The Database of Political Institutions presents institutional and electoral results data such as measures of checks and balances, tenure and stability of the government, identification of party affiliation and ideology, and fragmentation of opposition and government parties in the legislature. The current version of the database expands its coverage to about 180 countries for 45 years, 1975-2020. It has become one of the most cited databases in comparative political economy and comparative political institutions, with more than 4,500 article citations on Google Scholar as of December 2020.
The social networks of voters have been shown to facilitate political cooperation and information transmission in established democracies. These same social networks, however, can also make it easier for politicians in new democracies to engage in clientelistic electoral strategies. Using survey data from the Philippines, this article demonstrates that individuals with more friend and family ties are disproportionately targeted for vote buying. This is consistent with the importance of other social factors identified in the literature such as reciprocity, direct ties to politicians, and individual social influence. In addition, this article presents evidence supporting an additional mechanism linking voter social networks to the targeting of vote buying: social network–based monitoring. Voters with larger networks are both more sensitive to the ramifications of reneging on vote buying agreements and are primarily targeted for vote buying in contexts where monitoring is necessary.
Politicians in developing countries misuse foreign aid to get reelected by fiscally manipulating foreign aid resources or domestic budgets. Our article suggests another mechanism that does not require politicians to have any control over foreign aid in order to make use of it for electoral purposes: undeserved credit claiming. We analyze the conditions under which local politicians can undeservedly take credit for the receipt of foreign aid and thereby boost their chances of reelection. We theorize that politicians can employ a variety of techniques to claim credit for development aid even when they have little or no influence on its actual allocation. Using a subnational World Bank development program in the Philippines, we demonstrate that credit claiming is an important strategy to exploit foreign aid inflows and that the political effects of aid can persist even when projects are designed to minimize the diversion or misuse of funds.
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