Economic and Political Studies Pub Date : 2020-12-03 , DOI: 10.1080/20954816.2020.1837335 James Habyarimana 1 , Daniel Houser 2 , Stuti Khemani 3 , Viktor Brech 4 , Ginny Seung Choi 5 , Moumita Roy 2
Abstract
Electoral clientelism or vote buying has been regarded as undermining democratic institutions and weakening the accountability of the state towards its citizens, especially the poor. Social identity as a form of political mobilisation may contribute to this, enabling support to be won with clientelist transfers. This paper reports data from a novel laboratory experiment designed to examine whether clientelism can be sustained as a political strategy, and whether identity impacts the nature or efficacy of clientelism. Specifically, we design a voting and leadership game in order to examine whether individuals vote for clientelist allocations by a leader even at the expense of more efficient and egalitarian allocations. We find group identity does not significantly impact the prevalence of clientelist plans. Leaders are more likely, however, to choose allocations that provide fewer benefits (lower rents) to themselves when they are part of the majority in-group than when they are in the minority.
中文翻译:
客户主义和身份认同
摘要
选举客户主义或买票被认为破坏了民主体制,削弱了国家对公民,特别是穷人的责任。社会认同作为政治动员的一种形式,可能有助于实现这一目标,从而使客户支持者的转移获得支持。本文报告了一项新颖的实验室实验中的数据,该实验旨在检查客户主义是否可以作为一种政治策略得以维持,以及身份认同是否会影响客户主义的性质或功效。具体来说,我们设计了一个投票和领导力博弈,以检查个人是否为领导者的客户满意分配投票,即使是以更有效和平等的分配为代价。我们发现,团体身份并不会显着影响客户计划的普遍性。领导者更有可能,