Hostname: page-component-669899f699-qzcqf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-28T00:23:57.545Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Distributive Politics with Vote and Turnout Buying

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2018

AGUSTIN CASAS
AGUSTIN CASAS*
Affiliation:
Colegio Universitario de Estudios Financieros
*
Agustin Casas is an Assistant Professor at Colegio Universitario de Estudios Financieros (CUNEF), Calle Leonardo Prieto Castro, 2, Madrid, 28040, Spain (acasas@u.northwestern.edu).
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to model the incumbent’s allocation of efforts that maximize his electoral chances in the presence of both vote buying (persuasion) and turnout buying (mobilization). The existing literature on distributive politics concludes that political candidates should concentrate their campaigning efforts either on safe districts or on swing districts. This paper shows that when candidates can use both persuasion and mobilization strategies, and the ideology of voters is unknown to the incumbent party, a third option should be taken into account. In fact, the optimal allocation of resources—rather than focusing on safe or swing districts—should target opposition strongholds, that is, the incumbent should try to sway voters in those districts in which the challenger is favored. The intuition for this result is simple. Since the incumbent does not know individual preferences (he only observes the distribution of preferences in the districts), all voters in a given district look identical to him. Hence, when approaching voters in a district to buy their vote, the incumbent always faces the risk of buying the vote of his supporters (who would have voted for him anyway).

Type
Letter
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 112 , Issue 4 , November 2018 , pp. 1111 - 1119
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

I am grateful to David Austen-Smith and Steve Callander, who were very patient at the early stages of this project. I also thank Bard Harstad, Antoine Loeper and Andrea Mattozzi and seminar and conference participants at several institutions for useful comments and suggestions. I also benefited greatly from the comments of three anonymous referees and the editor. All possible remaining errors are my own.

References

REFERENCES

Bratton, Michael. 2008. “Vote Buying and Violence in Nigerian Election Campaigns.” Electoral Studies 27 (4): 621–32. URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379408000589Google Scholar
Cox, Gary W. 1999. “Electoral Rules and the Calculus of Mobilization.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 24 (3): 387–419.Google Scholar
Cox, Gary W. and McCubbins, Mathew D.. 1986. “Electoral Politics as a Redistributive Game.” The Journal of Politics 48 (2): 370–89.Google Scholar
Curto-Grau, Marta, Herranz-Loncan, Alfonso, and Sole-Olle, Albert. 2012. “Pork-Barrel Politics in Semi-Democracies: The Spanish ‘Parliamentary Roads,’ 1880–1914.” Journal of Economic History 72 (3): 771–96.Google Scholar
Dekel, Eddie, Jackson, Matthew, and Wolinsky, Asher. 2008. “Vote Buying: General Elections.” Journal of Political Economy 116 (2). URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/587624Google Scholar
Diaz-Cayeros, Alberto, Estevez, Federico, and Magaloni, Beatriz. 2012. Strategies of Vote Buying: Democracy, Clientelism and Poverty Relief in Mexico. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dixit, Avinash, and Londregan, John. 1995. “Redistributive Politics and Economic Efficiency.” The American Political Science Review 89 (4): 856–66.Google Scholar
Dixit, Avinash, and Londregan, John. 1996. “The Determinants of Success of Special Interests in Redistributive Politics.” The Journal of Politics 58 (4): 1132–55.Google Scholar
Downs, Anthony. 1957. “An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy.” Journal of Political Economy 65 (2): 135. URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/1827369Google Scholar
Finan, Frederico, and Schechter, Laura. 2012. “Vote-Buying and Reciprocity.” Econometrica 80 (2): 863–81. URL: http://doi.wiley.com/10.3982/ECTA9035Google Scholar
Fried, Brian J. 2012. “Distributive Politics and Conditional Cash Transfers: The Case of Brazil’s Bolsa Família.” World Development 40 (5): 1042–53.Google Scholar
Gans-Morse, Jordan, Mazzuca, Sebastián, and Nichter, Simeon. 2014. “Varieties of Clientelism: Machine Politics during Elections.” American Journal of Political Science 58 (2): 415–32. URL: http://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/ajps.12058Google Scholar
Gerber, Alan S., Huber, Gregory A., Doherty, David, and Dowling, Conor M.. 2013a. “Is There a Secret Ballot? Ballot Secrecy Perceptions and their Implications for Voting Behavior.” British Journal of Political Science 43 (01): 77–102. URL: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S000712341200021XGoogle Scholar
Gerber, Alan S., Huber, Gregory A., Doherty, David, Dowling, Conor M., and Hill, Seth J.. 2013b. “Do Perceptions of Ballot Secrecy Influence Turnout? Results from a Field Experiment.” American Journal of Political Science 57 (3): 537–51. URL: http://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/ajps.12019Google Scholar
Golden, Miriam, and Min, Brian. 2013. “Distributive Politics Around the World.” Annual Review of Political Science 14 (1): 73–99.Google Scholar
Keefer, Philip, and Vlaicu, Razvan. 2007. “Democracy, Credibility, and Clientelism.” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 24 (2): 371–406. URL: http://jleo.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/doi/10.1093/jleo/ewm054Google Scholar
Lindbeck, Assar, and Weibull, Jörgen W.. 1987. “Balanced-Budget Redistribution as the Outcome of Political Competition.” Public Choice 52 (3): 273–97.Google Scholar
Morgan, John, and Várdy, Felix. 2010. “Negative Vote Buying and the Secret Ballot.” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 28 (4): 818–49. URL: http://jleo.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/doi/10.1093/jleo/ewq016Google Scholar
Nichter, Simeon. 2008. “Vote Buying or Turnout Buying? Machine Politics and the Secret Ballot.” American Political Science Review 102 (1): 19–31. URL: http://www.journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0003055408080106Google Scholar
Stokes, Susan C. 2005. “Perverse Accountability: A Formal Model of Machine Politics with Evidence from Argentina.” American Political Science Review 99 (03): 315–25.Google Scholar
Stokes, Susan C., Dunning, Thad, Nazareno, Marcelo, and Brusco, Valeria. 2013. Brokers, Voters, and Clientelism: The Puzzle of Distributive Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Vicente, Pedro C. 2014. “Is Vote Buying Effective? Evidence from a Field Experiment in West Africa.” The Economic Journal 124 (574): 356–87. URL: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.366.3313Google Scholar
Zarazaga, Rodrigo. 2016. “Party Machines and Voter-Customized Rewards Strategies.” Journal of Theoretical Politics 28 (4): 678–701. URL: http://jtp.sagepub.com/cgi/doi/10.1177/0951629815603496Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.