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I - Research Data & Fieldwork: Uncovering Benin’s Electoral History
To study the impact of women's political candidacy on educational outcomes, I constructed a unique, research-ready dataset from the ground up. These materials were not previously available in any usable or digitized format, requiring a multi-year effort to recover, digitize, and standardize records from Benin’s early decentralization period.
The Electoral Records Archive
Record-keeping for Benin's first two municipal council (MC) elections in 2003 and 2008 was historically limited; no single repository held consolidated electoral lists or official tallies. My fieldwork involved a comprehensive search across several national institutions, including:
The National Assembly of Benin.
The Ministry of Decentralization.
The National Association of the Communes of Benin.
After these institutional searches yielded little, I broadened my strategy to include professional networks and former staff of private contractors who had managed data for the National Electoral Commission (CENA). Through these efforts, I successfully recovered partial records and surviving files for the first two local election cycles.
Digitization and Standardization
The recovered materials arrived in non-standard formats, primarily as legacy Microsoft Access files and PDFs. In December 2020, I assembled and supervised a specialized team of 13 research assistants—all with graduate-level training in mathematics, economics, or statistics—to manually enter, standardize, and cross-check the information.
The resulting dataset is exceptionally rich, enabling candidate-level analyses that were previously impossible. It includes detailed information for every candidate and electoral list, such as:
Candidate Profile: Full names, gender, date and place of birth, and residence.
List Dynamics: Candidate position/rank on the list and status as a titular or alternate candidate.
Electoral Outcomes: Vote counts, vote shares, the total number of seats available per arrondissement, and seats won by each list.
Collaborations & Data Access
I am open to research collaborations and partnerships that leverage the unique data infrastructure built for this project. My combined electoral and demographic dataset is identifiable at the arrondissement level—a granular administrative unit significantly smaller than the average U.S. county. This precision allows for highly localized analyses that can be aggregated up to the Commune or Département levels as needed.
Researchers interested in collaboration can benefit from the following assets:
Benin Electoral Archive: Access to a comprehensive, digitized dataset covering the first two local election cycles (2003 and 2008), including candidate-level details such as gender, list position, and electoral outcomes.
Complete Census Records: In addition to the electoral data, I have access to the full General Population and Housing Census (RGPH) datasets for 1992, 2002, and 2013 at the most granular level possible.
High-Resolution Spatial Coverage: The dataset includes 10 départements, 62 communes, and 424 arrondissements, offering a robust foundation for spatial or longitudinal studies in development economics, political economy, or public policy.
If you are interested in discussing a project that requires high-resolution electoral or census data from Benin, please feel free to reach out.