Replication Data for: Drivers of Political Participation: The Role of Partisanship, Identity and Incentives in Mobilizing Zambian Citizens

Scholars and policymakers widely view identity as a key driver of African citizens’ political engagement. In doing so, however, they have emphasized ethnicity and largely sidelined other identities, including gender, local origin, shared residency, and partisanship. In this paper, we explore which identities drive political engagement and why they do so. We employ an original survey experiment that includes various identities and other incentives that may drive citizens’ participation around Zambia’s 2021 national elections. We find that partisanship most influences individuals’ stated willingness to campaign for a candidate or meet with an MP, while ethnicity and social incentives play less significant roles. Finally, we explore the mechanisms underpinning these results and find that citizens anticipate sanctions if they fail to support a co-partisan but not a co-ethnic candidate. These findings have important implications for understanding political engagement and democratic development throughout the region.This dataset provides all the variables needed to replicate the results in the journal article "Drivers of Political Participation: The Role of Partisanship, Identity and Incentives in Mobilizing Zambian Citizens", published in Comparative Political Studies.

The dataset contains variables from the Zambian Election Panel Study (ZEPS), including data from a survey experiment on ethnicity, partisanship and political participation around the 2021 general elections. The data was merged with data on party strongholds in the 2016 and 2021 general elections from the Electoral Commission in Zambia.

学界与政策制定者普遍将身份认同视作非洲公民政治参与的核心驱动因素。然而，此类研究多侧重于族群身份（ethnicity），却在很大程度上边缘化了其他身份维度，诸如性别、本土出身、共同居住经历与党派归属（partisanship）。本研究旨在探究究竟哪些身份维度会驱动政治参与，及其背后的作用机制。我们依托一项原创性调查实验开展分析，实验覆盖了可能影响赞比亚2021年全国大选期间公民政治参与的各类身份变量与激励因素。研究结果表明，党派归属对个体表明的为候选人竞选拉票或会见议员的意愿影响最为显著，而族群身份与社会激励的作用则相对有限。进一步剖析上述结果的作用机制后，我们发现公民会预判，若不支持同党派候选人将面临制裁，但针对同族候选人则无此类预期。上述发现对于理解整个非洲地区的政治参与与民主发展具有重要的理论与实践参考价值。本数据集包含了复刻发表于《Comparative Political Studies》的期刊论文《Drivers of Political Participation: The Role of Partisanship, Identity and Incentives in Mobilizing Zambian Citizens》所需的全部变量。
本数据集的数据源自赞比亚选举追踪调查（Zambian Election Panel Study, ZEPS），涵盖2021年大选前后关于族群身份、党派归属与政治参与的调查实验数据。我们还将上述数据与赞比亚选举委员会公布的2016年及2021年大选党派据点数据进行了合并。