Vote-buying as a Signaling Game: Evidence from Lab and Survey Experiments

• In Event: Electoral Fraud and Integrity

Abstract

Vote-buying - in which political machines provide voters with private transfers such as T-shirts, gift coupons, and cash before an election in order to buy their votes - poses a fundamental threat to democratic ideals such as representativeness and accountability, also undermining economic development. Thus, scholars have long studied the operation of vote-buying, often relying on premise that the machines target voters who believe that their votes will be monitored. Yet, reliable evidence for the premise remains lacking, by large.
We explore a possibility that a belief about being monitored is actually a consequence of being targeted, rather than the other way around. We first construct a formal model of vote buying as a signaling game, in which a voter is uncertain about a politician’s monitoring capacity before observing her provision decision. We then characterize a separating equilibrium in which the voter affirmatively updates his belief about her monitoring capacity only when he receives a private transfer from her, whereas he negatively updates the belief if a private transfer is not offered. In addition, consistent with the voter’s belief updating, the politician offers a private transfer only when she is equipped with monitoring technology.
Experimental results verify the separating equilibrium. We recruited undergraduate students to a lab, asking them to play the roles of Voter and Candidate in an election game, in which a voter is informed that the likelihood of a candidate being equipped with monitoring technology is 0.4; the voter is able to observe only the candidate’s decision on the provision of a private transfer but not her actual monitoring capacity. In a guessing game after the multiple play of the election game, participants are asked to indicate their binary beliefs about a candidate’s monitoring capacity under two scenarios, one in which the candidate chooses to offer a private transfer and the other in which the candidate chooses not to do so. We find that 10% and 83.33% of participants believe that the candidate is equipped with monitoring capacity under the scenarios of no provision and provision, respectively. When a belief is adjusted on a scale between 0 and 1 using surveyed confidence, the average scores of adjusted beliefs are 0.21 and 0.75 under the scenarios of no provision and provision, respectively. We also find (1) that the likelihood of voting for a candidate offering a private transfer is greater among participants who affirmatively update beliefs under the hypothetical scenario of transfer provision and (2) that the likelihood of choosing to offer a private transfer after being equipped with monitoring capacity is greater among the same type of participants.
In order to bolster external validity, we will shortly implement an online survey experiment in Mexico. Survey participants will be randomly exposed to either a text describing a situation in which they are offered private transfers or the other one describing a situation in which they are not offered. Then, they will be asked to indicate their beliefs about their votes being monitored. We expect that an average belief will be greater among those exposed to the first text, compared to those exposed to the second text.
The main substantive insight of our research is that, by providing private transfers, a politician can effectively change voters’ beliefs about her ability to monitor their voter choices at the polls. Therefore, even when institutions make monitoring vote choices unfeasible, politicians can buy votes as long as small doubt about ballot secrecy remains in voters’ minds. A relevant policy implication is that institutional reform for ballot secrecy may be not sufficient to eradicate vote-buying; voter education of ballot secrecy should be combined with the reform.

Authors

• Sergio J Ascencio, University of New Mexico

• Han Il Chang, New York University