The Clientelistic Utilization of Firm Resources by Businessperson Candidates

• In Event: Business, Labor, and the State

Abstract

A large proportion of electoral candidates in many developing democracies works in the business sector before they run for political offices. These businessperson candidates are often successful in their bids for political offices. For example, while only around 24% of MP candidates in the 2019 Thai election are businesspeople, 31% of the successful candidates are businesspeople. To explain this success, this paper attempts to elucidate how businessperson candidates utilize their firm resources to win more votes in elections. I argue that businessperson candidates are able to mobilize employees within their firms to vote for the businessperson candidate connected to the firm. Aside from turning out to vote for their employers, these employees are expected to undertake partisan activities in support of the candidates such as serving as brokers in the clientelistic distribution of firm resources to mobilize voters who are business clients of the candidates’ firm. Clientelistic distribution of firm resources can come in either positive or negative forms such as discounts on goods and services to business clients or threats that continuing access to supplies will end. The paper also investigates the mechanisms that allow businessperson candidates to incentivize their employees to turn out and vote for them and to engage in partisan activities. I show that businessperson candidates mobilize their employees by making future rewards or future employment contingent on turning out to vote and on engaging in such political activities.

Since businessperson candidates are allocating firm resources to maximize votes rather than profit, this use of firm resources is expected to reduce firms’ profit margin and thus a costly strategy for businessperson candidates. As a result, businessperson candidates will only utilize firm resources clientelistically only when necessary. Firm-level and constituency-level factors are analyzed to see how characteristics of a firm and the constituency the businessperson candidates are running in impact the prevalence of clientelistic utilization of private sector resources. Examples of relevant firm-level and constituency-level factors discussed are the size of a firm and the competitiveness of a constituency.

Using data from list experiments conducted with employees of firms in Thailand, I provide evidence of the types of activities that employees engage in to support the businessperson candidates as well as the incentive mechanisms used by businessperson candidates to get the employees to turnout on election day and to undertake political activities prior to election day. The data from the survey will also be used to show that the frequency of employees undertaking partisan activities will be higher for firms connected to businessperson candidates in highly competitive districts than for firms in less competitive districts and for larger firms than for smaller firms.

Author

• Songkhun Nillasithanukroh, Duke University