scholarly journals Trust in elections, vote buying, and turnout in Latin America

2013 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 609-619 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Carreras ◽  
Yasemin İrepoğlu
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Vote Buying

Clientelism and Vote-Maximizing in Indigenous Latin America

2020 ◽  
pp. 178-199
Author(s):  
Karleen Jones West
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
Vote Buying

The analysis presented in this chapter indicates that indigenous voters are disproportionately targeted as clients in vote-buying schemes, which is why the distribution of patronage has become a necessary vote-maximizing strategy for ethnic-party candidates to utilize to earn votes. This finding gives further credence to the argument that ethnic-party candidates must compete using the tactics employed by mainstream candidates to win votes. As such, it was unfair to expect that ethnic-party candidates could ever be more consistently policy-focused, given the expectations of patronage that indigenous constituents have during campaign season. To demonstrate the power of clientelism as a technique to attract indigenous supporters, this chapter analyzes AmericasBarometer survey data from fifteen countries across Latin America. The results show that not only are indigenous voters more likely to be targeted for clientelism, but ethnic-party supporters specifically are also more likely to be approached to sell their votes. These findings therefore provide evidence of the generalizability of the argument that ethnic-party candidates face strong incentives to engage in the clientelist behavior of mainstream parties in order to win votes across Latin America.

Patterns and Puzzles

2021 ◽  
pp. 44-80
Author(s):  
Carew Boulding ◽  
Claudio A. Holzner
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Political Interest ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Poor People ◽  
Vote Buying ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter describes in detail patterns of political participation in Latin America with a particular focus on the political activity of poor citizens. It also introduces the book’s measures of poverty and political participation and engages in some preliminary statistical analysis in order to rule out alternative explanations. We identify three important findings: first, the poorest individuals in Latin America now participate in politics at least as much as, if not more than, more affluent individuals; second, the relationship between wealth and political activism is not uniform across countries or acts: in some places poor people participate more than the affluent, in most countries there is no difference in overall levels of participation across social classes, and in a few countries political stratification by class continues; third, the chapter shows that poor people do vote and protest a bit less than more affluent people but contact government more. It is the frequency with which poor people contact government officials that accounts for much of the equality in political participation that the book identifies. The analysis finds little evidence that individual-level factors explain these patterns. Instead, poor individuals participate as much or more than more affluent individuals despite possessing lower levels of education, political interest, and wealth. The chapter also explores the effect that efforts at vote buying and clientelist mobilization have on poor people’s activism, showing that although clientelism is common, it not the only mechanism through which poor people are mobilized into politics.

scholarly journals The Conditionality of Vote-Buying Norms: Experimental Evidence from Latin America

2013 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 197-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ezequiel Gonzalez Ocantos ◽  
Chad Kiewiet de Jonge ◽  
David W. Nickerson
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Vote Buying

Public spending, corruption, and income inequality: A comparative analysis of Asia and Latin America

2016 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 298-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathew YH Wong
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Government Spending ◽  
Regional Differences ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Budgetary Process ◽  
Vote Buying ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
Latin American Countries

Based on data from 16 Asian and 18 Latin American countries from 1996 to 2009, this article argues that corruption does indeed affect the distributive outcomes of government spending, but not necessarily in the expected direction. The incentives for bureaucrats and politicians to abuse their power during the budgetary process suggests that corruption should concentrate public funds in the hands of elites, exacerbating inequality. However, this should only be expected when corruption takes the form of looting (embezzlement). When it takes the form of cheating (vote-buying), it may actually reduce inequality as it involves resource distribution and building of clientelistic linkages. It is the level of political competition rather than regional differences that determines the distributional effects of corruption in Asia and Latin America. This article has profound implications for the study of corruption and policy outcomes, suggesting that the level of political competition is a key factor in determining the outcomes of corruption.

When Clientelism Backfires: Vote Buying, Democratic Attitudes, and Electoral Retaliation in Latin America

2021 ◽  
pp. 106591292110201
Author(s):  
Ryan E. Carlin ◽  
Mason W. Moseley
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Vote Buying ◽  
Multiple Indicators ◽  
Democratic Attitudes ◽  
Democratic Support ◽  
Democratic Norms ◽  
Rule Out ◽  
Cross National

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.

Electoral Discrimination: The Relationship between Skin Color and Vote Buying in Latin America

2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcus Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Skin Color ◽  
Interpersonal Trust ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
Vote Buying ◽  
Electoral Mobilization ◽  
Conjoint Experiment ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Buying In

AbstractUnder what conditions do elections produce racially discriminatory outcomes? This article proposes electoral discrimination as an electoral mechanism for racial marginalization in indigenous and Afro-descendant Latin America. Electoral discrimination occurs when voters are mobilized under differential terms of electoral inclusion based on their observable characteristics. Using the 2010–2014 rounds of the AmericasBarometer and a conjoint experiment, the author finds that skin color is a robust predictor of vote buying across countries in the region with large, visible black and indigenous populations. A significant portion of the relationship between skin color and vote buying is due to the disproportionate impacts of race-neutral targeting criteria on dark-skinned voters. Observed differences in wealth, political and civic engagement, partisanship, political interest, interpersonal trust, and geography together explain a portion of the skin color–client gap, although the individual contribution of each of these factors differs by country. In addition, the author finds an independent relationship between skin color and vote buying over and above these race-neutral factors. The argument and findings in this article speak broadly to the consequences of electoral mobilization in ethnoracially stratified states in Latin America and beyond.

The Genesis and Internal Dynamics of El Salvador's People's Revolutionary Army, 1970–1976

2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (01) ◽  
pp. 102-129
Author(s):  
ALBERTO MARTÍN ÁLVAREZ ◽  
EUDALD CORTINA ORERO
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
El Salvador ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Internal Dynamics ◽  
Internal Coherence ◽  
The 1960S

AbstractUsing interviews with former militants and previously unpublished documents, this article traces the genesis and internal dynamics of the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (People's Revolutionary Army, ERP) in El Salvador during the early years of its existence (1970–6). This period was marked by the inability of the ERP to maintain internal coherence or any consensus on revolutionary strategy, which led to a series of splits and internal fights over control of the organisation. The evidence marshalled in this case study sheds new light on the origins of the armed Salvadorean Left and thus contributes to a wider understanding of the processes of formation and internal dynamics of armed left-wing groups that emerged from the 1960s onwards in Latin America.

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