IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/bjposi/v42y2012i02p371-392_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Contingent Prize Allocation and Pivotal Voting

Author

Listed:
  • Smith, Alastair
  • Bueno De Mesquita, Bruce

Abstract

Parties can elitcit widespread electoral support by making the distribution of prizes or rewards to groups of voters contingent upon electoral support. In addition to altering which party wins, a voter's choice also influences the distribution of prizes. This latter factor, referred to in this article as prize pivotalness, tends to be the dominant influence in vote choice. The desire to win prizes can induce voters to coalesce into a highly supportive group, even if they dislike the party's policies. Characterizing voting equilibria in this framework explains the rationale for the support of patronage parties, variance in voter turnout and the endogenous political polarization of groups in both established and new democracies.

Suggested Citation

  • Smith, Alastair & Bueno De Mesquita, Bruce, 2012. "Contingent Prize Allocation and Pivotal Voting," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 42(2), pages 371-392, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:bjposi:v:42:y:2012:i:02:p:371-392_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0007123411000342/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Miguel R Rueda, 2015. "Buying votes with imperfect local knowledge and a secret ballot," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 27(3), pages 428-456, July.
    2. Charles Louis-Sidois, 2018. "Three Essays in Political Economy [Trois essais en économie politique]," SciencePo Working papers tel-03457852, HAL.
    3. Jorge Gallego, 2015. "Natural Disasters and Clientelism: the Case of Floods and Landslides in Colombia," Documentos de Trabajo 12537, Universidad del Rosario.
    4. Andersen, Jørgen Juel & Fiva, Jon H. & Natvik, Gisle James, 2014. "Voting when the stakes are high," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 157-166.
    5. Alastair Smith & Bruce Bueno de Mesquita & Tom LaGatta, 2017. "Group incentives and rational voting1," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 29(2), pages 299-326, April.
    6. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/bpfbvips89ef8bnmu88napd8r is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Charles Louis-Sidois, 2018. "Three essays in political economy [Trois essais en économie politique]," SciencePo Working papers tel-03419395, HAL.
    8. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/bpfbvips89ef8bnmu88napd8r is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Alastair Smith & Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, 2019. "Motivating political support with group-based rewards," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 31(2), pages 156-182, April.
    10. Charles Louis-Sidois, 2018. "Three essays in political economy [Trois essais en économie politique]," SciencePo Working papers Main tel-03419395, HAL.

    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:cup:bjposi:v:42:y:2012:i:02:p:371-392_00. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/jps .

    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.