Thread by @_sarahkhan

this is going to be a long thread about why i, a political scientist, am going to vote in the Pakistani General Elections on 25 July (and also other things) 1/N

for the past months I have felt incredibly conflicted about the repressive environment in Pakistan in the lead up to elections. this past week with so many lives lost, everything has felt utterly meaningless 2/N

i spent the better part of a year on a project on women’s voter turnout with amazing coauthors, the best survey team I’ve ever worked with, and dedicated partner orgs. but recently it has felt hollow in the face of bigger issues 3/N

we had all thought so hard about how to design interventions get women to engage with the election, yet here i was in a newsfeed-anxiety cycle feeling totally disillusioned and disengaged myself 4/N

being a voter in the election for which you are also trying to understand voter behavior is a double edged sword. i am so so grateful for the opportunity to do my research in my home country but this felt/feels really hard 5/N

academics often try to rationalize our emotional responses (lol don't try this at home) so i reread an article about “deliberate disengagement” in Zimbabwe by k.croke, @guygrossman, h.larreguy and j.marshall: cambridge.org/core/journals/… 6/N

"in electoral authoritarian regimes, educated voters may instead deliberately disengage. If education increases critical capacities, political awareness, and support for democracy, educated citizens may believe that participation is futile or legitimizes autocrats.” 7/N

i could FEEL this happening to me in real time. in a situation of reduced freedoms, i felt the futility mentioned in that abstract in really visceral way 8/N

sometimes, naming the feeling (even if it’s a journal article reference) is useful. there is a mental health side to this anxiety, but i also knew that i needed to feel convinced of the importance of voting in a less than transparent election. 9/N

i needed this for my own decision to vote, but also to be able to sleep at night knowing that an effort encouraging thousands of women to turnout to vote on election day was not a disingenuous exercise 10/N

most “voting is important” arguments weren’t doing it for me. i know i should be taking heart in the fact that there are genuinely impressive candidates in some races & even if they don’t win, they are pushing things in the right direction 11/N

but 7+ years of social science grad school has conditioned me to needing more solid proof that voting in this election will make a positive difference 12/N

then this morning i read @lukesonnet and @ibbikahn 's great piece about how incumbents in competitive constituencies seem to be paying more taxes
tribune.com.pk/story/1759015/… 13/N

it reminded me of @therabz excellent paper on how tax payments among competitively elected legislators following the 2013 General Elections rabiamalik.net/uploads/5/8/7/… 14/N

and my coauthors a.cheema, @shaandana and @asadliaqat 's work on how service delivery improves under greater political competition at all levels makingallvoicescount.org/publication/co… 15/N

and @NiloSiddiqui & @GarethNellis incredible work on how levels of violence depend on which party gets elected and the electoral pressures they face cambridge.org/core/journals/… 16/N

sth we know about democracy is that competition produces better outcomes. we know this from other contexts and now more & more scholars are testing theories using evidence from Pakistan, developing new theories, and helping us understand how Pakistan’s politics works. 17/N

so here’s the political science argument for voting in this election that i can get behind: Competition Matters. it’s a real lever of pressure that ordinary citizens hold. we need to vote to keep things competitive and keep the pressure on. 18/N

thank you to all the people doing the research to remind me of this thing that I learnt in the classroom but seemed to have forgotten in the midst of all this chaos. Please go vote on 25 July to keep the pressure on our representatives. 19/N

a footnote: i mention anxiety in this thread. the research i referenced has helped me be re-convinced about why to vote, but please know that reading journal articles isn’t how i take care of my mental health. happy to speak privately w/anyone about that in more detail 20/20