Do Anti-Poverty Programs Sway Voters? Experimental Evidence from Uganda

Blattman, Christopher; Emeriau, Mathilde; Fiala, Nathan

doi:10.3386/w23035

Cited by 7 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…4 Our study advances the literature by providing compelling evidence that reducing vulnerability decreases citizens' participation in clientelist exchanges. Second, our electoral findings may be interpreted as corroborating a related hypothesis of Blattman, Emeriau, and Fiala (2017): economic independence frees the poor to express support for opposition candidates. Third, by showing how these changes in the political equilibrium are concentrated among voters in ongoing relationships, our study complements research by Finan and Schechter (2012) and Calvo and Murillo (2013), which documents how vote buying and clientelism operate through established networks based on reciprocal, partisan, or personal ties.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 79%

Vulnerability and Clientelism

Bobonis¹,

Gertler²,

Gonzalez-Navarro³

et al. 2017

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This study argues that economic vulnerability causes citizens to participate in clientelism, a phenomenon with various pernicious consequences. We employ a randomized control trial that reduced household vulnerability through a development intervention: constructing residential water cisterns in drought-prone areas of Brazil. This intervention significantly decreased requests for private goods from politicians, especially among citizens likely to be in clientelist relationships. We also link program beneficiaries to electronic voting machines, and show the intervention decreased votes for incumbent mayors, who typically have more resources for clientelism. Findings are observed not only during the election campaign, but also a full year later.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 79%

Vulnerability and Clientelism

Bobonis¹,

Gertler²,

Gonzalez-Navarro³

et al. 2017

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“…However, the relationship between government spending programs and incumbent support are mixed. Some studies have shown that welfare programs increase voter turnout and support for incumbent politicians (Galiani et al, 2019; Manacorda et al, 2011; Zucco Jr, 2013), others have found null effects (Green, 2006; Imai et al, 2020), and even opposite results (Blattman et al, 2018). However, despite the importance of social welfare program in authoritarian countries to maintain regime legitimacy, few works examined the impacts of social policies on public opinion in authoritarian countries.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can social welfare buy mass loyalty?

Yang

Shen

2020

Governance

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Do social welfare benefits enhance political legitimacy in nondemocracies? Conventional wisdom treats material interest as being the central mechanism underpinning widespread political attitudes, but social welfare is not always effective in garnering political support in nondemocracies. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that even though receiving social welfare benefits has significantly improved individuals' well‐being, their political support in different levels of government have not significantly grown. We demonstrate that the null effect of social welfare on political support can be partially explained by individuals' exposure to political violence before. Social welfare benefits yield a backsliding effect on local government support when individuals were exposed to high revolutionary intensity.

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Identifying Conflict and Violence in Micro-Level Surveys

et al. 2010

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in 1 Executive SummaryThe overall goal of the report is to increase the capacity of researchers and policy makers to identify comparatively, and across time, how individuals, households and communities are affected by violent conflict. The report provides an extensive overview of existing practices and datasets used in this field of research. We investigate existing methodologies and data-bases used to operationalize the variables of interest and discuss the channels linking violent conflict to individual and household welfare. Special attention is paid to methodological issues on how to design a module and operationalize variables that allow researchers to analyze the welfare effects of violent conflict across countries and across time.We develop and discuss a generic household module that can be easily inserted into future socio-economic surveys implemented in conflict-affected countries. This module will enable researchers to address specific violencerelated issues comparatively across different conflict settings and systematically across time. The module proposed builds on previous experiences on survey designs in conflict-affected areas. We review existing conflict-and violence-related questionnaires, with a special focus on World Bank's Living Standard Measurement Surveys (LSMS), and propose suggestions on how to improve questionnaires in order to deepen the understanding of the nature of violent conflict and the channels whereby conflict and violence affect the welfare characteristics and choices of individuals and households in conflict areas.

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Do Anti-Poverty Programs Sway Voters? Experimental Evidence from Uganda

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

Vulnerability and Clientelism

Vulnerability and Clientelism

Can social welfare buy mass loyalty?

Identifying Conflict and Violence in Micro-Level Surveys

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