Local Dynamics of Electoral Manipulation in Cambodia

This paper examines when, where and why competitive authoritarian regimes engage in electoral manipulation. In implementing fraud at certain times and in certain locations but not others, do autocrats primarily aim to (a) project strength; (b) learn about the genuine popularity of the opposition; or (c) simply find a least-cost solution to retain office? The project develops a single case study of the Cambodian election 2013 to assess these competing arguments with a novel village-level dataset of domestic election observer reports and leaked commune-level data on voter registration.