Electoral Clientelism Under Autocracy: Parties Versus Firms

• In Event: Clientelism and Corruption

Abstract

From parties to firms to local notables, autocrats use a variety of brokers to mobilize voters during elections (Ziblatt 2008; Stokes et al. 2013; Mares and Zhu 2015, Frye et al. 2014). However, these mobilization strategies are often studied in isolation from each other. We do not yet have a good understanding of whether these strategies are complements or substitutes (Mares and Young 2016). We also lack a good understanding of the political and economic consequences of electoral mobilization strategies. For example, one might ask whether party-based political machines and employer-based political machines generate different prospects for democratization and economic development.

We develop a model that captures an autocrat’s tradeoff between using employers and parties to mobilize voters. Employers have more powerful tools to mobilize voters as they can fire, promote, or give raises to their workers, but can apply these tools only to their workers and have less sway with the broader public. In contrast, party brokers have weaker tools to mobilize voters, but can reach a much broader set of voters, including pensioners, the unemployed, and those outside the formal workforce. This tradeoff implies that autocrats may trade off the benefits of mobilizing via employers and via parties and target their mobilization efforts depending on one’s employment status. It also suggests that autocrats may shape the economy by creating inflexible labor markets where they use employers to mobilize voters. They also may adapt electoral rules to make employer-based monitoring more efficient in these settings.

We offer preliminary tests of the model using original surveys from 9 countries that include questions on voter mobilization in recent elections; administrative data across Russia’s more than 80 regions, and cross-national data on labor market conditions and electoral rules to assess the claims in the model. We expect to find that the choice of mobilization strategy depends on deep structural factors, such as the concentration of employment and the mobility of capital, as well as on more contingent factors, such as the tightness of the labor market and the extent of party competition. We also expect to find that autocrats try to shape these contingent factors in the short-run to suit their political needs.

This research thus hopes to generate insights into debates about the sources of electoral clientelism and coercion and the economic bases of autocracy and democracy.

Authors

• Timothy Frye

• Ora John Reuter, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

• David Szakonyi, Higher School of Economics