties or countries at any given point. In this paper, we attempt to remedy this situation, by focusing on one crucial aspec...

The conventional view holds that most of Africa's political parties are organizationally weak, with little grassroots presence. Yet few studies are based on systematically collected data about more than a handful of parties or countries at any given point. In this paper, we focus on one crucial aspect of party organization-the local presence that e...

This chapter provides evidence that partisan identification exists in Africa polities, though its extent varies considerably across countries. The authors also find that partisanship helps people organize their political world. It shapes the way they vote, and also exercises important influences on citizens propensity to become involved in a wide r...

Do men and women representatives hold different legislative priorities? Do these priorities align with citizens who share their gender? Whereas substantive representation theorists suggest legislators’ priorities should align with their cogender constituents, Downsian-based theories suggest no role for gender. We test these differing expectations t...

From a modernization perspective, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America—two of the poorest regions in the world—conform to one another in that citizens of both regions express very low levels of horizontal, generalized interpersonal trust. Indeed, these two regions are among the least trusting societies in the world. Both are low in terms of “bridgi...

Afrobarometer data collected three decades after Joel Barkan’s pioneering survey of rural Kenyans confirm his insights that voters stress MPs’ linkage roles in terms of representation (carrying views upward to the capital) and constituency service (bringing goods downward from national government) over their institutional roles (lawmaking and overs...

Idasa and Afrobarometer public opinion surveys conducted since 1994 reveal that levels of reported experiences with crime are unchanged over the past four years, but that public perceptions of overall safety and the performance of the police are actually improving. Of greatest concern is that the January-February 2006 survey found that almost half...

Afrobarometer’s regular surveys of public attitudes toward governance, democracy and economics in 18 African countries shows that experiences of crime and concerns over safety in South Africa are indeed quite prevalent, but are by no means exceptional. People in some African countries are as, or even more, fearful than South Africans, and there are...

The Limits of Democratic Governance in South Africa by Louis Picard and Thomas MogaleBoulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2015. Pp. 277. $68.50 (hbk) - Volume 54 Issue 1 - Robert Mattes

While South Africa has seen a significant increase in the post-apartheid period in the size of the Black middle class, the attitudinal consequences of indicators of the middle class, as of 2011, are inconsistent and modest in size. While they are no more likely to hold democratic values than other Black South Africans, they are more likely to want...

While it has clearly been a minority tendency within the discipline, there is a significant tradition of systematic, quantitative research on South African society, politics, and democracy that has contributed a great deal to our understanding of these issues. Yet much of this research has actually been carried out by South African psychologists an...

Against the theory on the nexus of higher education and citizenship, this article brings together the main findings and conclusions of three related studies with African mass publics, parliamentarians from African legislatures, and students from three African flagship universities, conducted by the Higher Education Research and Advocacy Network in...

South Africa's 1996 Constitution ushered in a democratic regime that brought new freedoms and rights and greatly expanded opportunities for political participation. In 1998, South Africa also implemented a new school curriculum intended, among other things, to promote democratic and other constitutional values. At the same time, South Africa has un...

Diamond and Morlino (2005) propose a quality of democracy framework that includes eight dimensions, but they restrict use of opinion data to measuring only one of these: ‘responsiveness’. However, we argue that citizen experiences and evaluations are essential pieces of data that may also enable us to capture valid ‘insider’ measures of procedural...

When millions of South Africans lined up to vote in the country’s historic founding 1994 election, public opinion polling seemed set to become a regular and important part of South Africa’s new democratic system. Under apartheid, a flourishing private research sector had emerged and the state had developed a strong opinion research facility to moni...

Whether and how higher education in Africa contributes to democratisation beyond producing the professionals that are necessary for developing and sustaining a modern political system, remains an unresolved question. This report, then, represents an attempt to address the question of whether there are university specific mechanisms or pathways by w...

Variance in partisan choice among South African voters can be predicted on the basis of what is known about the way voters see economic trends, evaluate government performance, perceive political parties, and rate party leaders. However, in this analysis it is demonstrated that factors related to racial divisions shape and filter how voters perceiv...

Outsiders sometimes like to impose their ideas on how Africans should govern their countries. but what do Africans themselves want? Surveys in 20 sub-Saharan countries reveal a widespread rejection of dictatorships and 'big man' leadership - suggesting a desire for a more accountable form of government. but to whom, then, must government be account...

This article seeks to identify whether any elements of governance or democracy are causal determinants of the effectiveness of policies directed at children affected by AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. If we can identify any such political factors, we will better understand why some countries respond to AIDS policies more effectively, but such findings...

This book, titled Citizenship and governance in Mozambique, is a collection of 5 articles produced by 6 researchers, covering topics like elections, decentralization, associativism and information and citizenship. Earlier versions of these articles were presented at the inaugural International Conference of IESE, in 2007.

In this article, I use public opinion data collected over the past decade to probe three widely held assumptions about local government and public participation in South Africa. The first, widely held by advocates of political decentralisation and devolution of power, posits a direct relationship between the physical proximity of government institu...

This article reports the results of a 2002 survey of emigration potential among a representative sample of 4784 postgraduate and final-year undergraduate students at South Africa's tertiary educational institutions. The authors created a valid and reliable index of emigration potential and found slightly higher levels than those measured by identic...

Conventional views of African politics imply that Africans' political opinions are based either on enduring cultural values or their positions in the social structure. In contrast, we argue that Africans form attitudes to democracy based upon what they learn about what it is and does. This learning hypothesis is tested against competing cultural, i...

Based on the Afrobarometer, a survey research project, this examination of public opinion in sub-Saharan Africa reveals what ordinary Africans think about democracy and market reforms, subjects on which almost nothing is otherwise known. The authors reveal that widespread support for democracy in Africa is shallow and that Africans consequently fee...

This chapter proceeds from the assumption that citizens vote for the political party they think is best fit to govern them and protect their interests. As political scientist V. O. Key succinctly put it: “Voters are not fools.”1 Or, in Christopher Achen’s formulation, voters are “neither geniuses nor saints…. Voters do not ignore information they h...

This book is a fascinating exploration of public opinion in sub-Saharan Africa. Based on the Afrobarometer, a comprehensive cross-national survey research project, it reveals what ordinary Africans think about democracy and market reform, subjects on which almost nothing is otherwise known. The authors find that support for democracy in Africa is w...

This article is based on a survey of popular attitudes towards the pure list system that is South Africa's proportional representation electoral system. While the reported findings are broadly positive there are some notable exceptions, located disproportionately among racial minorities and also among sizable numbers of black respondents. Pure prop...

The growth of young, technology-based firms has received considerable attention in the literature given their importance for the generation and creation of economic wealth. Taking a strategic management perspective, we link the entrepreneurial strategy deployed by young, technology-based firms with firm growth. In line with recent research, we cons...

Structural theories predict that the cues of social identity, particularly ethnicity, should exert a strong influence upon voting choices and party support in developing societies with low levels of education and minimal access to the news media. To explore these issues, this study seeks to analyze the influence of ethno-linguistic and ethno-racial...

Journal of Democracy 13.1 (2002) 22-36 Perhaps more than any other democratizing country, South Africa generates widely differing assessments of the present state and likely future prospects of its democracy. If one takes the long view -- comparing South Africa today to where it was just 12 years ago -- it is difficult not to be enthusiastic about...

Although a more balanced debate about cross-border migration in South Africa is starting to take place, xenophobic stereotypes about migrants of African origin are still all too common. Allusions to a "flood of illegal aliens" who bring disease and crime to the country and who are seen to be a threat to the social and fiscal stability of South Afri...

Comparative analysis of original survey data from Ghana, Zambia and South Africa is used here to assess the attitudes of African citizens towards democracy. Is democracy valued intrinsically (as an end in itself) or instrumentally (for example, as a means to improving material living standards)? We find as much popular support for democracy in Afri...

Sub-Saharan Africa has witnessed the end of foreign colonial rule, the rise and fall of autocratic political regimes, and the disappearance of statist command economies. The challenges were to turn populations into coherent nations owing allegiance to the state; to democratise the state structures that govern these populations; and to liberalise th...

Although Africa is a latecomer to democratization, Africans overwhelmingly support democracy, and their conception of democracy is surprisingly liberal.

In this article, we set out the basic points of the theoretical framework of voter choice that underlie the Opinion ’99 research project. In contrast to prevailing theories that have characterized voter choice in South Africa as an ethnic or racial census, this approach emphasizes the role of how voters learn about government performance and the al...

Journal of Democracy 9.1 (1998) 95-110 As recently as January 1990, almost all observers would have agreed that the odds were stacked heavily against a successful transition to democracy in South Africa. In the aftermath of the "miracle election" of April 1994, however, the odds might appear, at first glance, to favor a successful consolidation of...

In this paper, we examine the political consequences of quality of life, focusing on the link between perceived well-being and people's support for democratic government. We make two key distinctions. First of all, with regard to quality of life, we distinguish between assessments of personal, or household, quality of life, and assessments of colle...

This report presents evidence from a recent national post-election study concerning South Africa's prospects for developing into either a truly competitive multi-party system or the one-party-dominant system characteristic of so many other emerging democracies. Focusing on long-term party identification, the evidence indicates that the African Nati...

Allister Sparks, TOMORROW IS ANOTHER COUNTRY: THE INSIDE STORY OF SOUTH AFRICA'S NEGOTIATED REVOLUTION. Johannesburg: Struik, 1994, pp. 254, paper. Paul M Sniderman and Thomas Piazza, THE SCAR OF RACE. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993, pp. 207. Janina Frentzel‐Zagorska (ed.), FROM A ONE‐PARTY STATE TO DEMOCRACY: TRANSITION IN EASTERN EUROP...

Anthony Minnaar, Ian Liebenberg and Carl Schutte (Eds.), THE HIDDEN HAND: COVERT OPERATIONS IN SOUTH AFRICA, Pretoria: Human Sciences Research Council, 1994, pp. 474. N. Steytler, J. Murphy, P. De Vos and M. Rwelamira (Eds.) FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS.. Cape Town: Juta and Co., 1994, pp. 269. Amato, R. UNDERSTANDING THE NEW CONSTITUTION.. Cape Town: S...

The debate about appropriate democratic national institutions in South Africa has focused on the electoral system and the executive but has failed to address the benefits and drawbacks of differing types of legislatures. Yet a properly designed legislature which is truly politically independent offers several important advantages for constitutional...

The Afrobarometer has developed an experiential measure of lived poverty (how frequently people go without basic ecessities during the course of a year) that measures a portion of the central core of the concept of poverty not captured by existing objective or subjective measures. Empirically, the measure has strong individual level construct valid...