Electoral Violence and Prospects for Peace in Gabon

Methods

Summary

This study is qualitative descriptive. Material will be sourced from both primary and secondary sources. Primary and secondary data will be obtained from relevant documents including books, academic journals, country reports and newspaper articles. Additional data will be sourced from key stakeholders in Gabon including academics, political parties and or politicians, election management bodies and other civil society organizations. Semi-structured interviews will be used to collect primary data on the field after prior consent. Respondents will be obtained using the snowball method with original respondents coming from the Faculty of Laws and Humanities of Omar Bongo University where I studied in 2012-2013. Interviews will be recorded and transcribed and all ethics concerns will be checked by Good Governance Counsel’s ethics board.

Challenges

My experience as a student in Gabon has shown that Gabonese people are generally very reserved when dealing with foreigners. While this situation has changed significantly in the last few years under Ali Bongo, a major challenge will be to surmount the general reticence to participate in research within the Gabonese society. Best practices will be used in the course of the recruitment of respondents and during interviews. Also, recommendations from former professors at Omar Bongo University will enable us break the glass ceiling.

Pre Analysis Plan

Data will be analysed through thematic analysis. Thematic analysis is a qualitative analytic method for ‘identifying, analysing and reporting patterns (themes) within data. It minimally organises and describes [the] data set in (rich) detail. However, frequently it goes further than this, and interprets various aspects of the research topic.’ (Braun et Clarke, 2006:79).  Themes will be generated both from what the informants say and from the documentary research. The themes are required to support the data and the over-arching theoretical framework. Themes are required to make meaning out of the data that is collected. Member checking will be done to improve the quality of the data. This procedure is repeated for both causes and enabling conditions and I expect that the several competing explanations will answer the research problem.