Vote Buying and Partisan Competition in the Developing World

Session Submission Type: Full Submitted Panel

Session Description

Vote buying is the scourge of modern democracy. Its practice undermines electoral integrity, perverts political accountability, distorts public spending, and can even lead citizens to question the legitimacy of democracy itself. Analysts have documented significant vote buying schemes in at least 53 countries in recent years and although the relevant literature has boomed in recent years, there remains much that researchers do not know. This panel brings together 11 junior and senior scholars to study various new issues and deploy new methods in deepening our understanding of vote buying. Greene/Aytac and Schneider investigate how non-clientelist attachments shape citizens’ responses to vote buying attempts. Larreguy/Bowles/Liu and Ravanilla/Haim/Hicken examine voter compliance where the density of machine’s broker-networks vary. Vote buying presents a major threat to democratic practice and thus engages questions of legitimacy, the organizing theme for this year’s annual meetings. Country cases under study include India, Turkey, Liberia, and the Philippines. The papers employ a range of methodologies, including field experiments, survey experiments, statistical analysis, and ethnographic interviewing.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 12: COMPARATIVE POLITICS OF DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Individual Presentations

• Party-Voter Linkages and Access to Selective Benefits in Rural India - Mark Allan Schneider, Pitzer College

• How Voters View Payoffs: Vote-Buying Attempts in Turkey’s 2011 General Election - Kenneth F. Greene, University of Texas, Austin; S. Erdem Aytaç, Koç University; Ali Carkoglu

• Monitoring Brokers in Liberia's Developing Democracy - Horacio Alejandro Larreguy, Harvard University; Jeremy Bowles, Harvard University; Shelley Xuan Liu, Harvard University

• Brokers, Social Networks, Reciprocity, and Vote-buying in the Philippines - Nico Ravanilla, University of California San Diego; Dotan A Haim, University of California, San Diego; Allen D. Hicken, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Chair

• Kenneth F. Greene University of Texas, Austin

Discussants

• Dominika Koter Colgate University

• Mariela Szwarcberg Daby Reed College