Thwarting Vote Buying Through Decoy Ballots

In many recent democracies, candidates compete for office using illegal strategies to influence voters. In Hungary and Romania, local actors including mayors and bureaucrats offer access to social policy benefits to voters who offer to support their preferred candidates, and they threaten others with the loss of a range of policy and private benefits for voting the “wrong” way. These quid pro quo exchanges are often called clientelism. How can politicians and their accomplices get away with such illegal campaigning in otherwise democratic, competitive elections? When do they rely on the worst forms of clientelism that involve threatening voters and manipulating public benefits? This book uses a mixed method approach to understand how illegal forms of campaigning including vote buying and electoral coercion persist in two democratic countries in the European Union. It argues that clientelistic strategies must be disaggregated based on whether they use public or private resources, and whether they involve positive promises or negative threats and coercion. The authors document that the type of clientelistic strategies that candidates and brokers use varies systematically across localities based on their underlying social coalitions, and also show that voters assess and sanction different forms of clientelism in different ways. Voters glean information about politicians’ personal characteristics and their policy preferences from the clientelistic strategies these candidates deploy. Most voters judge candidates who use clientelism harshly. So how does clientelism, including its most odious coercive forms, persist in democratic systems? This book suggests that politicians can get away with clientelism by using forms of it that are in line with the policy preferences of constituencies whose votes they need. Clientelistic and programmatic strategies are not as distinct as previous studies have argued.

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Vote Buying and Election Promises: Should Democrats Care About the Difference?

Journal of Political Philosophy ◽

10.1111/j.1467-9760.2010.00367.x ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 19 (2) ◽

pp. 125-144 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

KASPER LIPPERT-RASMUSSEN

Keyword(s):

Vote Buying ◽

The Difference

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Digital vote-buying will challenge weak democracies

Emerald Expert Briefings ◽

10.1108/oxan-db266657 ◽

2022 ◽

Keyword(s):

Rural Areas ◽

Online Banking ◽

Vote Buying ◽

Content Type ◽

Buying In

Significance In August, the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) warned that online banking and electronic wallets -- the use of which has surged during the pandemic -- will be prime vehicles for digital vote-buying. Impacts Digital vote-buying will strengthen regional political clans, which are often the conduit for vote-buying in rural areas. Foreign influencer campaigns could become more disruptive with digital vote-buying. Fintech firms in fragile democracies could face tighter regulation on transparency and Know Your Customer rules.

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Pressure, Favours, and Vote-buying: Experimental Evidence from Romania and Bulgaria

Europe Asia Studies ◽

10.1080/09668136.2017.1364351 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 69 (6) ◽

pp. 940-960 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Isabela Mares ◽

Aurelian Muntean ◽

Tsveta Petrova

Keyword(s):

Experimental Evidence ◽

Vote Buying

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Hitting Them With Carrots: Voter Intimidation and Vote Buying in Russia

British Journal of Political Science ◽

10.1017/s0007123416000752 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 49 (3) ◽

pp. 857-881 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Timothy Frye ◽

Ora John Reuter ◽

David Szakonyi

Keyword(s):

Middle Income Country ◽

Income Country ◽

Vote Buying ◽

Election Cycle ◽

Active Monitoring ◽

Simple Argument ◽

Middle Income ◽

Survey Experiments ◽

Buying In

Scholars have identified many ways that politicians use carrots, such as vote buying, to mobilize voters, but have paid far less attention to how they use sticks, such as voter intimidation. This article develops a simple argument which suggests that voter intimidation should be especially likely where vote buying is expensive and employers have greater leverage over employees. Using survey experiments and crowd-sourced electoral violation reports from the 2011–12 election cycle in Russia, the study finds evidence consistent with these claims. Moreover, it finds that where employers have less leverage over employees, active forms of monitoring may supplement intimidation in order to encourage compliance. These results suggest that employers can be reliable vote brokers; that voter intimidation can persist in a middle-income country; and that, under some conditions, intimidation may be employed without the need for active monitoring.

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