9321864 Grofman The multi-party negotiation process in South Africa has set a date of April 27, 1994 for universal suffrage elections to a new constituent assembly that will serve as an interim legislature and as a constitutional drafting body for a new constitution. The basic election mechanism will be list Proportional Representation (PR) with both local constituencies and a national list. This investigation involves using a combination of hard and soft data to test a number of specific hypotheses about party strategies and voter choices in this important election - - hypotheses with general implication for the study of the influence of electoral systems on racial and ethnic conflict. An investigator will spend two and one half months in South Africa observing the campaigning in this critical election and gathering an archive of campaign material and a data base about candidates. The investigator will remain for several weeks after the election to conduct additional interviews of participants (both winners and losers) and of academic and journalistic sources and to collect a complete data set of election outcomes at the magisterial district (precinct equivalent) level and data sets from as many public opinion polls as are available. These data will also be used to generate simulations of the likely electoral consequences had alternative electoral systems been used. ***
