When Clientelism Backfires

Vote Buying, Democratic Attitudes, and Electoral Retaliation in Latin America

Dados Bibliográficos

ID6339014
AutoresRyan E Carlin (0000-0002-0945-205X, Georgia State University, Atlanta, USA), Mason W Moseley (0000-0002-9077-6923, West Virginia University, Morgantown, USA, autor correspondente)
Ano2022
Volume75
Fascículo3
Páginas766-781
Data de publicação2022-09-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoPolitical Research Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1065-9129 • E-ISSN: 1938-274X
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/10659129211020126
OpenAlexW3174606408
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas15
Referências citadas62

Attempting to buy votes is, in some cases, inefficient and damaging to a clientelistic party. To explain why, we propose the concept of electoral retaliation: sanctioning clientelistic parties by voting against them or intentionally invalidating the ballot. These forms of negative reciprocity are meant to uphold the democratic norms—equal participation, popular sovereignty, electoral fairness—that vote buying undermines. Electoral retaliation is, we theorize, the domain of “democrats.” Thus, we expect voters who highly value democratic norms to be most likely to retaliate against vote-buying parties. We test our theory’s observable implications with a research design that pairs case study and subnational evidence from Argentina with cross-national evidence from Latin America. Results are consistent with the notion that when clientelistic parties target democrats, it is likely to backfire on the machine. Our analyses examine multiple indicators of democratic support, explore causal mechanisms, conduct placebo tests, and seek to rule out various forms of selection bias

Ballot · Clientelism · Democracy · Dictator · Economics · Latin Americans · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Reciprocity (cultural anthropology · Secret ballot · Voting · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Law · Political Conflict and Governance · Politics and Society in Latin America · Psychology · Social Psychology