Links to the State and Pro-Incumbent Attitudes and Voting: Evidence from the Argentine Panel Election Study 2015

• In Event: Contemporary Politics in Argentina and Bolivia

Abstract

Scholarship on electoral behavior has produced many theories to explain voters’ decisions, from the classic approaches of the Columbia and Michigan schools, to more recent theories of directional and economic voting. A largely separate literature has emphasized the prevalence, especially among democracies in Latin America, of clientelism, patronage and other forms of state dependence that make voters more likely to support the incumbents who provide them with particularistic material benefits. Exploiting the rich data provided by the Argentine Panel Election Study 2015 (Lupu, Gervasoni, Oliveros y Schiumerini 2015) -a survey containing many and diverse dependent and independent variables related to voting patterns and the first electoral panel study available for Argentina- I test to what extent different forms of economic ties to the state (e.g. receiving salaries, retirement payments, conditional cash transfers or clientelistic goods and services) make voters more likely to support national and subnational incumbent parties. The dependent variable is not just electoral (the probability of voting for national and subnational incumbent parties), but a broader construct: the degree to which voters have pro-incumbent attitudes (expressed in their voting behavior but also in their assessments of incumbent parties, leaders and policies, both at the national and subnational level). Several regression models test the explanatory power of the proposed set of independent variables (diverse forms of economic links to the state) while holding constant other standard explanations of pro-incumbency attitudes.

Author

• Carlos H Gervasoni, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella