Clientelism, Turnout and Incumbents’ Performance in Chilean Local Government Elections

Parties and their leaders are linked programmatically and non-programmatically with citizens, incentivising the latter to vote in elections and seeking to influence their choices. In this paper, we analyse the effects of politician–voter linkages on the electoral performance of incumbent mayors in Chile and on electoral turnout in their municipalities. To measure the linkages, we use personal meetings that mayors hold with citizens. While some mayors use this mechanism to solve problems of general interest (programmatic meetings), others do so to provide bureaucratic advantages or benefits for their constituents (non-programmatic meetings). We use a database of 44,162 personal meetings aggregated from Chile’s 345 municipalities. We argue that increases in the number of meetings positively impact electoral turnout and increase the chances of success for incumbent mayors when they compete for re-election. This effect is particularly significant in the case of electoral performance and the re-election of mayors in municipalities with high levels of rurality. Finally, we report that the meetings not only help mayors to link with their constituents but also help them to publicise their political work.