Education Helps Female and Hazara Candidates — Yet In-Group Bias Persists

📋 Study Design

This study tests whether candidate qualifications can win over out-group voters in Afghanistan. An original conjoint experiment was embedded in a face-to-face survey conducted in three Afghan provinces between 2016 and 2017 with over 2,400 respondents.

Key features of the experiment included:

• Randomized candidate profiles that respondents ranked and chose between.
• Profile attributes varied along gender, ethnicity, and educational attainment.
• Outcomes measured were ranking and choice probabilities for hypothetical candidates.

📊 What the Data Show

Higher educational attainment consistently increases male (non-Hazara) respondents' support for candidates from two historically underrepresented groups: women and Hazaras (a predominantly Shi'a ethnic minority).

Findings in brief:

• Qualifications raise the ranking of female candidates among male (non-Hazara) respondents.
• Qualifications raise the likelihood that male (non-Hazara) respondents will choose Hazara candidates.
• These qualification-driven gains are consistent but do not eliminate male (non-Hazara) respondents' in-group preferences.

🔎 Why It Matters

Educational credentials can partially narrow out-group barriers to electoral support, indicating one pathway for underrepresented candidates to gain broader appeal. At the same time, qualifications alone are insufficient to dismantle entrenched in-group biases, underscoring persistent obstacles to descriptive representation in divided societies like Afghanistan.