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Vote Buying or Campaign Promises?: Electoral Strategies When Party Credibility is Limited

Author

Listed:
  • Hanusch, Marek
  • Keefer, Philip
  • Vlaicu, Razvan

Abstract

What explains significant variation across countries in the use of vote buying instead of campaign promises to secure voter support? This paper explicitly models the tradeoff parties face between engaging in vote buying and making campaign promises, and explores the distributional consequences of this decision, in a setting where party credibility can vary. When parties are less credible they spend more on vote buying and target vote buying more heavily toward groups that do not believe campaign promises. When political credibility is sufficiently low, some voter groups are targeted only with vote buying and not with promises of post-electoral transfers. Stronger electoral competition reduces rent seeking but increases vote buying. Incumbents may have an advantage in undertaking vote buying; the paper finds that in a dynamic setting the prospect of a future incumbency advantage increases current vote buying.

Suggested Citation

  • Hanusch, Marek & Keefer, Philip & Vlaicu, Razvan, 2016. "Vote Buying or Campaign Promises?: Electoral Strategies When Party Credibility is Limited," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 7775, Inter-American Development Bank.
  • Handle: RePEc:idb:brikps:7775
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Frederico Finan & Laura Schechter, 2012. "Vote‐Buying and Reciprocity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 80(2), pages 863-881, March.
    2. Nichter, Simeon, 2008. "Vote Buying or Turnout Buying? Machine Politics and the Secret Ballot," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 102(1), pages 19-31, February.
    3. Eddie Dekel & Matthew O. Jackson & Asher Wolinsky, 2008. "Vote Buying: General Elections," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 116(2), pages 351-380, April.
    4. Hanusch, Marek & Keefer, Philip, 2014. "Younger parties, bigger spenders? Party age and political budget cycles," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 1-18.
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    Cited by:

    1. Cruz, Cesi & Keefer, Philip & Labonne, Julien, 2016. "Incumbent Advantage, Voter Information and Vote Buying," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 7730, Inter-American Development Bank.
    2. Cesi Cruz & Philip Keefer & Julien Labonne, 2016. "Incumbent Advantage, Voter Information and Vote Buying," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 94877, Inter-American Development Bank.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • H20 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - General
    • H50 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - General
    • O10 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - General

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