Monitoring Brokers in Liberia's Developing Democracy

• In Event: Vote Buying and Partisan Competition in the Developing World

Abstract

In comparison to parties in well-established democracies, parties in developing democracies in Sub-Saharan Africa lack the resources to set up sophisticated infrastructures to monitor their political brokers. We argue, however, that weaknesses in electoral administration allow for simple monitoring of brokers, which induces increased effort and improved electoral performance. Such weaknesses are more likely to be exploited by incumbent parties with larger access to resources, and in rural areas where the scope for turnout buying is higher due to the increased costs of voting. Using post-war Liberia to test our argument, we combine rich administrative data with plausibly exogenous variation in parties' ability to monitor their brokers. Results indicate that increased monitoring ability leads to an improvement of the incumbent's electoral performance, which is larger in precincts where voters travel larger distances to vote. We provide evidence that supports the proposed monitoring mechanism.

Authors

• Horacio Alejandro Larreguy, Harvard University

• Jeremy Bowles, Harvard University

• Shelley Xuan Liu, Harvard University