Buying votes with imperfect local knowledge and a secret ballot

Rueda, Miguel R.

doi:10.1177/0951629814533841

Cited by 27 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 34 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In such settings, client choice can only occur via intra-party competition among brokers, which is rarely examined. Other frameworks specify a single broker (Gingerich and Medina 2013; Rueda 2015) or multiple brokers who each hold spatially distinct monopolies over clients (Gans-Morse, Mazzuca, and Nichter 2014; Camp 2015). Across all of these models, clients are bereft of options, rendering their preferences—and efforts to investigate them—redundant.…”

Section: Client Preferences Mattermentioning

confidence: 99%

How Clients Select Brokers: Competition and Choice in India's Slums

2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Conventional models of clientelism often assume poor voters have little or no choice over which local broker to turn to for help. Yet communities in many clientelistic settings are marked by multiple brokers who compete for a following. Such competition makes client choices, and the preferences guiding such choices, pivotal in fueling broker support. We examine client preferences for a pervasive broker—slum leaders—in the context of urban India. To identify resident preferences for slum leaders, we conducted an ethnographically informed conjoint survey experiment with 2,199 residents across 110 slums in two Indian cities. Contra standard emphases on shared ethnicity, we find residents place heaviest weight on a broker's capability to make claims on the state. A survey of 629 slum leaders finds client-preferred traits distinguish brokers from residents. In highlighting processes of broker selection, and the client preferences that undergird them, we underscore the centrality of clients in shaping local brokerage environments.

show abstract

Section: Client Preferences Mattermentioning

confidence: 99%

How Clients Select Brokers: Competition and Choice in India's Slums

2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…One strategy is to allocate resources to brokers based on comprehensive contracts. This means that brokers receive some specified benefit (such as monetary payment or a government job) after an election based on the electoral returns for their patron (Gingerich and Medina 2013;Rueda 2015). Although intuitively appealing, a comprehensive contracts framework does not reflect the empirical dynamics of brokerage in various settings.…”

Section: Brokers and Politiciansmentioning

confidence: 99%

Buying Power: Electoral Strategy before the Secret Vote

Gingerich

2020

Am Polit Sci Rev

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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.

show abstract

“…Government responsiveness : Villagers are more likely to contact their local government if they expect greater responsiveness. This could be the case, for example, if clientelistic exchange took place at the community level (Rueda ) and high‐uptake villages voted for the incumbent district chairperson at greater rates. Using 2016 election data, we find instead that incumbent vote share was somewhat lower in high‐uptake villages.…”

Section: A Puzzlementioning

confidence: 99%

It Takes a Village: Peer Effects and Externalities in Technology Adoption

Ferrali

Grossman

Platas

et al. 2019

American J Political Sci

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Do social networks matter for the adoption of new forms of political participation? We develop a formal model showing that the quality of communication that takes place in social networks is central to understanding whether a community will adopt forms of political participation where benefits are uncertain and where there are positive externalities associated with participation. Early adopters may exaggerate benefits, leading others to discount information about the technology's value. Thus, peer effects are likely to emerge only when informal institutions support truthful communication. We collect social network data for 16 Ugandan villages where an innovative mobile‐based reporting platform was introduced. Consistent with our model, we find variation across villages in the extent of peer effects on technology adoption, as well as evidence supporting additional observable implications. Impediments to social diffusion may help explain the varied uptake of new and increasingly common political communication technologies around the world.

show abstract

Buying votes with imperfect local knowledge and a secret ballot

Cited by 27 publications

References 34 publications

How Clients Select Brokers: Competition and Choice in India's Slums

How Clients Select Brokers: Competition and Choice in India's Slums

Buying Power: Electoral Strategy before the Secret Vote

It Takes a Village: Peer Effects and Externalities in Technology Adoption

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About