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Is Vote Buying Effective? Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in West Africa

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  • Pedro C. Vicente

Abstract

Vote buying is a frequent practice during election time in many parts of the world. But no research has been done to quantify its effects on voters` electoral behavior. To address this challenge, we have designed and conducted a randomized experiment during the presidential elections of July 2006 in Sao Tome and Principe. This is a newly found oil-rich West African country that has been facing an increase in `retail` vote buying. Our research design included a randomized campaign against vote buying sponsored by the Electoral Commission of the country, and pre-electoral campaign/post-election panel surveys in treatment (exposed to the campaign) and control locations, including 1034 subjects across 50 different areas. We observe a significant effect of the campaign on perceptions of vote buying, which constitutes the exogenous variation we use to identify effects on voting behavior. We characterize determinants of vote buying (more frequent in swing and rural locations), and find that vote buying energizes the electorate by increasing turnout. Crucially, we capture real effects on candidates` relative performance, by identifying the challenger to be driving more votes through vote buying (after the treatment), which is consistent with the timeline of events (late challenger candidacy). This result controls for changes in information about the candidates (e.g. policy platforms) and location-specific minutes spent by international electoral observers.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by University of Oxford, Department of Economics in its series Economics Series Working Papers with number 318.

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Date of creation: 01 Apr 2007
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Handle: RePEc:oxf:wpaper:318

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Keywords: Vote buying; Electoral politics; Political economy; Randomized experiment; West Africa;

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Cited by:
  1. Andrés Cendales, 2012. "Vote Buying, Political Patronage and Selective Plunder," Latin American Journal of Economics-formerly Cuadernos de Economía, Instituto de Economía. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile., vol. 49(2), pages 237-276, November.
  2. Lisa Chauvet & Paul Collier, 2008. "Elections and Economic Policy in Developing Countries," Working Papers DT/2008/11, DIAL (Développement, Institutions et Mondialisation).
  3. Finan, Frederico S. & Schechter, Laura, 2011. "Vote-Buying and Reciprocity," IZA Discussion Papers 5965, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  4. Gine, Xavier & Mansuri, Ghazala, 2011. "Together we will : experimental evidence on female voting behavior in Pakistan," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5692, The World Bank.

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