Voting Behavior and Accountability in Developing Countries

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Why do many voters in developing countries re-elect incumbents despite their poor performance? What biases affect their assessment, and what are the sources of these biases? More broadly, how does voter behavior stem from and impact the linkages between citizens and politicians? Addressing the specific themes of clientelism, ethnic voting, incumbency advantage and bureaucratic performance, the papers in this panel study how voters judge incumbent politicians’ performance at the local level and how they make voting decisions based on their relationships with local politicians and local officials. Spanning the Latin American and African regions, they illustrate a range of the most recent use of surveys, including survey experiments, to study these crucial comparative politics questions.

The first two studies address foundational questions of voter-politician linkages at the local level. Elizabeth Carlson, focusing on Uganda, grapples with public service provision and performance by studying how ethnicity impacts voting and perceptions of public officials. In a paper from Argentina, Virginia Oliveros, and co-authors M. Victoria Murillo and Rodrigo Zarazaga, study clientelism and its impact on the linkage between voters and politicians in slums and other poor areas, with a particular focus on how it affects voting behavior.

The final two papers center on electoral accountability, identifying contexts and conditions where voter sanctioning of incumbent performance is limited. In a study from Uganda, Pia Raffler and co-author Lucy Martin demonstrate how voters’ perceptions of politicians’ control over local bureaucrats seems to play an important role in shaping their willingness to hold those politicians responsible for their performance. Julie Anne Weaver’s paper presents evidence from Peru that the mechanism for voter sanctioning of incumbents seems to have broken down, given respondents’ universal disdain for even strong performing incumbents and for giving incumbent mayors the possibility of being re-elected.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 11: Comparative Politics

Individual Presentations

• What Coethnic Leaders Provide: Cultural Favoritism and Vote Choice - Elizabeth C. Carlson

• Shanty Town Politics: A Preliminary Analysis of Clientelism Where It Matters - Virginia Oliveros, Tulane University; Maria Victoria Murillo, Columbia University; Rodrigo Esteban Zarazaga, CIAS

• Fault Lines: The Effects of Bureaucratic Power on Electoral Accountability - Pia Raffler, Harvard University; Lucy E. S. Martin, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

• The Breakdown of Local Electoral Accountability: Survey Evidence from Peru - Julie Anne Weaver, Harvard University

Chair

• Ana Lorena De La O Torres Yale University

Discussant

• Jessica Gottlieb Texas A&M University