That research is about election campaign rallies in Tanzania, where between 2010 and 2015 parliamentary campaign expenditure rose 44 per cent. Tanzania is no ordinary place to study rallies. It sits in a region where election campaigns are rally-intensive. During campaigns, 35 per cent of people attend election rallies in sub-Saharan Africa. Tanzania’s election campaigns are the most rally-intensive of all: 62 per cent of people attended rallies in its most recent elections.
What the research shows is that rallies are changing. They used to be produced through labour-intensive practices. The rally site was prepared by an advanced team. Turnout was mobilised by party foot soldiers. Entertainment was laid on by a women’s choir. Politicians were greeted by a welcome committee.
Today, capital-intensive practices of rally production have been integrated alongside those labour-intensive ones. Instead of erecting a stage by hand, a customised truck folds out, transformer-style, into a stage. Rallies are advertised not by callers who walk street by street, but by fleets of vehicle-mounted PA systems. Politicians arrive at rallies at the head of motorcades of hundreds of vehicles that pass through towns and cities in long, ostentatious parades. Or they arrive by helicopters which put on impromptu air shows to dazzle spectators.
Of course, these practices are not unique to Tanzania, or Africa. Successive devices have been incorporated into rallies across the world, and indeed across time, not least to enable them to be covered in other media. But in Tanzania, the rallies of not just national politicians, but hundreds of parliamentary candidates and thousands of councillor candidates are all being upgraded to different degrees as well.
These practices may make rallies more effective as mobilisation instruments, but they have also made them more expensive. In 2015, Tanzanian parliamentary candidates and their campaign managers said they spent £30,000 in these campaigns. Hire of a car for the duration of the campaign cost between £900 and £2,900. Hire of a customised truck with an accompanying mounted PA system cost between £1,900 and £4,800. Helicopter hire came in at between £1,300 to £2,100 per hour.
Candidates hire squadrons of PA trucks. They hire fleets of cars. A number hire helicopters for days at a time. To finance the production of rallies at this scale, parliamentary candidates in Tanzania must have nearly exhausted their campaign budgets. The increase in the scale of rallies has driven up campaign spending.
Source link : https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2023/09/01/campaign-rallies-are-driving-up-the-cost-of-campaigning-in-africa/
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Publish date : 2023-09-01 03:00:00
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