Voting Beyond Borders: Diaspora (Dis)Enfranchisement in Africa

Over 281 million people currently live in a country different from where they were born, an increase of 84% since 1990. How does the democratic norm of universal suffrage operate in an era of burgeoning international mobility? Voting Beyond Borders examines the conditions under which governments include citizens abroad in national elections. In 1990, only 37 countries extended voting rights to their diasporas; today, over 140 countries legally enfranchise citizens abroad. These policies are not inconsequential; diaspora votes have determined the winner in multiple recent presidential elections, including in Cabo Verde, Moldova, and Romania.

Prior work interprets the rise of emigrant enfranchisement as a state strategy to strengthen ties to citizens abroad, or as an emerging norm associated with political liberalization. Empirical analysis of emigrant enfranchisement has focused primarily on the moment of legal extension. I examine legal adoption and effective implementation as two distinct political processes, and show why – even though most countries offer diaspora voting in principle – there is significant variation in diaspora voting in practice. I argue that the incumbent party’s electoral logic primarily drives this variation. I develop a Partisan Theory of Emigrant Enfranchisement, which predicts that emigrant enfranchisement will continue to be a contentious process and a source of partisan conflict.

I use a multi-method approach to test the observable implications of my argument. Through in-depth case studies and cross-national analysis of original datasets, the book first illuminates how de jure emigrant enfranchisement in Africa is not only a legislative battleground, but often occurs as part of larger processes including negotiated post-conflict transitions, constitutional reforms, and court rulings. This suggests that for many countries, emigrant enfranchisement is not a proactive, positive policy choice made by politicians but an unintended byproduct of emerging global norms and transnational processes. My argument implies many countries are in fact “false positives,” where diaspora voting rights exist despite the preferences of government leaders.

I then focus on the politics over emigrant inclusion during subsequent elections. I analyze an original dataset of emigrant enfranchisement in sub-Saharan Africa that covers multiple dimensions of external voting access for every national election in the region since 1990. I combine this analysis with insights from dozens of interviews and archival documents collected over the past 8 years, including 8 months of fieldwork in South Africa. I find that incumbent governments are likely to expand external voter access only if they believe the diaspora will vote for their party.

The in-depth case studies of Cabo Verde, Kenya, South Africa, and Zimbabwe further reveal how uncertainty about the diaspora and the dynamics of domestic electoral competition interact to shape both external voting policy and provisions. Moreover, the cases also highlight party resistance and restrictive external voting in contexts where alternative explanations predict high levels of emigrant inclusion, as well as advocacy efforts to expand diaspora participation. Thus, in addition to its theoretical motivation, this book makes a significant empirical contribution by providing the first comprehensive, systematic accounting of diaspora voting in sub-Saharan Africa as well as producing positive and negative case studies that broaden our knowledge of emigrant inclusion (and exclusion) in electoral politics.