Declared support and clientelism

Recent studies of clientelism predominantly focus on how elites use rewards to influence vote choices and turnout. This article shifts attention toward citizens and their choices beyond the ballot box. Under what conditions does clientelism influence citizens’ decisions to express political preferences publicly? When voters can obtain post-election benefits by declaring support for victorious candidates, their choices to display political paraphernalia on their homes or bodies may reflect more than just political preferences. We argue that various factors—such as the size of rewards and punishments, the competitiveness of the election, and whether multiple candidates employ clientelism—affect citizens’ propensity to declare support in response to clientelist inducements. Building on insights from fieldwork, formal analyses reveal how and why such factors can distort patterns of political expression observed during electoral campaigns. We conduct an experiment in Brazil, which predominantly corroborates predictions about declared support and clientelism

Politics and Poverty: Electoral Clientelism in Latin America

In many countries, clientelist parties (or political machines) distribute selective benefits, especially to the poor, in direct exchange for electoral support. Many scholars view clientelism as a political strategy, but fail to distinguish between substantively different patterns of machine politics. Conflating distinct strategies of clientelism poses a serious threat to descriptive and causal inference. This study seeks to increase analytical differentiation of clientelism, building on fieldwork in Brazil, formal modeling, and econometric analyses of survey data.A fundamental, yet frequently overlooked, distinction lies between strategies of electoral and relational clientelism. Whereas electoral clientelism involves elite payoffs to citizens during campaigns, relational clientelism involves ongoing relationships beyond campaigns. Electoral clientelism — the primary focus of this study — delivers all benefits to citizens before voting, and involves the threat of opportunistic defection by citizens. By contrast, relational clientelism delivers at least some benefits to citizens after voting, and involves the threat of opportunistic defection by both citizens and elites. Scholars often conflate vote buying with other strategies of electoral clientelism. Much of what scholars interpret as vote buying (exchanging rewards for vote choices) may actually be turnout buying (exchanging rewards for turnout). This study advances research on clientelism by specifying and testing a mechanism by which parties can distribute benefits to mobilize supporters. Formal modeling suggests that turnout buying is incentive-compatible, and also provides several testable predictions: (1) machines focus rewards on strong supporters, (2) they target the poor, and (3) they offer rewards where they can most effectively monitor turnout. Although both strategies coexist, empirical tests suggest that Argentine survey data are more consistent with turnout buying than vote buying. Two other strategies of electoral clientelism are also frequently conflated with vote buying: double persuasion (exchanging rewards for vote choices and turnout) and negative turnout buying (exchanging rewards for abstention).Formal analysis in Chapter 4 — coauthored with Jordan Gans-Morse and Sebastian Mazzuca — suggests that political machines are most effective when combining multiple strategies of electoral clientelism. Machines adapt the size of clientelist benefits to citizens' political preferences and inclination to vote, and are willing to pay relatively more for vote buying because unlike other strategies it both adds votes for the machine and subtracts votes from the opposition. The model also suggests that machines tailor their mix of electoral clientelism to five characteristics of political environments: (1) compulsory voting, (2) machine support, (3) political polarization, (4) salience of political preferences, and (5) strength of ballot secrecy. The model's predictions are consistent with qualitative evidence from Argentina, Brazil and Russia

Small Firm Growth in Developing Countries

Summary Although the vast majority of small firms in developing countries never expand beyond a few employees, some experience rapid and substantial growth. This study explores factors associated with small firm growth. We discuss key findings for four types of factors: (1) individual entrepreneur characteristics; (2) firm characteristics; (3) relational factors (such as social networks or value chains); and (4) contextual factors (such as the business environment). We conclude by suggesting implications for development practitioners.microenterprise small firm entrepreneur growth value chains business environment

Replication Data for: Voter Buying: Shaping the Electorate through Clientelism

Studies of clientelism typically assume that political machines distribute rewards to persuade or mobilize the existing electorate. We argue that rewards not only influence actions of the electorate, but can also shape its composition. Across the world, machines employ "voter buying" to import outsiders into their districts. Voter buying demonstrates how clientelism can underpin electoral fraud, and offers an explanation of why machines deliver rewards when they cannot monitor vote choices. Our analyses suggest that voter buying dramatically influences municipal elections in Brazil. A regression discontinuity design suggests that voter audits -- which undermined voter buying -- decreased the electorate by 12 percentage points and reduced the likelihood of mayoral reelection by 18 percentage points. Consistent with voter buying, these effects are significantly greater in municipalities with large voter inflows, and where neighboring municipalities had large voter outflows. Findings are robust to an alternative research design using a different dataset

Economic Determinants of Land Invasions

This study estimates the effect of economic conditions on redistributive conflict. We examine land invasions in Brazil using a panel data set with over 50,000 municipality-year observations. Adverse economic shocks, instrumented by rainfall, cause the rural poor to invade and occupy large landholdings. This effect exhibits substantial heterogeneity by land inequality and land tenure systems, but not by other observable variables. In highly unequal municipalities, negative income shocks cause twice as many land invasions as in municipalities with average land inequality. Cross-sectional estimates using fine within-region variation also suggest the importance of land inequality in explaining redistributive conflict. © 2010 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Replication data for: Economic Determinants of Land Invasions

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Vulnerability and Clientelism

This study argues that economic vulnerability causes citizens to participate in clientelism, a phenomenon with various pernicious consequences. To examine how reduced vulnerability affects citizens’participation in clientelism, we employ two exogenous shocks to vulnerability. First, we designed a randomized control trial to reduce household vulnerability: our development intervention constructed residential water cisterns in drought-prone areas of Brazil. Second, we exploit rainfall shocks. We find that reducing vulnerability significantly decreases requests for private goods from politicians, especially among citizens likely to be in clientelist relationships. Moreover, reducing vulnerability decreases votes for incumbent mayors, who typically have more resources for clientelism