# **1. Introduction**

A dominant political economy concern is that vote buying practices in electoral competition may be associated with weak accountability. The offering of “gifts” or money in exchange for votes at the time of elections has been found to be widespread in poor democracies, despite the existence of secret ballots. Much of the literature has been occupied with the question of how, even in the presence of secret ballots, vote buying might function and be appealing as a political strategy.<sup>2</sup> The equilibrium consequences for public policy performance when governments gain (or lose) office in elections with widespread vote buying, has received relatively little attention.<sup>3</sup> To date, there is no direct empirical evidence on how public spending or service delivery varies with the practice of vote buying.

This paper provides the first such evidence, using uniquely suited micro data. The data reveal a strong negative association between vote buying and the provision of a public service that is known to disproportionately benefit the poor—in primary health. This correlation is surprisingly robust to a host of alternate specifications. Both the richness of the data and the specific institutional context from which they are drawn allow the interpretation of this correlation as the equilibrium policy outcome of clientelist political competition. Where underlying conditions are conducive to the use of clientelist political strategies, such as vote buying, the politicians who win office are likely to use fewer public resources for, and perform worse in delivering broadly pro-poor public services.

It is important to emphasize upfront that the paper’s contribution is the establishment of a robust correlation with a meaningful interpretation, rather than any claims for causality. For example, the results **cannot** be used to argue that engaging in voter education campaigns to reduce vote buying would improve health services.<sup>4</sup> Vote buying in the context examined here is a particularly measurable form of clientelism.<sup>5</sup> Its correlation with health services is argued to arise out of the political incentives generated by and driving clientelism, with both greater vote buying and lower health services simultaneously emerging under more clientelist conditions. A more rigorous and empirically-based understanding of the implications of clientelist politics is not only significant for the state of knowledge in this area, but could also have policy relevance.

> 2 Some recent contributors are: Stokes (2005, 2007), Schaffer (2007), Nichter (2008, 2010, 2011), Vicente and Wantchekon (2009), Finan and Schecter (2011), Weitz-Shapiro (2012), and Gonzalez-Ocantos et al (2012). 3 One part of a collected volume edited by Schaffer (2007) theoretically examines the consequences of different types of vote buying for political and economic institutions. Baland and Robinson (2006) provide evidence from Chile on the impact of introducing secret ballots on election outcomes and on agricultural markets.

> 4 Indeed, Scaffer (2005, 2007) provides arguments for how such education or advocacy drives might be ineffective.

> 5 The term “clientelism” is used here in a general sense, as described by Kitschelt and Wilkinson (2007, pp2)— “clientelist accountability represents a transaction, the direct exchange of a citizen’s vote in return for direct payments or continuing access to employment, goods, and services”. That is, clientelism in the Kitschelt-Wilkinson definition includes both post-election transfer of benefits as well as pre-election buying of votes. Vicente and Wantchekon (2008) distinguish between “clientelism” and “vote buying”, although both involve a quid-pro-quo exchange between delivering private favors in exchange for political support. Clientelism is defined in their paper as an exchange of votes for favors conditional on being elected (eg. jobs in the public sector), and vote buying as votes for cash before an election. However, they blame both (or each) with reducing political incentives for broad public goods. Nichter (2010) defines vote buying strategies as “electoral clientelism” and distinguishes it from “relational clientelism” in which benefits are provided on a longer term basis (rather than just at election times) in exchange for political support.

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