IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/econom/v85y2018i339p518-531.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Clientelism, Contagious Voting and Governance

Author

Listed:
  • Abhirup Sarkar

Abstract

This paper explains inferior quality of governance in less affluent countries in terms of a patron–client relationship between political parties and a large section of voters. The client voters resort to strategic voting, which is shown to be contagious, leading to suboptimal effort choice by the incumbent government and a higher probability for the incumbent to remain in power. The possibility of competition between the incumbent and the opposition, in terms of expenditure on political propaganda, actually helps the incumbent and reinforces these results.

Suggested Citation

  • Abhirup Sarkar, 2018. "Clientelism, Contagious Voting and Governance," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 85(339), pages 518-531, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:econom:v:85:y:2018:i:339:p:518-531
    DOI: 10.1111/ecca.12265
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/ecca.12265
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/ecca.12265?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Morris, Stephen & Shin, Hyun Song, 1998. "Unique Equilibrium in a Model of Self-Fulfilling Currency Attacks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(3), pages 587-597, June.
    2. Carlsson, Hans & van Damme, Eric, 1993. "Global Games and Equilibrium Selection," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 61(5), pages 989-1018, September.
    3. Timothy Feddersen & Wolfgang Pesendorfer, 1997. "Voting Behavior and Information Aggregation in Elections with Private Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(5), pages 1029-1058, September.
    4. Leonard Wantchekon, 2003. "Clientelism and voting behavior: Evidence from a field experiment in benin," Natural Field Experiments 00339, The Field Experiments Website.
    5. Dixit, Avinash & Londregan, John, 1995. "Redistributive Politics and Economic Efficiency," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 89(4), pages 856-866, December.
    6. Dilip Mookherjee & Pranab K. Bardhan, 2000. "Capture and Governance at Local and National Levels," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(2), pages 135-139, May.
    7. David P. Myatt, 2007. "On the Theory of Strategic Voting -super-1," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 74(1), pages 255-281.
    8. Acemoglu,Daron & Robinson,James A., 2009. "Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521671422.
    9. Gene M. Grossman & Elhanan Helpman, 1996. "Electoral Competition and Special Interest Politics," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 63(2), pages 265-286.
    10. George-Marios Angeletos & Christian Hellwig & Alessandro Pavan, 2007. "Dynamic Global Games of Regime Change: Learning, Multiplicity, and the Timing of Attacks," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 75(3), pages 711-756, May.
    11. Khemani, Stuti, 2004. "Political cycles in a developing economy: effect of elections in the Indian States," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 125-154, February.
    12. Robert J. Barro, 1999. "Determinants of Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(S6), pages 158-183, December.
    13. Chris Edmond, 2013. "Information Manipulation, Coordination, and Regime Change," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 80(4), pages 1422-1458.
    14. Shadmehr, Mehdi & Bernhardt, Dan, 2011. "Collective Action with Uncertain Payoffs: Coordination, Public Signals, and Punishment Dilemmas," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 105(4), pages 829-851, November.
    15. 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.
    16. Bernard Caillaud & Jean Tirole, 2002. "Parties as Political Intermediaries," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(4), pages 1453-1489.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sarkar, Abhirup & Sinha, Abhinandan, 2022. "Clientelism and violence: The politics of informal economy," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    2. Sarkar, Abhirup & Sinha, Abhinandan, 2018. "Clientelism and Violence: The Politics of Informal Economy," MPRA Paper 110445, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Oct 2021.
    3. Soumyanetra Munshi, 2021. "Criminality and clientelism: a game-theoretic exploration," Indian Economic Review, Springer, vol. 56(2), pages 375-403, December.

    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. Bhalla, Manaswini & Chatterjee, Kalyan & Dutta, Souvik, 2021. "Social reform as a path to political leadership: A dynamic model," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 191(C), pages 982-1010.
    2. Dilip Mookherjee, 2014. "Accountability of local and state governments in India: an overview of recent research," Indian Growth and Development Review, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 7(1), pages 12-41, April.
    3. Dilip Mookherjee & Pranab K. Bardhan, 2012. "Political Clientelism and Capture: Theory and Evidence from West Bengal, India," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2012-097, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    4. Pranab Bardhan & Dilip Mookherjee, 2023. "Political clientelism and capture: theory and an application," Indian Economic Review, Springer, vol. 58(1), pages 17-34, July.
    5. Shadmehr, Mehdi, 2015. "Extremism in revolutionary movements," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 97-121.
    6. Abraham Aldama & Mateo Vásquez-Cortés & Lauren Elyssa Young, 2019. "Fear and citizen coordination against dictatorship," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 31(1), pages 103-125, January.
    7. Basu, Pathikrit & Chatterjee, Kalyan & Hoshino, Tetsuya & Tamuz, Omer, 2020. "Repeated coordination with private learning," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 190(C).
    8. Sarkar, Abhirup & Sinha, Abhinandan, 2018. "Clientelism and Violence: The Politics of Informal Economy," MPRA Paper 110445, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Oct 2021.
    9. Pathikrit Basu & Kalyan Chatterjee & Tetsuya Hoshino & Omer Tamuz, 2018. "Repeated Coordination with Private Learning," Papers 1809.00051, arXiv.org.
    10. Heng Chen & Yang K. Lu & Wing Suen, 2016. "The Power Of Whispers: A Theory Of Rumor, Communication, And Revolution," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 57(1), pages 89-116, February.
    11. Lee, Kyounghun & Oh, Frederick Dongchuhl, 2021. "Public information and global games with strategic complements and substitutes," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 199(C).
    12. Kováč, Eugen & Steiner, Jakub, 2013. "Reversibility in dynamic coordination problems," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 298-320.
    13. Pavan, Alessandro & Vives, Xavier, 2015. "Information, Coordination, and Market Frictions: An Introduction," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 158(PB), pages 407-426.
    14. Angeletos, G.-M. & Lian, C., 2016. "Incomplete Information in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1065-1240, Elsevier.
    15. Chong Huang, 2018. "Coordination and social learning," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 65(1), pages 155-177, January.
    16. Edmond, Chris, 2018. "Non-Laplacian beliefs in a global game with noisy signaling," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(2), pages 297-312.
    17. Hubert Janos Kiss & Ismael Rodríguez-Lara & Alfonso Rosa-García, 2017. "Overthrowing the dictator: a game-theoretic approach to revolutions and media," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 49(2), pages 329-355, August.
    18. Toni Ahnert & Ali Kakhbod, 2017. "Information Choice and Amplification of Financial Crises," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(6), pages 2130-2178.
    19. Sarkar, Abhirup & Sinha, Abhinandan, 2022. "Clientelism and violence: The politics of informal economy," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    20. Dengwei Qi, 2022. "Learning and Strategic Delay in a Dynamic Coordination Game," KIER Working Papers 1087, Kyoto University, Institute of Economic Research.

    More about this item

    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:bla:econom:v:85:y:2018:i:339:p:518-531. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.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.