greater in some places because of the presence of an illegal economy; in another because of the presence of a dominant political clan with the networks to support vote buying practices; in another because of the _lack_ of a dominant clan, which spurs contenders to emerge on the basis of vote buying; in another because of a persistent history of vote buying as the electoral strategy selected by contenders. The empirical methodology used below relies on this apparently idiosyncratic variation in vote buying to identify its equilibrium policy consequences.

# **4. Empirical specification to correlate vote buying with service delivery**

The following type of equation is estimated at the village-level, alternating different measures of health services on the left hand side, different measures of the main explanatory variable—vote buying—on the right hand side, and different combinations of other control variables:

# HealthServiceijk = β0 + β1VoteBuyingijk + WijkBb + ZjkBm + ak + εijk  (2)

Three different measures of health services in village _i_ , in municipality _j_ , of congressional district _k_ are used: proportion of children under 6 with weight well-below normal, the number of village health workers assigned by the municipality, and the number of health projects undertaken in the village. The vote buying measures are as discussed in the previous section. Fixed effects for the four congressional districts, ak , in the province are included because of their importance in explaining variation in vote buying across municipalities (as shown in the previous section).

Data on health service delivery was collected from health facility records at the villagelevel. Key informants—the village health workers and council members—provided the data on health and other sector projects undertaken by the municipal government in the village in recent years. A nationally mandated program to monitor the health of young children, Operation Timbang (OPT), requires villages, or barangays, to measure and record the weight of young children in their areas. The survey team gathered data from barangay health officers on the number of children participating in OPT weighing, and the number of these that were recorded as having weight well below normal measures of good health. On average across the barangays in the sample, the records indicate that close to 3 percent of the children weighed under OPT were found to have a weight well below the normal, healthy range. There is wide variation across barangays in this proportion—half of the barangays report 1 percent or fewer children with weight well-below normal; however, 13 barangays report between 5 and 17 percent of children with weight well-below normal. These 13 barangays include those where the largest percentage of household respondents indicated instances of vote buying in the municipality. This is the correlation the analysis below will examine in greater detail.

The barangay-level data collection also includes other measures of availability of health services—the number of barangay health workers appointed by the municipality, and the number of health projects undertaken. The health projects typically involve rehabilitating and equipping the village health facility. On average, a barangay in the sample has 3 health workers assigned to it, and 1 health project recently completed or ongoing. However, these averages mask large variation across barangays—some barangays have 0 health workers, whilst others have more than 10; some barangays have 0 health projects, whilst others have more than 3.

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