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Politicians often buy votes with impunity. Brazil outlawed vote buying for many years, but prosecutions were rare. However, popular pressure mounted against the practice in the late 1990s. Over one million Brazilians signed a petition against vote buying, leading to the country's first law by popular initiative passed by the national legislature. The law not only surmounted key obstacles to the popular initiative process but also dramatically increased prosecutions for clientelism during elections. Campaign handouts became the top reason that politicians were ousted in Brazil, with over a thousand removals from office. This study examines the role of civil society and the judiciary in the enactment and implementation of this important legislation. ResumoOs políticos frequentemente compram votos sem serem punidos. O Brasil proibiu a compra de votos por muitos anos, mas processos penais foram raros. No entanto, a pressão popular contra a prática aumentou no final dos anos 90. Mais de um milhão de brasileiros assinaram uma petição contra a compra de votos, levando à primeira lei do país de iniciativa popular a ser aprovada pelo Congresso Nacional. Essa lei não apenas superou os principais obstáculos do processo de iniciativa popular, mas também aumentou dramaticamente os processos por clientelismo eleitoral. A compra de votos se tornou a principal razão pela qual os políticos foram afastados no Brasil, com mais de mil cassações de mandatos. Este estudo examina o papel da sociedade civil e do judiciário na promulgação e implementação desta importante legislação.

This study investigates the concept of vote buying, with a particular focus on its usage in research on clientelism. Vote buying is often poorly defined. Such conceptual ambiguity may distort descriptive findings and threaten the validity of causal claims. Qualitative analysis suggests that researchers often employ the concept of vote buying differently, and regressions from Nigeria and Mexico suggest that using alternative definitions can yield divergent empirical results. This diverse usage also poses the risk of conceptual stretching, because scholars often use vote buying to describe other phenomena. To improve future research, analysts should pay close attention to the conceptualization of vote buying. [Copyright Elsevier Ltd.]

Scholars typically understand vote buying as offering particularistic benefits in exchange for vote choices. This depiction of vote buying presents a puzzle: with the secret ballot, what prevents individuals from accepting rewards and then voting as they wish? An alternative explanation, which I term "turnout buying," suggests why parties might offer rewards even if they cannot monitor vote choices. By rewarding unmobilized supporters for showing up at the polls, parties can activate their passive constituencies. Because turnout buying targets supporters, it only requires monitoringwhetherindividuals vote. Much of what scholars interpret as vote buying may actually be turnout buying. Reward targeting helps to distinguish between these strategies. Whereas Stokes's vote-buying model predicts that parties target moderate opposers, a model of turnout buying predicts that they target strong supporters. Although the two strategies coexist, empirical tests suggest that Argentine survey data in Stokes 2005 are more consistent with turnout buying.

In many countries, clientelist parties (or political machines) distribute selective benefits, especially to the poor, in direct exchange for electoral support. Many scholars view clientelism as a political strategy, but fail to distinguish between substantively different patterns of machine politics. Conflating distinct strategies of clientelism poses a serious threat to descriptive and causal inference. This study seeks to increase analytical differentiation of clientelism, building on fieldwork in Brazil, formal modeling, and econometric analyses of survey data.A fundamental, yet frequently overlooked, distinction lies between strategies of electoral and relational clientelism. Whereas electoral clientelism involves elite payoffs to citizens during campaigns, relational clientelism involves ongoing relationships beyond campaigns. Electoral clientelism — the primary focus of this study — delivers all benefits to citizens before voting, and involves the threat of opportunistic defection by citizens. By contrast, relational clientelism delivers at least some benefits to citizens after voting, and involves the threat of opportunistic defection by both citizens and elites. Scholars often conflate vote buying with other strategies of electoral clientelism. Much of what scholars interpret as vote buying (exchanging rewards for vote choices) may actually be turnout buying (exchanging rewards for turnout). This study advances research on clientelism by specifying and testing a mechanism by which parties can distribute benefits to mobilize supporters. Formal modeling suggests that turnout buying is incentive-compatible, and also provides several testable predictions: (1) machines focus rewards on strong supporters, (2) they target the poor, and (3) they offer rewards where they can most effectively monitor turnout. Although both strategies coexist, empirical tests suggest that Argentine survey data are more consistent with turnout buying than vote buying. Two other strategies of electoral clientelism are also frequently conflated with vote buying: double persuasion (exchanging rewards for vote choices and turnout) and negative turnout buying (exchanging rewards for abstention).Formal analysis in Chapter 4 — coauthored with Jordan Gans-Morse and Sebastian Mazzuca — suggests that political machines are most effective when combining multiple strategies of electoral clientelism. Machines adapt the size of clientelist benefits to citizens' political preferences and inclination to vote, and are willing to pay relatively more for vote buying because unlike other strategies it both adds votes for the machine and subtracts votes from the opposition. The model also suggests that machines tailor their mix of electoral clientelism to five characteristics of political environments: (1) compulsory voting, (2) machine support, (3) political polarization, (4) salience of political preferences, and (5) strength of ballot secrecy. The model's predictions are consistent with qualitative evidence from Argentina, Brazil and Russia.