Party machines and voter-customized rewards strategies

Zarazaga, Rodrigo

doi:10.1177/0951629815603496

Cited by 55 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…In the models of clientelism, the political parties have access to private information on individual voters’ preferences, which is used to target citizens and promise (or advance) rewards in exchange for votes (Stokes 2005; Nichter 2008; Zarazaga 2016). 1 Although there is abundant anecdotal evidence about these transactions, the source of the money to pay the rewards and the brokers’ incentives to distribute it are less apparent.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Distributive Politics with Vote and Turnout Buying

Casas

2018

Am Polit Sci Rev

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The objective of this paper is to model the incumbent’s allocation of efforts that maximize his electoral chances in the presence of both vote buying (persuasion) and turnout buying (mobilization). The existing literature on distributive politics concludes that political candidates should concentrate their campaigning efforts either on safe districts or on swing districts. This paper shows that when candidates can use both persuasion and mobilization strategies, and the ideology of voters is unknown to the incumbent party, a third option should be taken into account. In fact, the optimal allocation of resources—rather than focusing on safe or swing districts—should target opposition strongholds, that is, the incumbent should try to sway voters in those districts in which the challenger is favored. The intuition for this result is simple. Since the incumbent does not know individual preferences (he only observes the distribution of preferences in the districts), all voters in a given district look identical to him. Hence, when approaching voters in a district to buy their vote, the incumbent always faces the risk of buying the vote of his supporters (who would have voted for him anyway).

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Distributive Politics with Vote and Turnout Buying

Casas

2018

Am Polit Sci Rev

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“…First, I determine how brokers would classify voters under two counterfactual conditions. Brokers could naïvely predict voter types using precampaign dispositions only, as the existing literature and I argue they do (Stokes, 2005;Zarazaga, 2014Zarazaga, , 2016. Alternatively, if brokers were omniscient, they could forecast voter types using postcampaign dispositions.…”

Section: How Campaigns Diminish the Efficiency Of Vote-choice Buyingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Third, machines could pay clients a flat rate rather than an individually tailored amount (Zarazaga, 2016). Yet, overpaying some clients means buying fewer votes from the outset and wasting even more resources on converted loyalists and continuing swing voters who react positively to the campaigns.…”

Section: Problems Of Vote Buying During Partisan Campaignsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Campaign Effects and the Elusive Swing Voter in Modern Machine Politics

Greene

2020

Comparative Political Studies

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Are vote-choice buying attempts successful? Much research across the social sciences argues that political machines expertly turn citizens into clients, undermining core aspects of democracy. Using insights from behavioral theories of vote choice, I argue that standard partisan campaigns can diminish vote-choice buying’s efficiency. Machines face a targeting problem: Local brokers identify good clients using long-term markers but then campaigns shift many citizens’ vote-relevant attitudes in ways that brokers cannot detect, leading to targeting errors. Vote-choice buying remains effective on recipients who are unmoved by the campaigns, but this group is small where campaigns are influential. Tests using panel surveys from Mexico’s 2000 and 2012 elections measure vote-buying attempts with direct questions and list experiments, employ various measures of campaign influence, and rely on new and existing estimation techniques. The findings yield a more optimistic view of the quality of elections in new democracies than current literature implies.

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“…They receive goods from their party bosses that they discretionally distribute to voters in order to garner their electoral support. Existing formal models on vote-buying (Stokes 2005;Nichter 2008;Cox and McCubbins 1986;Zarazaga 2015) usually assume complete information; that is, brokers know the exact price at which voters will sell their votes and, accordingly, brokers buy each voter at her reservation value (the lowest level of benefits for which a voter will sell her vote). 1 These models present brokers as having all or most of the bargaining power when buying clients' vote.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The poor support their brokers either because they are culturally or affectively identified with them (Auyero 2001;Ostiguy 1998) or in order to show gratitude to them (Finan and Schechter 2012). On the other hand, authors who portray the poor as being rational and self-interested fail to recognize the fact that clients care about which broker they support (Dixit and Londregan 1996;Stokes 2005;Nichter 2008;Zarazaga 2015). The present paper shows that although a client's behavior is motivated by self-interest, clients still care about which broker they work with, because a broker's skill at accessing resources affects the client's well-being.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Plugged in Brokers: A Model of Vote-Buying and Access to Resources

Zarazaga

2015

Journal of Applied Economics

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Available formal models portray brokers as exploitative agents who buy their clients at the minimum possible price; that is, at voters' reservation values. If this were the case then we should expect that poor voters be indifferent as to which broker they deal with, since they could expect the same minimum price from any broker. On the contrary, evidence of longterm broker-client relationships suggests that clients do care about who their broker is. The formal model in this paper, in correspondence with evidence drawn from 120 interviews with brokers, illuminates the reason why clients care about who their brokers are. Brokers are uncertain about voters' reservation values. Due to this uncertainty, the more resources brokers obtain, the more they transfer to clients to assure their votes. Given this uncertainty over reservation values, voters benefit from brokers' abilities to access more resources. These dynamics account for party machines' frequent electoral hegemony.

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Party machines and voter-customized rewards strategies

Cited by 55 publications

References 20 publications

Distributive Politics with Vote and Turnout Buying

Distributive Politics with Vote and Turnout Buying

Campaign Effects and the Elusive Swing Voter in Modern Machine Politics

Plugged in Brokers: A Model of Vote-Buying and Access to Resources

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