IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/unu/wpaper/wp-2021-138.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Social ties, clientelism, and the poor's expectations of future service provision: Receiving more, expecting less?

Author

Listed:
  • Prisca Jöst
  • Ellen Lust

Abstract

Are candidates who hand out clientelistic goods at election time less likely to provide services once they take office? This paper examines the poor's expectations of future service provision by candidates who hand out money and other goods versus those who do not. We hypothesize that the poor's expectations should depend on the density of social ties. To test this hypothesis, we use hierarchical models to analyse observational data and two conjoint experiments embedded in a unique survey of Kenyans, Malawians, and Zambians.

Suggested Citation

  • Prisca Jöst & Ellen Lust, 2021. "Social ties, clientelism, and the poor's expectations of future service provision: Receiving more, expecting less?," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2021-138, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    • Handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2021-138
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/Publications/Working-paper/PDF/wp2021-138-social-ties-clientelism-poors-expectations-future-service-provision.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Leight, Jessica & Foarta, Dana & Pande, Rohini & Ralston, Laura, 2020. "Value for money? Vote-buying and politician accountability," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 190(C).
    2. Auerbach, Adam Michael & Thachil, Tariq, 2018. "How Clients Select Brokers: Competition and Choice in India's Slums," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 112(4), pages 775-791, November.
    3. Edwine W Barasa & Anthony M Manyara & Sassy Molyneux & Benjamin Tsofa, 2017. "Recentralization within decentralization: County hospital autonomy under devolution in Kenya," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(8), pages 1-18, August.
    4. Roxana Gutiérrez-Romero, 2014. "An Inquiry into the Use of Illegal Electoral Practices and Effects of Political Violence and Vote-buying," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 58(8), pages 1500-1527, December.
    5. Khemani, Stuti, 2015. "Buying votes versus supplying public services: Political incentives to under-invest in pro-poor policies," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 84-93.
    6. Stokes, Susan C., 2005. "Perverse Accountability: A Formal Model of Machine Politics with Evidence from Argentina," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 99(3), pages 315-325, August.
    7. Kate Baldwin, 2013. "Why Vote with the Chief? Political Connections and Public Goods Provision in Zambia," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 57(4), pages 794-809, October.
    8. Harris, J. Andrew & Posner, Daniel N., 2019. "(Under What Conditions) Do Politicians Reward Their Supporters? Evidence from Kenya’s Constituencies Development Fund," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 113(1), pages 123-139, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jöst, Prisca & Lust, Ellen, 2022. "Receiving more, expecting less? Social ties, clientelism and the poor’s expectations of future service provision," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    2. Bardhan, Pranab, 2022. "Clientelism and governance," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    3. Alice Guerra & Mogens K. Justesen, 2022. "Vote buying and redistribution," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 193(3), pages 315-344, December.
    4. Garay, Candelaria & Palmer-Rubin, Brian & Poertner, Mathias, 2020. "Organizational and partisan brokerage of social benefits: Social policy linkages in Mexico," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 136(C).
    5. Anand Murugesan & Jean-Robert Tyran, 2023. "The Puzzling Practice of Paying “Cash for Votes”," CESifo Working Paper Series 10504, CESifo.
    6. Gallego, Jorge & Li, Christopher & Wantchekon, Leonard, 2020. "Electoral Intermediaries," Working papers 45, Red Investigadores de Economía.
    7. Jeremy Bowles & Horacio Larreguy & Shelley Liu, 2020. "How Weakly Institutionalized Parties Monitor Brokers in Developing Democracies: Evidence from Postconflict Liberia," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 64(4), pages 952-967, October.
    8. Christopher Blattman & Horacio Larreguy & Benjamin Marx & Otis Reid, 2019. "Eat Widely, Vote Wisely ? Lessons from a Campaign Against Vote Buying in Uganda," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03608420, HAL.
    9. Pranab Bardhan & Sandip Mitra & Dilip Mookherjee & Anusha Nath, 2020. "How Do Voters Respond to Welfare vis-à-vis Public Good Programs? An Empirical Test for Clientelism," Staff Report 605, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    10. Paniagua, Victoria, 2022. "When clients vote for brokers: How elections improve public goods provision in urban slums," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    11. Leopoldo Fergusson & Carlos A. Molina & James A. Robinson, 2022. "The Weak State Trap," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 89(354), pages 293-331, April.
    12. Jessica Gottlieb & Guy Grossman & Horacio Larreguy & Benjamin Marx, 2019. "A Signaling Theory of Distributive Policy Choice: Evidence from Senegal," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03570875, HAL.
    13. Anindya Bhattacharya & Anirban Kar & Alita Nandi, 2016. "Local institutional structure and clientelistic access to employment: the case of MGNREGS in three states of India," Working papers 269, Centre for Development Economics, Delhi School of Economics.
    14. Leight, Jessica & Foarta, Dana & Pande, Rohini & Ralston, Laura, 2020. "Value for money? Vote-buying and politician accountability," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 190(C).
    15. Inken von Borzyskowski & Patrick M Kuhn, 2020. "Dangerously informed: Voter information and pre-electoral violence in Africa," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 57(1), pages 15-29, January.
    16. Aidt, Toke & Asatryan, Zareh & Badalyan, Lusine, 2022. "Political consequences of consumer debt relief," ZEW Discussion Papers 22-049, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    17. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/7j1t12vvla8c887v4q18ihljej is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Das, Ritanjan & Dey, Subhasish & Neogi, Ranjita, 2021. "Across the stolen Ponds: The political geography of social welfare in rural eastern India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    19. Chau, Nancy H. & Liu, Yanyan & Soundararajan, Vidhya, 2021. "Political activism as a determinant of strategic transfers: Evidence from an indian public works program," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    20. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/7j1t12vvla8c887v4q18ihljej is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Baldwin, Kate & Karlan, Dean & Udry, Christopher & Appiah, Ernest, 2023. "How political insiders lose out when international aid underperforms: Evidence from a participatory development experiment in Ghana," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    22. Chau, Nancy H. & Liu, Yanyan & Soundararajan, Vidhya, 2017. "Political activism as a determinant of clientelistic transfers: Evidence from an Indian public works program:," IFPRI discussion papers 1700, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    vote-buying; Clientelism; Social cohesion; Poverty; Service delivery;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2021-138. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Siméon Rapin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/widerfi.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.