Suchergebnisse

What are the effects of war on political behavior? Colombia is an interesting case in which conflict and elections coexist, and illegal armed groups intentionally affect electoral outcomes. Nonetheless, groups have used different strategies to alter these results. This paper argues that differential effects of violence on electoral outcomes are the result of deliberate strategies followed by illegal groups, which in turn result from military conditions that differ between them. Using panel data from Senate elections from 1994 to 2006 and an instrumental variables approach to address potential endogeneity concerns, this paper shows that guerrilla violence decreases turnout, while paramilitary violence has no effect on participation, but reduces electoral competition and benefits non-traditional third parties. FARC violence is significantly higher during election years, while paramilitary violence is lower. This is consistent with the hypothesis that the guerrillas' strategy is to sabotage elections, while paramilitaries establish alliances with certain candidates.

Armed clientelism is a particular form of patronage in which politicians and non-state armed groups establish a symbiotic relationship where the former provides economic resources, judicial protection, or other benefits, while the latter provides political support and votes. In this paper a theory of armed clientelism is presented, which shows that when politicians establish illegal alliances with armed groups and mafias, they face a political tradeoff: illegal alliances augment the probability of being elected, but generate the risk of being removed from office. The model predicts that in a context in which a mafia controls a district or a town, armed clientelism is more likely when social diversity among the constituency is high, the judicial system is inefficient, party identification of citizens to clientelistic parties is low, and candidates are highly budget-constrained. It also shows that armed clientelism is more likely when the illegal group and the machine are ideologically aligned.

¿Cuáles son los efectos de la guerra sobre el comportamiento político? Colombia es un caso interesante en el que el conflicto y las elecciones coexisten y los grupos armados ilegales intencionalmente afectan los resultados electorales. Sin embargo, los grupos usan diferentes estrategias para alterar estos resultados. Este artículo argumenta que los efectos diferenciales de la violencia sobre los resultados electorales son el resultado de estrategias deliberadas de los grupos ilegales, que a su turno, son consecuencia de las condiciones militares que difieren entre ellos. Usando datos panel de las elecciones al Senado de 1994 a 2006 y una aproximación por variables instrumentales para resolver posibles problemas de endogenidad, este artículo muestra que la violencia guerrillera disminuye la participación electoral, mientras que la violencia paramilitar no tiene ningún efecto sobre la participación pero reduce la competencia electoral y beneficia a nuevos partidos no-tradicionales. Esto es consistente con la hipótesis de que la estrategia de la guerrilla es sabotear las elecciones, mientras que los paramiltares establecen alianzas con ciertos candidatos. ; What are the effects of war on political behavior? Colombia is an interesting case in which conflict and elections coexist, and illegal armed groups intentionally affect electoral outcomes. Nonetheless, groups use different strategies to alter these results. This paper argues that differential effects of violence on electoral outcomes are the result of deliberate strategies followed by illegal groups, which in turn, are a consequence of military conditions that differ between them. Using panel data from Senate elections from 1994 to 2006 and an instrumental variable approach to address potential endogeneity concerns, this paper shows that guerrilla violence decreases turnout, while paramilitary violence has no effect on participation, but reduces electoral competition and benefits non-traditional third parties. FARC violence is significantly higher during election years, while paramilitary violence is lower. This is consistent with the hypothesis that the guerrilla's strategy is to sabotage elections, while paramilitaries establish alliances with certain candidates.

What are the effects of natural disasters on electoral results? Some authors claim that catastrophes have a negative effect on the survival of leaders in a democracy because voters have a propensity to punish politicians for not preventing or poorly handling a crisis. In contrast, this paper finds that these events might be beneficial for leaders. Disasters are linked to leader survival through clientelism: they generate an in-flow of resources in the form of aid, which increase money for buying votes. Analyzing the rainy season of 2010-2011 in Colombia, considered its worst disaster in history, I use a difference-in-differences strategy to show that in the local election incumbent parties benefited from the disaster. The result is robust to different specifications and alternative explanations. Moreover, places receiving more aid and those with judicial evidence of vote-buying irregularities, are more likely to reelect the incumbent, supporting the mechanism proposed by this paper.

Political clientelism is a dyadic relation in which a politician (the patron) gives material goods and services to a citizen (the client), in exchange for political support. If, at different stages of this relationship, both the patron and the client have incentives to defect and not honor informal agreements, what makes clientelism self-enforcing? The following paper presents a game-theoretical model of political clientelism in which a candidate disciplines a majority of voters through the promise of a future flow of benefits. A mixed strategy involving a randomized allocation of resources among constituencies makes clientelism feasible when the politician's action is contingent on the result of the election. Higher campaign budgets and lower voter aversion towards clientelistic parties, as well as higher patience and higher heterogeneity across groups of voters, make clientelism more likely. Swing voters tend to be gifted more frequently than core supporters with this frequency increasing as group heterogeneity increases, presenting a positive association.

The discussions now going on in Colombia by
the announcement of aggressive projects consisting of gold holdings in the open, would not occur if we were not attending on the planet to the
growth of a giant bubble around the metal.

El presente trabajo fue realizado en la subregión del Suroeste de Antioquia. Se pretendió establecer a través de los instrumentos de planificación, el modelo de ocupación que presentaba el suroeste en el año 2010 y las proyecciones estratégicas que se esperaba implementar en el transcurso de una década. Mediante encuestas de percepción, talleres subregionales y locales con líderes sociales y actores políticos, se logra constatar los principales cambios y transformaciones que ha presentado la subregión en un lapso de nueve años. Se puede evidenciar finalmente que los principales conflictos hallados en el año 2010, no se han resuelto, por el contrario, actividades como la minería aurífera, los monocultivos, y la ampliación de la frontera agrícola siguen aumentado y ejerciendo presión sobre el territorio ; The current research was carried out in a region of the Southwest of Antioquia. It was intended to establish the occupational model of this region in 2010 and the strategic projections that were expected to be implemented over the course of a decade. Some planning tools were used to carry out this study. It was possible to verify the main changes and transformations that the sub region had presented in a period of nine years, by applying some perception surveys, and doing sub regional and local workshops with social leaders and politicians It was demonstrated that the main conflicts found in 2010 have not been resolved. On the contrary, activities such as gold mining, monocultures, and the extension of the agricultural frontier continued to expand and put pressure on the territory. ; Maestría

Tax compliance is a big challenge in weakly institutionalized countries, in which citizens do not trust the State and prefer to evade. Can compliance be increased, and hence fiscal state capacity strengthened, using online strategies? We perform a randomized field experiment in Venezuela's capital, Caracas, to determine if email messages, Facebook ads, or a combination of both, can increase tax compliance. By varying the mechanism used to approach taxpayers, we are able to test if more direct and personalized methods, such as email messages, are more effective than general advertisement tools, such as Facebook ads. Moreover, our design allows us to test if both strategies complement each other and boost the capacity of a local government to increase compliance. Preliminary results suggest that these strategies are cost-effective methods for increasing tax revenues, even in a context of low confidence in the State, as is the case of Venezuela nowadays.

En este capítulo discutimos algunos de los temas más importantes relacionados con la literatura en clientelismo político. Luego de definir algunos de los conceptos básicos asociados con este tema, defendemos la afirmación de que la literatura se ha centrado excesivamente en el problema de la compra de votos, ignorando algunos temas (quizás) más importantes del proceso, como el patronazgo y el prebendalismo. Posteriormente, resaltamos la importancia de los intermediarios (brokers) y de las redes clientelistas, para poder entender la estructura de las relaciones entre patrones y clientes. Finalmente, revisamos algunas de las soluciones de corto y mediano plazo que han sido exploradas, principalmente a través de métodos experimentales, que incluyen mecanismos relacionados con instituciones, deliberación e información. ; In this chapter, we discuss some of the main issues pertaining to the literature on political clientelism. After defining some of the basic concepts associated with this topic, we support the claim that much of the literature has excessively focused on the problem of vote buying, while ignoring other (perhaps) more important aspects of the process, such as patronage and prebendalism. Afterwards, we underscore the importance that brokers and clientelistic networks have in order to understand the structure of patron-client relationships. Finally, we review some of the short- and medium-term solutions to the problem that have been explored mainly through experimental methods, which include mechanisms related to institutions, deliberation, and information.