Value for money? Vote-buying and politician accountability

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Leight, Jessica; Foarta, Dana; Pande, Rohini; Ralston, Laura
• 署名单位: CGIAR; International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI); Stanford University; Yale University; National Bureau of Economic Research; The World Bank
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104227
• 发表日期: 2020
• 关键词: Vote-buying; Politician accountability; social preferences; laboratory experiments

摘要

The prevalence of vote-buying is widely identified as a cause of poor governance in the developing world; potential mechanisms for this relationship include the selection of lower quality politicians, and the reduced accountability experienced by politicians once elected. In this paper, we present the first experimental evidence in support of the second channel of reduced accountability. Using data from laboratory experiments conducted in the U.S. and Kenya, we find that vote payments reduce voters' willingness to hold politicians accountable: holding fixed politician identity, voters who receive payments are less willing to punish the politician for rent-seeking, and this reduction in punishment is larger in magnitude when payments arc widely targeted. Unsurprisingly, the politician then engages in a higher level of rent-seeking. A simple model of multi-faceted social preferences encompassing reciprocity and inequality aversion is consistent with these findings. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.