Vote Buying and Land Takings in China’s Village Elections

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (110) ◽  
pp. 277-294 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tan Zhao
Keyword(s):  
Vote Buying ◽  
Village Elections

Democracy learning, election quality and voter turnout

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tonglong Zhang ◽  
Linxiu Zhang ◽  
Linke Hou
Keyword(s):  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Individual Rationality ◽  
Causal Mechanism ◽  
Willingness To Participate ◽  
Vote Buying ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Significance Level ◽  
Village Elections ◽  
High Participation ◽  
Nationally Representative

Purpose – After two decades of village elections, the quality of village elections, rather than the utility of village elections, becomes the focus of current research. Based on nationally representative data at the village level, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the determinants of voting participation, focussing on the effect of election quality. The findings show that competitiveness, vote buying and manipulation are the key determinants significantly affecting village turnouts. The results are robust to alternative specifications. Design/methodology/approach – As discussed, the authors take three measures for villagers’ willingness to vote, e.g. raw turnout (RT), voluntary turnout (VT) and direct turnout (DT). The authors include four types of elements which affect the willingness to participate, the electoral quality, procedure and implementation, individual rationality, village social structure and villages’ level of modernization. The causal mechanism of elements and turnout can be written as: Turnout=f (election quality and procedure, individual rationality, mobilization structure, modernization). Findings – Competitiveness, vote buying and manipulation affect village turnout at significance level. More competitive elections tend to attract high participation of voting, and the effects on VT are the largest ones in magnitude, comparing with RT and DT, as well as manipulation. Village voters do not like to be fooled by nominal voting. If they recognize that elections are likely to be manipulated by township government, the turnout rates drop drastically. The effect associated with manipulation is larger than those associated with competitiveness and vote buying, indicating intervention from up-level government might block the improving process of election massively. Originality/value – It is the first paper that address the effect of election quality on vote participation.

scholarly journals Vote Buying, Village Elections, and Authoritarian Rule in Rural China: A Game-Theoretic Analysis

2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hiroki Takeuchi
Keyword(s):  
Rural China ◽  
Theoretic Model ◽  
Vote Buying ◽  
Political Organizations ◽  
Authoritarian Rule ◽  
Democratic Institution ◽  
Village Elections ◽  
Game Theoretic Analysis ◽  
Democratic Reform ◽  
Game Theoretic

Village elections are a democratic institution in one of the most resilient authoritarian regimes in the world. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has promoted village elections over the past twenty years, but not elections at higher levels. I present a game-theoretic model in which candidates would engage in vote buying when competing in a small electorate but not when competing in a larger electorate. The model's equilibrium outcome implies that the logic of China's introduction of village elections inherently limits this democratic reform to the grassroots level. Elections for higher levels of government would be dangerous to the regime because they would lead candidates to create substantive policy platforms and political organizations. Thus, rather than being an experiment that has failed to lead to further reforms, village democracy is self-limiting by design.

scholarly journals The Paradox of Incumbency: Patronage, Clientelism, and Incumbent Defeat in Village Chief Elections

PCD Journal ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 197
Author(s):  
Norin Mustika Rahadiri Abheseka
Keyword(s):  
Social Distance ◽  
Social Bonds ◽  
Vote Buying ◽  
Club Goods ◽  
Village Elections ◽  
Material Resources ◽  
Territorial Representation

This article examines the practices of  patronage and clientelism during village elections. Examining Mekarsari Village, Yogyakarta, this study finds that patronage strategies such as programmatic politics, vote buying, club goods, and individual gifts were used by all candidates during village elections owing to the lack of  strong social bonds between candidates and voters. The incumbent with all advantages and access to material resources also used patronise and clientelism as strategy, but in fact, it cannot guarantee they win the election. This suggests that the societal relationships and practices of  patronage and clientelism continue to affect voter’s preference. Applying sociological, psychological, and rational approaches to understanding voter behaviour especially in Java, the study found that, apart from the instrumental and social distance considerations, territorial representation also influenced voter’s preference at Village.

Conditionality & Coercion

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabela Mares ◽  
Lauren E. Young
Keyword(s):  
Mixed Method ◽  
Personal Characteristics ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Vote Buying ◽  
Private Benefits ◽  
Public Benefits ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
Democratic Systems ◽  
Method Approach

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.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document