Can a corrupt ruling party win a re-election through vote buying?

ABSTRACT

In many developing countries, it is common for electoral candidates to use embezzled money to buy votes. We develop a dynamic model to analyse the trade-off between economic performance and free handouts resulting from corruption on an incumbent party’s chances of being re-elected. The results show, because voters anticipate handouts from the politicians, politicians engage in corrupt behaviour early in the election cycle while minimizing unemployment and maximizing vote buying at the end of the election cycle.

KEYWORDS:

• Corruption
• election cycle
• unemployment
• vote buying

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• D72

Notes

¹ The literature on vote buying and ballot fraud is extensive (Collier and Vicente 2012a, 2012b; Dal Bo, 2007; Dekel, Jackson, and Wolinsky 2008; Finan and Schechter 2012; Gonzalez-Ocantos et al. 2012).

² Brusco, Nazareno, and Stokes (2004) report that vote buying in Argentina is a common practice and an effective tactic to mobilize low-income electorates. Popular press articles have amply reported the massive and endemic voting fraud in India. For instance, Hiddleston (2011) documents that the political parties bribe the voters by handing out cash, rice and electronic gadgets such as TVs, refrigerators, fans, mixer-grinders and laptop computers. These practices are so common that voters expect the handouts from the candidates because of poverty (more than 30% of the people live below the poverty line), the large uneducated rural population (illiteracy rate is about 35%) and sheer culture of the public. Callahan and McCargo (1996) found evidence of electoral fraud and voter bribery, particularly in the provincial areas of Thailand. There are other strategies used by political parties in many developing countries. For instance, Collier and Vicente (2012a) discuss extensively on various tactics such as intimidation, vote buying, ballot fraud and violence akin to terrorism by electoral candidates in Sub-Saharan Africa. Collier and Vicente (2012b) analyse the consequences of anti-violence campaigns on voter turnout in the 2007 Nigerian national and state elections.

³ Mo (2001) also notes that the most important factor through which corruption diminishes economic growth is political instability, which highlights the public’s derision towards corrupt ruling parties and to vote them out of power. Alesina et al. (1996) observed that political instabilities and poor economic performances are common across the political spectrum, from authoritarian regime to democratic government.

⁴ The political parties are more interested in coming to power than improving the livelihood of the population through employment, mitigating poverty and providing basic amenities such as drinking water, infrastructure and schools.

⁵ See Dekel, Jackson, and Wolinsky (2008) for discussion on the effects of bribes and enticement of special programmes on vote buying. Finan and Schechter (2012) find that candidates bribe only those individuals who feel obliged to vote since not everyone who receives money will vote for the bribing candidates.

⁶ The nonnegativity constraint on the control variable C is tackled by optimizing the problem and examining whether the solution is positive or not. If C is positive, then there is no need to impose this constraint.