Varieties of Clientelism: Machine Politics during Elections

Abstract

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.

Policy Design and Non-Design: Towards a Spectrum of Policy Formulation Types

“…Non-design processes have been studied extensively in the political science literature but less systematically in the policy sciences (Frye, Reuter, & Szakonyi, 2012;Gans-Morse, Mazzuca, & Nichter, 2014;Goodin, 1980;Saward, 1992) despite their prevalence and importance in many areas. While it is not necessary to include them in a spectrum of design work, they can be appended to a spectrum of formulation types by moving from those types of non-design work which are compatible with at least some aspects of instrumental design activities-such as bargaining among affected interests over elements of otherwise carefully designed policy alternatives-to those-such as pure electoral opportunism or corruption-where party, leader or individual self-interest replace policy instrumentalism altogether (see Figure 2).…”

To the Victor Belongs the Spoils? Party Membership and Public Sector Employment in Brazil

“…1 From this perspective, public sector employment can be a mechanism for establishing loyal clienteles and constitutes one of many vote buying or clientelistic strategies available to politicians (Mainwaring 1999;Stokes et al 2013;Gans-Morse, Mazzuca and Nichter 2014). 2 The ability to appoint party loyalists to public sector positions can also help build and maintain the infrastructure required for political parties to function, as government jobs can be used to compensate party members for their work (Sorauf 1964;Conway and Feigert 1968;Panebianco 1988).…”

He Who Counts Elects: Economic Elites, Political Elites, and Electoral Fraud

“…In a more general model one could choose whether or not to use coercion to keep voters from the polls or instead to force them to turn out and vote in a particular way. Also, instead of using sticks, political parties can use carrots, buying votes or rewarding people for turning out (see Stokes ; Alvarez et al., ; Baland and Robinson, ; Dekel et al., ; Dunning and Stokes, ; Nichter, ; Gans‐Morse et al., ; Diaz‐Cayeros et al., , for models of some of these strategies). Which strategy is optimal depends on the institutional details.…”