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Although many studies of clientelism focus exclusively on vote buying, political machines often employ diverse portfolios of strategies. We provide a theoretical framework and formal model to explain how and why machines mix four clientelist strategies during elections: vote buying, turnout buying, abstention buying, and double persuasion. Machines tailor their portfolios to the political preferences and voting costs of the electorate. They also adapt their mix to at least five contextual factors: compulsory voting, ballot secrecy, political salience, machine support, and political polarization. Our analysis yields numerous insights, such as why the introduction of compulsory voting may increase vote buying, and why enhanced ballot secrecy may increase turnout buying and abstention buying. Evidence from various countries is consistent with our predictions and suggests the need for empirical studies to pay closer attention to the ways in which machines combine clientelist strategies. Adapted from the source document.

Politicians distribute money to voters during campaigns in many low-income democracies. Many observers call this practice 'vote buying'. Money for Votes develops an alternative theory of electoral clientelism that emphasizes the role of monetary handouts in conveying information to voters, helping politicians enhance the credibility of their promises to deliver development resources and particularistic benefits to their constituents. Supported by interviews, experiments, and surveys in Kenya, and additional evidence from qualitative and survey data from elsewhere in Africa, the study tests the implications of this argument, and traces the consequences of electoral clientelism for voter behaviour, ethnic politics, public goods provision, and democratic accountability. Ultimately, the book suggests that the relationship of electoral clientelism to the quality of democracy is far more nuanced than our instincts might suggest.

I use a unique dispute between major aid donors in the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to investigate whether donor nations change their aid giving in response to changes in aid recipients' voting behavior inside international organizations (IOs). This relationship is difficult to pin down in most IOs because agenda items constantly change and donor coalitions fluctuate with them. I exploit the fact that the IWC has, on the one hand, seen two fixed aid donor blocs opposing each other for three decades over a single issue, but has on the other hand seen rich variation in both membership and voting behavior of aid recipient countries. Using an identification strategy that relates changes in bilateral aid to within-recipient variation in IWC voting-bloc affiliation and fixed cross-sectional variation in donors' voting bloc, the evidence suggests that Japan rewards joining the pro-whaling bloc, and that countries who recently experienced aid reductions from the three big anti-whaling donors - the U.S., the U.K., and France - are more likely to join the pro-whaling bloc.

Presentado el 22 de mayo de 2013 en el Internal Workshop: Social Choice & Game Theory, de la Unitat de Fonaments de l'Anàlisi Econòmica, UAB, Barcelona (España). Presentado el 3 de abril de 2014 en The 2014 Meeting of the European Public Choice Society, celebrado del 3 al 6 de abril de 2014 en Cambridge (Reino Unido) ; The paper analyses the problem of a committee chair using favours at her disposal to maximize the likelihood that her proposal gains committee support. The favours increase the probability of a given member approving the chair's proposal via a smooth voting function. The decision-making protocol is any quota voting rule. The paper characterizes the optimal allocation of any given level of favours and the optimal expenditure minimizing level of favours. The optimal allocation divides favours uniformly among a coalition of the committee members. At a low level of favours, the coalition comprises all committee members. At a high level, it is the minimum winning coalition. The optimal expenditure level guarantees the chair certain support of the minimum winning coalition if favours are abundant and uncertain support of all committee members if favours are scarce; elitist or egalitarian committees are compatible with a strategic chair. The results are robust to changing the chair's objectives and to alternative voting functions ; Peer Reviewed

Exchanging one's vote for particularistic benefits - practices usually grouped under 'clientelism' - is often thought to weaken programmatic links between citizens and politicians and disincentivize public good provision, as well as undermine voter autonomy and the ideal role of elections. However, empirically analyzing this key phenomenon for the working of democracies entails formidable challenges. We conduct list experiments on a large sample of households to estimate the incidence of clientelistic vote buying, as well as the extent to which respondents refrain from openly recognizing this behavior. Nearly one out of every five respondents engage in clientelism and, surprisingly, they do not feel ashamed to admit it. Using the literature to guide our analysis, we examine the robust correlates of clientelism, finding that vote buying increases with poverty, reciprocity, disregard for the rule of law and, challenging several theories, interest in politics. ; Con frecuencia se argumenta que intercambiar el voto por beneficios particulares - practicas usualmente agrupadas como 'clientelismo' - debilita los vínculos programáticos entre ciudadanos y políticos y desincentiva la provisión de bienes públicos para el bienestar general, además de atentar contra la autonomía del elector y el papel ideal de las elecciones. Sin embargo, es difícil analizar empíricamente este crucial comportamiento para la democracia. Para superar este reto, aplicamos experimentos de lista a una muestra grande de hogares para estimar la incidencia de la venta de votos y calcular qué tanto los encuestados se abstienen de reconocer abiertamente este comportamiento. Casi uno de cada cinco encuestados se involucra en el clientelismo y, sorprendentemente, no se sienten avergonzados de admitirlo. Usando la literatura existente como guía, examinamos la incidencia y correlaciones más sobresalientes del clientelismo, encontrando que la compra de votos aumenta con la pobreza, la reciprocidad, el desconocimiento del imperio de la ley y, desafiando varias teorías, el interés por la política.

We study vote buying by competing interest groups in a variety of electoral and contractual settings. While increasing the size of a voting body reduces its buyability in the absence of competition, we show that larger voting bodies may be more buyable than smaller voting bodies when interest groups compete. In contrast, imposing the secret ballot---which we model as forcing interest groups to contract on outcomes rather than votes---is an effective way to fight vote buying in the presence of competition, but much less so in its absence. We also study more sophisticated vote buying contracts

We test the predictions of a behavioral model of transactional electoral politics in the context of a randomized anti-vote-selling intervention in the Philippines. We model selling one's vote as a temptation good: it creates positive utility for the future self at the moment of voting, but not for past selves who anticipate the vote-sale. We also allow keeping or breaking promises regarding vote-selling to affect utility. Voters who are at least partially sophisticated about their vote-selling temptation can thus use promises not to vote-sell as a commitment device. An invitation to promise not to vote-sell is taken up by a majority of respondents, reduces vote-selling, and has a larger effect in electoral races with smaller vote-buying payments. The more effective promise treatment reduces vote-selling in the smallest-stakes election by 10.9 percentage points. Inviting voters to make another type of promise - to accept vote-buying payments, but to nonetheless "vote your conscience" - is significantly less effective. The results are consistent with voters being partially (but not fully) sophisticated about their vote-selling temptation.