Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-sv6ng Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-01T17:24:56.733Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Vote-buying: Is it at Threat to Democratic Policy Representation?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 October 2007

Mary Breeding
Affiliation:
American University

Extract

Do “vote-buying” activities of locally elected legislators in developing countries crowd out the representation of mass policy preferences? If a legislator can buy a citizen's vote with a material benefit, does he really have an incentive to represent the interests of his constituents in legislative decision-making? Imagine the following setting: A slum neighborhood near Bangalore city center in Southern India. A group of women in worn-out sari-s, domestic servants who clean houses for a living, sit chatting outside their one-room concrete shacks with tin roofs. They have no bathing or cooking facilities in their shacks. They share the same water tap with hundreds of neighbors. Their toilet is the nearby railroad track. A well-dressed man exits a car and approaches.

Type
ASSOCIATION NEWS
Copyright
© 2007 The American Political Science Association

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.)

References

Dahl, Robert. 1971. Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Eisenstadt, Todd A. 2006. “Mexico's Post-Electoral Concertacesiones: The Rise and Demise of a Substitutive Informal Institution.” In Informal Institutions and Democracy: Lessons from Latin America, eds. Gretchen Helmke and Steven Levitsky. Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 22748.Google Scholar
Helmke, Gretchen, and Steven Levitsky, eds. 2006. Informal Institutions and Democracy: Lessons from Latin America. Baltimore: John Hopkins Press.Google Scholar
Hurley, Patricia A., and Kim Quaile Hill. 2003. “Beyond the Demand-Input Model: A Theory of Representational Linkages.” Journal of Politics 64(2).Google Scholar
Kitschelt, Herbert. 2000. “Linkages between Citizens and Politicians in Democratic Polities.” Comparative Political Studies 33(6/7): 84579.Google Scholar
Kitschelt, Herbert, and Steven I. Wilkinson, eds. 2007. Patrons, Clients and Policies: Patterns of Democratic Accountability and Political Competition. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Miller, Warren E., and Donald E. Stokes. 1963. “Constituency Influence in Congress.” American Political Science Review 57(1): 4556.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shaffer, Frederic C. 2006. Vote Buying: Who, What, When and How? Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner.Google Scholar
Stokes, Susan. 2004. “Is Vote-Buying Undemocratic?Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, September 1–4.Google Scholar