Mortara Research Seminar – A Conversation with Professor Nicholas Kerr

By Soumya Bodhanapu (SFS ‘29) –

On Monday, March 3rd, 2026, the Mortara Center for International Studies had the pleasure of hosting Dr. Nicholas Kerr, Associate Professor at the University of Florida, studying comparative politics with a regional focus on sub-Saharan Africa. Dr. Kerr presented his working paper, titled “Safeguarding Electoral Integrity During Contentious Elections: Popular Assessments of State Electoral Security Provision in Non-Consolidated Democracies,” examining how state security influences democratic attitudes in an electoral context. This event was hosted through the Mortara Research Seminar, a forum for visiting scholars of Comparative Politics and International Relations to present working papers and receive feedback from the Georgetown research community.

This project, co-authored by Dr. Annekatrin Deglow and Hanne Fjelde of Uppsala University, was inspired by the 2011 Nigerian elections, which emphasized the paradoxical relationship between state security action and democratic attitudes. As the apparatus responsible for protecting electoral legitimacy while simultaneously posing a threat to citizens, this research aims to uncover if and how state security behavior shapes public opinion. To examine this relationship, the authors field a survey with an embedded experiment following the 2023 Nigerian elections in five states. The survey uses a multi-factorial vignette to vary the hypothetical attributes of an electoral transgression and state security response to understand how citizens develop their perceptions of appropriate state action, election quality, and democratic legitimacy. Variations in response are recorded in a regression model to estimate Average Marginal Component Effects (AMCEs) per attribute adjusted.

Their findings show significant deviations in public perceptions of government based on police response to electoral transgressions. Namely, Nigerian citizens prefer when coercive state agents respond to electoral violations with reasonable force, compared to excessive force or inaction. Furthermore, citizens with weakest ties to the incumbent government experience greatest fluctuations in democratic attitudes, especially when coercive state agents fail to intervene. These results suggest an expectation from citizens of non-consolidated democracies, for state security forces to preserve electoral legitimacy through any means possible despite low levels of trust in police. Their work contributes to research regarding non-consolidated democracies by asserting that perceptions of state security are positively correlated with regime legitimacy, and police action to secure electoral situations indicates a consolidation of power which improves trust in emerging democratic systems compared to total absence of regulation.

Professor Kerr concluded the presentation with a Q&A session, in which the academics present spoke up regarding feedback and concerns. Their thoughtful insights regarding potential sample selection bias illuminated the impact of cultural, political, and personal experiences on perceptions of government and what constitutes ‘legitimate force.’