Clientelism and vote buying: lessons from field experiments in African elections

Vicente, Pedro C.; Wantchékon, Léonard

doi:10.1093/oxrep/grp018

Cited by 162 publications

(90 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Other work of theirs (Bardhan and Mookherjee 2000, 2005, 2006 analyzes whether a move toward decentralized governance in India has been effective in delivering government services and poverty alleviation schemes to the poor. Fujiwara and Wantchekon (2013); and Vicente and Wantchekon (2009) in West Africa. Finan and Shechter (2012) demonstrate how vote-buying can be sustained by an internalized norm of reciprocity using data from Paraguay.…”

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confidence: 99%

Clientelism in Indian Villages

Anderson

François

Kotwal

2015

American Economic Review

176

115

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We study the operation of local governments (Panchayats) in rural Maharashtra, India, using a survey that we designed for this end. Elections are freely contested, fairly tallied, highly participatory, non-coerced, and lead to appointment of representative politicians. However, beneath this veneer of ideal democracy we find evidence of deeply ingrained clientelist vote-trading structures maintained through extra-political means. Elite minorities undermine policies that would redistribute income toward the majority poor. We explore the means by which elites use their dominance of land ownership and traditional social superiority to achieve political control in light of successful majoritarian institutional reforms. (JEL D72, H23, I38, J15, O15, O17, O18)

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confidence: 99%

Clientelism in Indian Villages

Anderson

François

Kotwal

2015

American Economic Review

176

115

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“…88 Illustratively, Prichard (2015) discusses reductions in taxation prior to elections in Ethiopia in 2005, which were widespread, but also widely viewed by the opposition as having been a relatively ineffective policy tool. 89 The literature on vote buying around African elections, for example, suggests that short-term giveaways may nonetheless influence outcomes (e.g., Vicente and Wantchekon 2009). research, 90 imply a significantly different understanding of pre-election tax dynamics and new directions for research on political budget cycles affecting taxation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Electoral Competitiveness, Tax Bargaining and Political Incentives in Developing Countries: Evidence from Political Budget Cycles Affecting Taxation

Prichard¹

2016

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

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Studies of political budget cycles in developing countries have generally sought to inform understanding of short-term fiscal dynamics, but can also offer unique insight into broader political dynamics in developing countries. This article correspondingly employs markedly improved data in order to study the impact of elections on tax collection, and draw broader lessons. It shows that while elections as a group have had no significant effect on tax collection, the subset of competitive elections has had a significant negative impact on pre-election tax collection; while this effect appears to be largest where incumbents are particularly unpopular. This provides powerful evidence that the impact of elections on political incentives in developing countries is conditioned by the existence of an electorally competitive opposition, while offering preliminary evidence that popular resistance to taxation by unpopular governments may be an important means by which taxpayers may generate pressure for improved governance.A long-established research tradition explores the effects of elections on short-term fiscal policy making, widely dubbed 'political budget cycles'. Models of opportunistic budget cycles predict expanded public spending and reduced taxation in advance of elections, as governments seek to secure short-term political support among voters with short time horizons or limited information. 1 The recent literature has, in turn, increasingly focused on the possibility of 'conditional political budget cycles', and a variety of studies have found that political budget cycles are more pronounced where democratic institutions, and broader checks and balances, are relatively weak -as is frequently the case in developing countries. 2 These studies have argued that weak institutional environments have facilitated opportunistic efforts to employ short-term fiscal policy measures to secure political support, though often at the expense of the overall quality of economic management.However, most studies of political budget cycles have continued to focus primarily on public expenditure, with comparatively limited, and inconclusive, research focused on the impacts of political budget cycles on taxation. This represents a significant oversight: the effects of elections on tax collection may be both more substantively important and reveal more about broader political dynamics in developing country democracies. Short-term increases in public spending are relatively easily financed through borrowing, and in many (though not all) cases * Department of Political Science and School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, and Institute of Development Studies, UK (email: wilson.prichard@utoronto.ca). Enormous thanks to Paola Salardi for invaluable support in shaping the analysis in the article, and to Mick Moore for very helpful comments about the framing of the article. Data replication sets available at https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/BJPolS and online appendices at http://dx.doi.org

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“…Accordingly, we have four foreign aid instruments and cannot model with more than three endogenous explaining variables. 12 There is a broad consensus on the imperative for good institutions for African development and foreign aid effectiveness (Fosu, 2013ab;Wantchekon, 2003;Gibson et al, 2014;Vicente & Wantchekon, 2009;Anyanwu & Erhijakpor, 2014;Boyce & Ndikumana, 1998, 2011 In the estimation process, three main steps are adopted. First, we justify the choice of the IV procedure with a Hausman test for endogeneity.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Foreign Aid, Investment and Fiscal Policy Behavior: Theory and Empirical Evidence

Asongu

Jellal²

2014

SSRN Journal

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The paper provides theoretical and empirical justifications for the instrumentality of foreign aid in stimulating private investment and fixed capital formation through fiscal policy mechanisms. We propose an endogenous growth theory based on an extension of Barro (1990) by postulating that the positive effect of aid mitigates the burden of the taxation system on the private sector of recipient countries. The empirical validity is based on 53 African countries for the period 1996-2010. While the findings on the tax effort channel are overwhelmingly consistent with theory across specifications and fundamental characteristics, those of the government expenditure channel are a little heterogeneous but broadly in line with the theoretical postulations. Justification for the slight heterogeneity and policy implications are discussed.JEL Classification: B20; F35; F50; O10; O55

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Clientelism and vote buying: lessons from field experiments in African elections

Cited by 162 publications

References 36 publications

Clientelism in Indian Villages

Clientelism in Indian Villages

Electoral Competitiveness, Tax Bargaining and Political Incentives in Developing Countries: Evidence from Political Budget Cycles Affecting Taxation

Foreign Aid, Investment and Fiscal Policy Behavior: Theory and Empirical Evidence

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