Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-ws8qp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T09:41:04.364Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Buying Power: Electoral Strategy before the Secret Vote

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 July 2020

DANIEL W. GINGERICH*
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
*
Daniel W. Gingerich, Associate Professor, Department of Politics, University of Virginia, dwg4c@virginia.edu.

Abstract

Research on clientelism emphasizes the use of brokers to mobilize voters. To utilize these agents efficiently, politicians must learn about brokers’ relative abilities and allocate scarce resources accordingly. Drawing upon a hand-coded dataset based on the archives of Gustavo Capanema, a powerful mid-twentieth-century congressman from Minas Gerais, Brazil, this paper offers the first direct evidence of such learning dynamics. The analysis concentrates on Brazil’s pre-secret ballot era, a time when measuring broker performance was particularly straightforward. Consistent with theories of political learning, the data demonstrate that resource flows to local machines were contingent on the deviation between actual and expected votes received in previous elections. Moreover, given politicians’ ability to discern mobilization capacity, payments to brokers were highly effective in bringing out the vote.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The author would like to thank Danilo Medeiros and Mariana Brazão for excellent research assistance on this article. Thanks for comments and suggestions go to Shan Aman-Rana, Ernesto Calvo, Jose Antonio Cheibub, Anderson Frey, John Gerring, Michael Gilbert, Yamile Guibert, Deborah Hellman, Gabrielle Kruks-Wisner, Fabrice Lehoucq, Raul Madrid, Scott Mainwaring, Ken Roberts, David Singerman, Sandip Sukhtankar, Dawn Teele, Silvia Tidey, Jan Vogler, participants in the panel “Comparative Democratization” at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, participants in the panel “Party Systems and Dynamics” at the 2019 Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, seminar participants at Cornell University and the University of Virginia, the Editors, and three anonymous referees. Funding for this research was provided by the Corruption Laboratory for Ethics, Accountability and the Rule of Law (CLEAR) of the Democracy Initiative at the University of Virginia and a SPRINT grant from the University of Virginia. Replication files are available at the American Political Science Review Dataverse https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/QIWQWL.

References

REFERENCES

Aspinall, Edward. 2014. “When Brokers Betray: Clientelism, Social Networks, and Electoral Politics in Indonesia.” Critical Asian Studies 46 (4): 545570.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Auerbach, Adam, and Thachil, Tariq. 2018. “How Clients Select Brokers: Competition and Choice in India’s Slums.” American Political Science Review 112 (4): 775791.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bolton, Patrick, and Dewatripont, Mathias. 2005. Contract Theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Bombardini, Matilde, and Trebbi, Francisco. 2011. “Votes or Money? Theory and Evidence from the US Congress.” Journal of Public Economics 95 (7–8): 587611.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowles, Jeremy, Larreguy, Horacio, and Liu, Shelley. Forthcoming. “How Weakly Institutionalized Parties Monitor Brokers in Developing Democracies: Evidence from Post-Conflict Liberia.” American Journal of Political Science. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12515).Google Scholar
Carvalho, Orlando. 1958. Ensaios de Sociologia Eleitoral. Belo Horizonte: UFMG.Google Scholar
De Kadt, , Daniel, , and Larreguy, Horacio. 2018. “Agents of the Regime? Traditional Leaders and Electoral Politics in South Africa.” Journal of Politics 80 (2): 382399.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duarte, Rual, Finan, Federico, Larreguy, Horacio, and Schechter, Laura. 2019. “Networks, Information, and Vote Buying.” Working Paper, Harvard University. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/hnu7msg9djxlwe7/AADTe62VnIyzYwPLr1YuY6zya?dl=0&preview=I_Larreguy.pdf.Google Scholar
Finan, Federico, and Schechter, Laura. 2012. “Vote Buying and Reciprocity.” Econometrica 80 (2): 863881.Google Scholar
Frey, Anderson. 2019. “Strategic Allocation of Anti-Clientelism Goods and the Breaking of Political Machines.” Working Paper, University of Rochester. https://events.barcelonagse.eu/live/files/2875-andersonfrey66184pdf.Google Scholar
Gingerich, Daniel W. 2019. “Ballot Reform as Suffrage Restriction: Evidence from Brazil’s Second Republic.” American Journal of Political Science 63 (4):920935.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gingerich, Daniel W. 2014. “Brokered Politics in Brazil: An Empirical Analysis.” Quarterly Journal of Political Science 9 (3): 269300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gingerich, Daniel W., and Medeiros, Danilo. 2020. “Vote Secrecy with Diverse Voters.” Comparative Political Studies 53 (3–4): 567600.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gingerich, Daniel W., and Medina, Luis F.. 2013. “The Endurance and Eclipse of the Controlled Vote: A Formal Model of Vote Brokerage under the Secret Ballot.” Economics & Politics 25 (3): 453–80.Google Scholar
Gottlieb, Jessica, and Larreguy, Horacio. 2020. “An Informational Theory of Electoral Targeting in Young Clientelistic Democracies: Evidence from Senegal.” Quarterly Journal of Political Science 15 (1): 73104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, Donald, and Gerber, Alan. 2015. Get Out the Vote: How to Increase Voter Turnout. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.Google Scholar
Holmström, Bengt. 1982. “Managerial Incentive Schemes: A Dynamic Perspective.” In Essays in Economics and Management in Honour of Lars Wahlbeck, eds. Björn Wahlroos, Bo‐Göran Ekholm, Alf-Erik Lerviks, and Hendrik Meyer, 169–82. Helsinki: Swedish School of Economics.Google Scholar
Kam, Christopher. 2017. “The Secret Ballot and the Market for Votes at 19th-century British Elections.” Comparative Political Studies 50 (5): 594635.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kinzo, Maria. 1980. Representação Política e Sistema Eleitoral no Brasil. São Paulo: Edições Símbolo.Google Scholar
Koter, Dominika. 2013. “King Makers: Local leaders and Ethnic Politics in Africa.” World Politics 65 (2): 187232.Google Scholar
Larreguy, Horacio. 2013. “Monitoring Political Brokers: Evidence from Clientelistic Networks in Mexico.” Working paper, Harvard University. https://www.dropbox.com/s/2klf26vyru0vehx/Monitoring_Brokers_Dec2013.pdf.Google Scholar
Larreguy, Horacio, Marshall, John, and Querubin, Pablo. 2016. “Parties, Brokers, and Voter Mobilization: How Turnout Buying Depends upon the Party’s Capacity to Monitor Brokers.” American Political Science Review 110 (1): 160179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Larreguy, Horacio, Olea, Cesar Montiel, and Querubin, Pablo. 2017. “Political Brokers: Partisans or Agents? Evidence from the Mexican Teachers’ Union.” American Journal of Political Science 61 (4): 877891.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lipson, Leslie. 1956. “Government in Contemporary Brazil.” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 22 (2): 183198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mainwaring, Scott. 1999. Rethinking Party Systems in the Third Wave of Democratization: The Case of Brazil. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Mares, Isabela, and Young, Lauren. 2016. “Buying, Expropriating, and Stealing Votes.” Annual Review of Political Science 19: 267288.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mares, Isabela, and Young, Lauren. 2018. “The Core Voter’s Curse: Clientelistic Threats and Promises in Hungarian Elections.” Comparative Political Studies 51 (11): 14411471.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martinez-Bravo, Monica. 2014. “The Role of Local Officials in New Democracies: Evidence from Indonesia.” American Economic Review 104 (4): 12441287.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nichter, Simeon. 2018. Votes for Survival: Relational Clientelism in Latin America. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nicolau, Jairo. 2012. Eleições no Brasil: do Império aos Dias Atuais. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar.Google Scholar
Novaes, Lucas. 2018. “Disloyal Brokers and Weak Parties.” American Journal of Political Science 62 (1): 8498.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Persson, Torsten, and Tabellini, Guido. 2000. Political Economics: Explaining Economic Policy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Rueda, Miguel. 2015. “Buying Votes with Imperfect Local Knowledge and a Secret Ballot.” Journal of Theoretical Politics 27 (3): 428456.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stokes, Susan, Dunning, Thad, Nazareno, Marcelo, and Brusco, Valeria. 2013. Brokers, Voters, and Clientelism: The Puzzle of Distributive Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Szwarcberg, Mariela. 2015. Mobilizing Poor Voters: Machine Politics, Clientelism, and Social Networks in Argentina. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Gingerich Dataset

Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Gingerich supplementary material

Gingerich supplementary material

Download Gingerich supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 5.1 MB