Electoral Politics in Sri Lanka

Presidential Elections, Manipulation and Democracy

S. I. Keethaponcalan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000613490
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Campagnes politiques et élections

This volume examines and analyses electoral politics in Sri Lanka through the theoretical framework of manipulation. The following questions guided the study: how do political actors manipulate elections, and what are the salient features of electoral politics in Sri Lanka? Primary and secondary data formed the basis of the analysis, examining eight presidential elections. The research findings indicated that Sri Lankan governments, political parties and political leaders have taken advantage ofsix types of electoral manipulation, including constitutional tinkering, field fixing, time fixing, vote suppression, process manipulation and resource manipulation. Through a close examination ofeight presidential elections, research carried out for the volume found that elections are often associated with violence; presidential elections are mainly a majoritarian affair in which minority communities play only a marginal role; there is a significant gender imbalance, as women's participation in the electoral process is very limited; despite the presence of a large number of candidates contesting the election, it always remains a two-way race; and amid extensive manipulation and other problems, voter participation tends to be high.

This volume will be a valuable resource for students, academics and researchers who focus on democracy, good governance, electoral studies and South Asian politics and history, and will enhance the conceptual foundation of democracy advocates and activists.

1 Theoretical overview

DOI: 10.4324/9781003304685-1

Introduction

Sri Lankan elections and electoral processes are problematic. They are impacted by multiple issues that hamper democracy. Often elections involve fraud, malpractice and violence. Nevertheless, the pilot study conducted on the presidential elections indicated that one of the most significant problems associated with Sri Lankan elections and electoral processes is manipulation: manipulation by governments, political parties and political leaders. Meanwhile, electoral manipulation as a research problem has been gaining prominence, due to the recognition that it is a significant issue for democracy and democratic governance. Therefore, this research uses the ‘manipulation’ lens to understand the nature and characteristics of electoral politics in Sri Lanka.

This chapter starts with an introduction to the notion of manipulation from a theoretical perspective. The following section surveys the growing literature on electoral manipulation, most of which was published recently. Publications on electoral manipulation proliferated in the early 2000s. As indicated in the preface to this book, the focus is on Sri Lanka’s presidential elections. The British colonial administrators left behind a well-established parliamentary system of governance in the country. Sri Lanka retained the Westminster form of governance for three decades after its independence in 1948. Nevertheless, it shifted to a presidential form of governance in 1978, and eight presidential elections have since been conducted under the new dispensation. It is essential to understand the ‘system’ before moving on to the election analysis. Therefore, the following section introduces the existing presidential system in Sri Lanka. The chapter also incorporates a section on methodology.

What is manipulation?

The term manipulation is used to mean different things under different contexts. For example, fascial manipulation is a therapy technique used to restore muscle balance (Day 2018). Experimental manipulation denotes the process whereby researchers alter independent variables to determine the research outcome (Allen 2017). This study deals with manipulation as ‘human behaviour’. Manipulation as a research problem and a subject of scholarly debate has gained significance recently. Researchers have been looking into many dimensions of manipulation, including, for example, the relationship between manipulation and evolution (Reisman and Forber 2005) and manipulation and moral responsibility (Fischer 2003). Electoral manipulation could also be considered a part of this growing literature. Electoral manipulation is the subject of the next section. Therefore, in this section, the focus is on the meaning and definitions of manipulation. The section answers the question: what is manipulation?

Some analysts take a relatively broad approach in defining manipulation. For example, Noggle (1996), in his influential work on manipulation, suggested that manipulation, or what he called manipulative action, ‘is the attempt to get someone’s beliefs, desires, or emotions to violate these norms, to fall short of these ideals’ (p. 44). In keeping with Noggle’s notion of manipulation, Barnhill (2014) defined it as ‘directly influencing someone’s beliefs, desires, or emotions such that she falls short of ideals for belief, desire, or emotion in ways typically not in her self-interest or likely not in her self-interest in the present context’ (p. 52). Parker’s (1972) means of manipulation entailed

political power; physical force; authority relationships; the withholding or bestowal of governmental largess; the withholding or infliction of punishment; rhetoric, which by itself involves solely the use of language; and nonverbal techniques of conditioning an audience toward adherence, such as the use of music, lighting, art, motion and the like.

(p. 69)

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines manipulation as the ‘radical programming or reprogramming of all or most of an agent’s beliefs, desires, and mental state’. This definition suggests that manipulation involves altering a target’s beliefs and actions by using the manipulator’s power.

In relation to the meaning and definition of manipulation, dictionaries are simple, straightforward and clear. For example, the Cambridge English Dictionary defines manipulation as ‘controlling someone or something to your own advantage, often unfairly or dishonestly’. Similarly, one of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary definitions states that manipulation is ‘to control or play upon by artful, or unfair, or insidious means especially to one’s own advantage’.

A related question is whether manipulation involves deception on the part of the manipulator. Many believe that manipulation involves deception. For example, Green and Pawlak (1983) pointed out that manipulation in organizational set-ups ‘is the conscious control of another’s behavior, without his knowledge or consent, by the control of communication or activities that have meaning to the other person in order to achieve one’s own objectives’ (p. 36). Belohrad (2019) agreed that manipulation involves deception in relation to the manipulator’s intentions. Noggle (1996), on the other hand, argued that manipulation is not necessarily deceptive. He believed that there are ‘forms of manipulation that do not involve deception’ (p. 43). This study endorses Noggle’s view on the relationship between manipulation and deception. Some commentators believe that manipulation could involve coercion. Parker (1972), for example, included physical force as a means of manipulation. However, many analysts do not believe that coercion is part of manipulation. For example, while underscoring the differences between coercion and manipulation, Rudinow (1978) argued that coercion is explicit in its effort to alter the target’s behaviour. He pointed out that ‘manipulation seems in some way more mysterious about it’ (p. 339). This research agrees that coercion and violence are not part of manipulative actions. Hence, they should be analysed independently.

Interestingly, there has been a debate on whether manipulation is moral or immoral. Some believe that it is not necessarily immoral. For example, Wood (2014) argued that, at times, manipulation could be morally neutral. Dowding and Van Hees (2007) made a distinction between what they called sincere and non-sincere manipulation. Despite these outliers, an overwhelming majority of those who studied manipulation agree that it is immoral. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy points out that it is generally assumed that manipulation entails ‘an element of moral disapprobation’. Belohrad (2019) pointed out that ‘since manipulation contains an element of deception, it is … immoral’ (p. 447). Green and Pawlak (1993) claimed that ‘in the absence of extenuating circumstances and special considerations, manipulation should be avoided’ (p. 41).

Electoral manipulation

Although the problem of electoral manipulation concerning democracy and democratic governance was flagged up in the late 20th century, studies on electoral manipulation have intensified in the recent past. Most of the studies were published in the early 21st century. Therefore, electoral manipulation could be depicted as an emerging frontier of democracy studies. Since the subject matter is an upcoming theme, the literature reflects a scattered character, as no specific issue has received concentrated attention. There are isolated studies on, for example, manipulation and post-election protest (Harvey and Mukherjee 2020), manipulation and institutions of the state (Gehlbach and Simpser 2014), and manipulation and citizens’ trust in the electoral process (Kerr and Luhrmann 2017). Nevertheless, the common theme that runs through almost all the studies is that electoral manipulation undermines democracy. This survey will also demonstrate that Sri Lanka’s democratic fragility has not been studied through the lens of electoral manipulation. Critically examining electoral manipulation in Sri Lanka is crucial because, despite the presence of electoral fraud and violence for example, manipulation is the predominant form of abuse that undercuts democratic credentials of elections and governance.

Electoral manipulation can be committed by governments, political parties, private entities and voters. A small number of studies have highlighted the fact that voters can indeed manipulate elections. For example, one of the early studies on electoral manipulation was undertaken by Gibbard (1973). Gibbard looked at manipulation by voters through elements of game theory and argued that no voting system can escape strategic voting by voters. By strategic voting, Gibbard meant voters securing their preferred outcome through ‘misrepresentation’ of their preferences (p. 587). In a recent study, Hartvigsen (2008) investigated vote trading. Vote trading is an internet-based scheme that allows American voters to vote in a different state instead of their home state in order to have ‘more impact’ (p. 13). Hartvigsen argued that vote trading amounts to ‘gaming the system’, which involves ethical problems (p. 20). Hartvigsen’s study emphasized the need to minimize the effectiveness of vote trading. Nevertheless, citizen manipulation is not the focus of the present study.

This study focuses on manipulation by governments, political leaders and political parties. Characteristically, the bulk of the existing literature on electoral manipulation concentrates on governments and political parties. Simpser (2013) raised the question: why do governments and parties manipulate elections? Simpser argued that electoral manipulation is ‘more than winning’ (p. xv). His theory suggests that manipulation projects the power of the manipulator. He suggested that excessive manipulation could imply that the manipulating party is strong, and that the failure to manipulate may project weakness. He maintained that his theory ‘proposes the argument that electoral manipulation can potentially yield substantially more than simply winning the election at hand’ (p. 3). This is a controversial argument, which should be tested with more cases. Another study by Simpser (2012) examined the nexus between electoral manipulation and voter turnout in Mexico. This study suggested that there is a negative correlation between electoral manipulation and voter participation. Simpser (2012) maintained that excessive manipulation by Mexico’s ruling party before 1990 ‘significantly depressed voter participation’ (p. 793). Manipulation of the election timing has also been studied. For example, Beckman and Schleiter (2020) examined the relationship between economic manipulation and election timing in parliamentary systems. This research concluded that governments are less likely to use economic manipulation to enhance their chances of victory when time can be manipulated.

The problem of vote buying was looked at by Rueda (2017) and Ham and Lindberg (2015). Ham and Lindberg examined data from 286 elections held between 1986 and 2021 in Africa and concluded that democratization escalated vote buying as what they called cheap forms of manipulation became less viable. They concluded that ‘the future of democracy in Africa means more money in politics, more patronage and more clientelistic offers thrown around’ (p. 521). Rueda’s (2017) Colombian study suggested that vote buying is resilient due to the manipulation of electoral results by brokers. One area that has received relatively more attention is the manipulation of elections and information via social media. Electoral manipulation via social media can be undertaken by governments (Aral and Eckles 2019) and entities such as Facebook and Twitter (Yerlikaya and Aslan 2020). It has been pointed out that social media manipulation weakens the credibility of elections. The fact that online personalized messages designed to influence voting decisions could also undermine elections has also been highlighted by Burkell and Regan (2019). They argued that such online messages should be regulated. Based on experiments undertaken in...