AbstractPrior research has sought to understand the rise of election observers and their consequences for outcomes such as fraud, protest, and violence. These studies are important but they overlook a significant individual-level dynamic that observers themselves care about: the effect that election observers have on local attitudes about elections. We argue that the activities of election observers can enhance elections' local credibility, but only when locals perceive observers as being both capable of detecting fraud and unbiased in that pursuit. Not all observer groups are seen as equally capable and unbiased. Evidence from a large-scale, nationally representative experiment in Tunisia supports the argument. A key finding is that observers from the Arab League—an organization criticized internationally for low-quality election observation—enhanced credibility the most because they were perceived locally as both relatively capable and unbiased.

Do public images of state leaders affect individuals’ political attitudes and behaviors? If so, why do they have that effect and among whom? Authoritarian iconography could increase compliance with and support for the state via three causal mechanisms: legitimacy, self-interest, and coercion. This article uses a laboratory experiment in the United Arab Emirates to evaluate the effect of public images of state leaders on individuals’ compliance with and support for an authoritarian regime. Using a pre-registered research design, it finds no meaningful evidence that authoritarian iconography increases political compliance or support for the Emirati regime. Although these null results may be due to a number of factors, the findings have important implications for the future research agenda on how and why authoritarian leaders use political culture to maintain power.