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Replication Data for: Voter Buying: Shaping the Electorate through Clientelism

Harvard Dataverse (Africa Rice Center, Bioversity International, CCAFS, CIAT, IFPRI, IRRI and WorldFish)

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Title Replication Data for: Voter Buying: Shaping the Electorate through Clientelism
 
Identifier https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/9OOLQ7
 
Creator Hidalgo, F. Daniel
Nichter, Simeon
 
Publisher Harvard Dataverse
 
Description Studies of clientelism typically assume that political machines distribute rewards to persuade or mobilize the existing electorate. We argue that rewards not only influence actions of the electorate, but can also shape its composition. Across the world, machines employ "voter buying" to import outsiders into their districts. Voter buying demonstrates how clientelism can underpin electoral fraud, and offers an explanation of why machines deliver rewards when they cannot monitor vote choices. Our analyses suggest that voter buying dramatically influences municipal elections in Brazil. A regression discontinuity design suggests that voter audits -- which undermined voter buying -- decreased the electorate by 12 percentage points and reduced the likelihood of mayoral reelection by 18 percentage points. Consistent with voter buying, these effects are significantly greater in municipalities with large voter inflows, and where neighboring municipalities had large voter outflows. Findings are robust to an alternative research design using a different dataset.
 
Subject Social Sciences
Clientelism
Machine politics
Fraud
Vote buying
Elections
Reelection
Electorate
Politics and government
Auditing
Transfers
Regression discontinuity design
 
Contributor Nichter, Simeon