Vote Buying and Campaign Promises

• In Event: Distortions to Democracy: Corruption, Clientelism, and Voter Intimidation

Abstract

What explains the significant variation across countries in political competitors’ use of vote buying in conjunction with campaign promises to secure voter support? This paper models political parties' use of vote buying in a setting with imperfect party commitment to campaign promises. We find that higher vote buying is associated with frequent reneging on campaign promises, strong electoral competition, and high policy rents. Higher campaign promises are associated with infrequent reneging, high competence in public good provision, and incumbents who run again. The model addresses distributional consequences of vote buying: voters targeted with vote buying pre-election may receive no government benefits post-election. The results point to obstacles to the democratic transition from clientelist to programmatic forms of electoral competition.

Authors

• Philip Keefer, Inter-American Development Bank

• Razvan Vlaicu, Inter-American Development Bank