Self-Enforcing Clientelism
Chappell Lawson
Associate Professor
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
clawson@mit.edu
Kenneth F. Greene
Associate Professor
University of Texas at Austin
kgreene@austin.utexas.edu
Draft
April 30, 2012
Abstract
Recent research on clientelism focuses on deliberate exchanges between mercenary voters
and strategic political brokers. In this “instrumentalist” view, machine politics is only sustainable
where patrons can monitor voters’ actions – a situation that does not apply in many places
known for clientelism. In this paper, we build a different theory of clientelism around the norm of
reciprocity. If exchanges rely on clients’ feelings of obligation to return favors to their patrons,
then clientelism can be self-enforcing and persist despite ballot secrecy. To support this
argument, we draw on ethnographic reports, survey data, and experiments from a variety of
countries, as well as split-sample experiments embedded in two new surveys on Mexico
specifically designed to test our predictions. Our findings have implications for voting behavior,
party organization, and the types of public policies that may diminish clientelism.
1. Introduction
Political scientists have long been interested in relationships in which leaders exchange
selective benefits for political allegiance.1 In developing countries, scholars typically group these
relationships under the rubric of “clientelism”; followers are known as clients, leaders as patrons,
and intermediaries as brokers. In the United States, analysts have referred to these same three
groups as “constituents”, “bosses”, and “precinct captains”; the relationships among them are
known as “machine politics” (Ostrogorski 1910, Gosnell 1937, Allswang 1977, Cox and Kousser
1981, Erie 1988). Despite extensive research in both contexts, however, political scientists have
not produced a consensus on how such relationships are maintained.
Recent theory argues that voters only comply with political brokers’ wishes if they
believe that their vote choices are monitored and that they can thus be sanctioned if they fail to
support the machine. This instrumentalist approach focuses on deliberate exchanges between
voters who seek to extract tangible benefits and strategic political brokers who want to deliver
votes to the politicians they serve as cheaply as possible (Dal Bó 2007; Kitschelt and Wilkinson
2007b; Nichter 2008; Stokes 2005). Such arguments emphasize the degree to which careful
surveillance – or at least the credible threat of such surveillance (Chandra 2007) – ensures that
constituents follow-through on their part of the clientelist bargain.
Yet this instrumentalist approach has not fully resolved the problem of voter compliance,
especially where ballot secrecy is well established. When clientelist exchanges are
1
In keeping with recent work (e.g., Kitschelt and Wilkinson 2007b, Stokes 2007), we consider
benefits to be “selective” if they are excludable goods that can be distributed in a discretionary
fashion. We conceive of “clientelism” as a relationship between patrons with access to
resources that they trade for political support, and “vote-buying" as one possible manifestation
of clientelism in which benefits are exchanged for votes.
1
asynchronous (i.e. brokers distribute benefits before an election in hopes of generating support
on Election Day), clients may “defect” from the agreement after receiving their payoff (Stokes
2005). To diminish the incentive to renege, patrons not only must be able to monitor voters’
choices, either at the time they cast their ballots or after the fact, but they must be able to
sanction individual voters who defect. Without identifying individual defectors, brokers cannot
know which voters to sanction by withdrawing benefits in subsequent elections. Clientelism
would then break down for one of two reasons. If brokers pay supporters and opponents alike,
then the disincentive for voting against the machine disappears. In addition, clientelism may
prove unsustainably costly (Dal Bó 2007). If brokers inadvertently sanction supporters, they
would create spurned voters who would not support the machine in the future under any
standard punishment-path strategy.2 Sanctioning groups of voters would only hasten
clientelism’s demise because a machine that loses once in a constituency would withdraw
benefits from some supporters who, in response, may not renew their support for the machine
(see Levine and Pesendorfer 1995; also see Finan and Schecter 2009).3
Brokers can overcome these problems in some contexts. Some countries use partisan
ballots, effectively eliminating ballot secrecy or permit party operatives in polling places,
conveying the perception of monitoring even when voting is secret (see Kitschelt and Rozenas
2011). In other places, operatives use more clever tactics to violate the secret ballot and
2
If voters use “grim trigger”, then they would cease to be clients forever after not receiving a
payoff in any given election cycle (Stokes 2005). If both brokers and voters use “tit-for-tat,” then
a similar outcome would occur.
3
The logical implication is that clientelism based on instrumental calculations alone should be
sustainable only where the machine has an unlimited budget (so that it can buy opponents) or
where it holds monopoly power.
2
overcome the problem of asynchronous exchange. For instance,in Mexico, brokers are rumored
to have asked voters to photograph their marked ballot using cell phones. In Italy, operatives
from the Christian Democratic Party reportedly distributed left shoes to its clients before
elections with the promise of delivering the right shoes if it won (Chubb 1982). In many settings,
however, parties and candidates have limited capacity to monitor voters’ choices, allowing
instrumentally motivated voters to “take the money and run” and ultimately undermining
machine politics.
In recent work, some instrumentalist scholars have recognized this problem and
attempted to grapple with it systematically (Piattoni 2001: 7, Kitschelt and Wilkinson 2007: 8,
Magaloni 2006, Kitschelt and Rozenas 2011). For instance, Stokes (2005, 2007) argues that the
monitoring problem is mitigated by local brokers who are deeply embedded in their communities
and can guess at how their clients vote. Unfortunately, this key claim has not been testes
systematically. However, research in experimental psychology shows that people are
surprisingly bad at detecting when others are lying, even when they are trained to do so (Grohol
1999, Kohnken 1987, Kraut and Poe 1980).4 In addition, clientelism persists in many places
where well-organized political machines do not operate.5 Thus, difficulties in monitoring and
sanctioning voters continue to pose a serious challenge to instrumentalist theories of
clientelism.
Given the theoretical and practical problems with enforcement of the clientelist bargain
4
Using turnout at the polls or at campaign events does not necessarily improve brokers’
guesses about which individuals vote for the machine.
5
Examples include Nigeria and Benin (Van de Walle 2007: 64), Taiwan (Wang and Kurzman’s
2007: 233), Paraguay (Finan and Schecter 2009: 17), Sao Tomé e Principe (Vicente 2008), and
Peru (González Ocantos et al. 2011a; Seawright 2011).
3
through external monitoring, we propose that machine politics can be supported by a
psychological mechanism rooted in norms of reciprocity. Specifically, we argue that the receipt
of gifts, favors, services, or protection creates feelings of obligation among voters, who then
spontaneously support their political patrons. Under such circumstances, clientelism is selfenforcing.
This norms-based approach to clientelism has roots in certain ethnographic studies from
anthropology, sociology, and political science that emphasize the embeddedness of
relationships between patrons and clients and the “moral economy” of exchanges between the
two (Boissevain 1966, Wolf 1969, Powell 1970, Scott 1972, Lemarchand and Legg 1972,
Johnson 1974, Scott 1976, Eisenstadt and Lemarchand 1981, Lomnitz 1982 , Chubb 1982,
Komito 1984, Roniger and Günes-Ayata 1994, Gay 1994, Fox 1994, Auyero 2001, Calvo and
Murillo 2004, Gay 2006, Krishna 2007, Schaffer and Schedler 2007). These largely descriptive
studies have routinely emphasized norms of reciprocity as the basis for clientelist exchanges,
but they lack a plausible psychological micro-foundation that is as conceptually well-grounded
as the instrumentalist underpinnings of principal-agent models of vote-buying.
We show that norms of reciprocity create a separate foundation for machine politics. The
sense of obligation that brokers create through the provision of selective benefits can help
politicians build clientelist networks even in the context of ballot secrecy. One implication is that
clientelism may be much more entrenched than existing analyses would lead us to believe and
will not necessarily disappear rapidly once ballot secrecy is enforced, as long as politicians have
access to discretionary resources. Rather, purging clientelism from political life may require a
normative component – specifically, that citizens reject on principle the exchange of votes for
selective benefits because they feel a greater obligation to vote their conscience, to obey the
law, and to support democratic institutions.
Our argument also has ramifications for party organization. Because machine politics
4
can persist in the absence of active monitoring, politicians may not need the large-scale, deeply
embedded organizations that would otherwise be required to monitor and sanction voters
(Gyrzmala-Busse 2005; Kitschelt and Wilkinson 2007b; Stokes 2005, 2007). Rather, they can
secure election by earning voters’ loyalty, somewhat akin to the way that politicians generate
gratitude through constituency service and pork-barrel politics.
The next section of this paper provides a systematic rationale for the “norms-ofobligation” interpretation of clientelism. We caution that the instrumentalist and norms-based
approaches contrasted here are not synonyms for “rational choice” and “cultural” approaches.
There is nothing inherently cultural about discharging one’s debts through acts of political
support. The third section discusses observable implications of this approach and compares
them to those of instrumentalist models; this section draws on ethnographic studies, surveys,
and experiments, as well as on two new surveys from Mexico. The concluding section returns to
the implications of our findings for electoral behavior, party organization, and public policy.
2. Reciprocity and Obligation in Clientelist Exchange
Our approach is based on the notion that powerful instincts of reciprocity cause people
to feel indebted to those who provide them with benefits of more than token significance. When
the recipient cannot discharge this debt of obligation materially, patron-client relationships may
emerge. Of course, not all such debts generate clientelism. After detailing the psychological
foundation for reciprocity, we generate more specific hypotheses about the conditions under
which feelings of obligation promote clientelism.
Reciprocity is a fundamental element of human social interaction. Norms of reciprocity
are recognized at a very young age (Harris 1970, Dreman and Greenbaum 1973, Birch and
Billman 1986) and, although cultural differences can influence the expression of these norms
(Herrmann et al. 2008, Gächter and Herrmann 2008), the concept and practice of reciprocity are
5
essentially universal (Heinrich et al. 2005). This component of human nature appears to be
evolutionarily “hard-wired” (Hammerstein 2003, Gintis et al. 2003, Berg et al. 1995, Ornstein
1980, Trivers 1971, Simmel and Wolff 1950). Recent research in genetics and neuroscience
even identifies some of the specific alleles and biological pathways that underlie reciprocal
exchange (McCabe et al. 2001, Sanfey et al. 2003, de Quervain et al. 2004, Cesarini et al.
2008, Fowler et al. 2008).
Instincts of reciprocity can powerfully influence behavior (see Fehr and Fischbacher
2002, Elster 1989: 192-214; Dawes and Thaler 1988: 195). For instance, experimental research
shows that people often treat others fairly even when they face an incentive to do otherwise
(McCabe et al. 1996, McCabe et al. 2003, Berg et al. 1995). Several years ago, two leading
behavioral economists remarked that, “the obligation to reciprocate is so strong that we take it
for granted” (Carmichael and MacLeod 1997: 502). Scholars from various disciplines have now
documented the role of reciprocity in a wide range of social activities, but it has not yet been
used as the basis for understanding political clientelism.6
Instincts of reciprocity lead people to feel indebted to those who provide them with gifts,
services, favors, or protection (Mauss 1990, Sherry 1983). Among individuals of similar status,
such obligations are often discharged by providing a good of comparable worth to the original
“gift”.7 But not all recipients have the wherewithal to pay their patrons back in kind. Patron-client
relationships may emerge when recipients discharge their debt by according the giver greater
6
One potential criticism of this literature is that reciprocity’s role has not been experimentally
tested for large-scale transactions. Fortunately, voting is a low-cost activity that falls well within
the scope of the gains at stake in the experiments on the effect of reciprocity.
7
Debts can also be discharged by maintaining a long-term relationship in which mutual
assistance is taken for granted as in friendship or marriage.
6
social status, esteem, or loyalty (Weinstein et al. 1969, Bienenstock and Bianchi 2004). This
exchange creates a status hierarchy among previous equals (Rao 2001, Aragon 1996, Bartlett
1980).8
In the political sphere, recipients typically reciprocate patronage through outward
manifestations of allegiance and shows of solidarity (Forster 1963; Scott 1972, Eisenstadt and
Roniger 1984) – such as voting for a particular candidate, attending rallies, volunteering on a
campaign, contributing their energy to projects sponsored by patrons, or joining protests when
urged to do so (Harik 2004: 81-110, 147-62, Cambanis 2006, Radnitz 2010). Status hierarchy
has long been the core of clientelism as conceptualized by scholars in anthropology and
sociology. As Lomnitz puts it (1988: 47):
Loyalty in unbalanced exchange relations is the basis for political support…The
patron provides security of employment, political protection, and dependability in
unexpected circumstances of need in exchange for loyalty, expressed through
personal commitment to the patron in labor, political support, and ideological
allegiance.
Political clientelism becomes established when it is clear to both sides that recipients
can never repay benefits in kind, turning one group into perpetual recipients of material goods,
services, favors, or protection and the other group into perpetual providers. As Scott
characterizes it, the “patron is in a position to supply unilaterally goods and services which the
potential client and his family need for their survival and well-being” (1972: 93).
8
Where status hierarchies already exist, exchanges between social superiors and subordinates
reinforce them (Aragon 1996: 49-50, Weiner 1980). Gifts from followers to leaders (tribute) help
to secure protection or assistance, whereas gifts from leaders to followers cultivate gratitude
and sustain bonds of loyalty.
7
A key question concerns the conditions under which feelings of obligation become
activated in service of clientelism, and thus why scholars observe variation in the extent of
machine politics across individuals, communities, and countries (even where politicians have
similar levels of access to discretionary resources). We underscore two important limitations on
the power of obligation to activate clientelist relations.
First, not all gifts automatically activate instincts of reciprocity. Token items (e.g., a pen
bearing a party logo) may be taken as a gesture of introduction or courtesy, rather than as the
“quid” in a quid pro quo. Likewise, items distributed to everyone who happens to be on a street
corner at a particular moment could be interpreted similarly as materials meant to attract
attention or to announce a candidate’s presence, rather than as part of an exchange
relationship. The same holds if the benefits distributed are interpreted by recipients as
repayments for past good behavior or as entitlements rather than gifts. Selective benefits
offered by political machines may also be insufficient to generate clientelist support if the
obligation they create is not deemed “worth” a vote (or some other demonstration of adhesion).
The “going rate” for a vote likely varies across voters with different levels of resources.
Second, obligations stemming from reciprocity, do not necessarily propel citizens to
become clients when all factors are taken into account (Klosko 1990). A person may feel an
obligation to her family to accept groceries from a political party in return for her vote, and this
exchange may in turn generate an obligation to vote for that party. However, that new obligation
may conflict with some existing obligation, such as the personal conviction that she should to
vote her conscience or (where selling one’s vote is illegal) the moral obligation to obey the law.
Thus, factors like the intensity of a voter’s attachment to competing parties, the degree to which
she has imbibed civic norms, her respect for the law, and support for representative institutions
could affect the extent and durability of clientelism. Just as instrumentally motivated clients do
not automatically support the machine when they have competing reasons to choose another
8
party,9 voters motivated by feelings of obligation will only become captured clients under specific
circumstances, as we detail below.
3. Observable Implications of the Reciprocity and Instrumentalist Approaches
Both instrumental and normative motivations for clientelism may be present within a
given system, and machine politics will presumably be most durable when both mechanisms
operate. In some cases, both approaches make similar predictions. For instance, both predict
that clientelism would deteriorate when politicians run out of discretionary resources to
distribute. However, the two approaches do yield a number of different predictions, presented in
Table 1, which can be used as the basis for more systematic comparison. This comparison
helps “locate” our norms-based approach in relation to the now-dominant literature on
clientelism and yields testable hypotheses.
[Table 1 about here]
The key difference between the two approaches concerns the importance of monitoring
voters’ actions. If instrumental models are correct, machine politics is limited to contexts in
which patrons can credibly threaten to reward or punish their followers for non-compliance (Dal
Bó 2007; Kitschelt and Wilkinson 2007b; Nichter 2008; Stokes 2005). By contrast, clientelism
based on reciprocity may persist even where voters do not believe that they are monitored.
9
Scholars working in the instrumentalist tradition have long recognized the power of partisan
loyalty and policy proximity to moderate the effect of payoffs. For instance, opponents of the
machine are considered too costly to buy (Stokes 2005) and supporters are predicted to
respond more positively to payoffs (Cox and McCubbins 1993).
9
The two approaches also yield competing predictions about retrospective voting. In the
instrumental view, voters care exclusively about prospective costs and benefits (Kitschelt and
Wilkinson 2007b: 25, 342; Lyne 2007; Stokes 2005). Although their perceptions of what benefits
they may receive in the future are likely informed by what they have received in the past,
instrumentally motivated voters care only about how today’s interactions condition their future
stream of benefits. Clients motivated by obligation, however, may demonstrate loyalty to leaders
who did right by them in the past, regardless of what they stand to gain in the future. That is,
their actions today may be motivated by repaying a past favor rather than as part of a
calculation about what they expect to receive in the future. They may thus cast their ballots
based on purely retrospective considerations (see Kinder and Kiewiet 1979, Fiorina 1981, Cain
et al. 1987). Intriguingly, they may even seek to reciprocate perceived injuries and injustices by
voting against politicians who failed to deliver when expected to do so. This phenomenon,
known as “altruistic punishment,” can even lead citizens to turn against patrons when doing so
diminishes the chances of receiving clientelist benefits in the future (Fehr and Gächter 2000,
Fehr and Gächter 2002, de Quervain et al. 2004).
Political attitudes also play a key role in the reciprocity approach to clientelism.
Instrumentalist approaches generally discount citizens’ attitudes because such attitudes do not
affect the costs and benefits of supporting the machine. In the norms-based approach, however,
civic values create conflicting obligations that should make voters less likely to participate in
clientelist arrangements or follow through on a clientelist bargain once it is struck. Civic-minded
voters should thus be more likely to see clientelist exchanges as illegitimate, to reject proffered
benefits, and to perceive a value conflict between clientelist and civic obligations.
Finally, the reciprocity framework predicts that the provision of benefits by politicians
induces feelings of indebtedness among recipients to support the politicians in question. As the
value of a particular benefit rises in the mind of the recipient, he should become a more reliable
10
client. Instrumentally minded voters clearly also assess the value of a proffered benefit such that
voters evaluate whether a given good is “worth” their vote. To the extent that the two
perspectives differ on this point, they predict differences in how voters react to two benefits of
similar monetary value. For the strictest of instrumentalists, two such benefits should elicit
similar responses, whereas in the reciprocity framework, they may elicit widely varying feelings
of obligation. For instance, a needed “just in time” service such as a free visit to a doctor for a
sick child may elicit more obligation than a cash payment that could purchase such a visit.
Instrumentalist arguments are currently better-established in the political science
literature, yet as Brusco and colleagues (2004:81) point out, neither framework has been
subjected to a systematic test. For this reason, we first summarize supporting evidence for the
norms of reciprocity approach from existing studies using a variety of methods. We then present
new data from split-sample experiments embedded in two new surveys from Mexico in which
registered voters were selected at random from seven precincts (2009, N=545) and four
different precincts (2010, N=360) in the Federal District of Mexico City and the State of
Mexico.10 We view this combination of observational and experimental methods as a step
beyond the observational approach researchers have used to test principal-agent models of
clientelism based on instrumentalist micro-foundations (Stokes 2005; Brusco et al. 2007).
Clientelist Exchanges Generate Obligation
If the provision of selective benefits failed to conjure up feelings of obligation, there
would be little reason to think such feelings motivated clientelist exchange. Consistent with our
argument, ethnographic accounts of clientelism produced over the last 75 years are drenched in
10
The Supporting Materials provide information on site selection and sampling and show that
our procedures effectively randomized the key treatments across respondents.
11
the language of obligation (inter alia, Gosnell 1937, Weinstein et al. 1969, Powell 1970, Scott
1972, Lemarchand and Legg 1972, Lemarchand 1972, Eisenstadt and Lamarchand 1981,
Eisenstadt and Roniger 1984, Erie 1988, Roniger 1990, Fukui and Fukai 1996, Gay 1998,
Auyero 1999, Auyero 2000, Auyero 2001, Levitsky 2003, Gay 2006). Clients regularly report
feeling indebted to the politicians who provide them with benefits and that such obligation
compels them to act accordingly (Gosnell 1937, Erie 1988, Auyero 2002, Gay 1998, Gay 2006,
Wang 2007).
One example of reciprocity from recent fieldwork comes from the so-called “new leaders”
(naya netas) in northern India. Although these village notables cannot monitor voters’ behavior,
they can count on beneficiaries to support them nonetheless. As one naya neta put it:
It is a matter of keeping faith. People can obviously vote as they wish. But most
people remember well who has helped them in times of need. And it is only a
rare person who is faithless (Krishna 2007: 148).
Field reports on electoral politics in other countries, including Benin, Japan, northern Portugal,
and the Philippines have uncovered the same dynamic (Schaffer and Schedler 2007: 21).
If the approach we propose is correct, not only should benefits generate obligations, but
variation in the value of benefits should affect the degree of obligation. Data from existing
surveys on Brazil and Mexico suggest that such a relationship does indeed exist. For instance,
respondents in the 2002 Brazilian Election Study, which polled over 2,500 adults nationwide,
were asked whether voter should accept a particular gift and then vote for the party that
provided it in return. In the aggregate, respondents ordered items in a predictable way, reporting
the greatest obligation to support a party that provided medical care for a sick child (61%),
followed by one that arranged for a spot in school for the voter’s child (52%), provided groceries
(46%), and gave the voter a bicycle (30%). (See Supporting Materials.) Likewise, respondents
in the nationally representative Mexico 2006 Panel Study reported that providing important
12
public services such as water, sewage, or electricity created more of an obligation than offering
a bag of groceries, which in turn was worth more than holding a neighborhood party. Data on
self-reported receipt of gifts from the same survey also show that the more recipients said that
the gifts mattered to them, the greater the obligation they felt to support the party providing it (r
= .51, p < .01, N = 79). (See Supporting Materials.)
Our own surveys provide a more direct test of this hypothesis using a series of splitsample experiments. Interviewers read third-person vignettes of the following type, in which half
the sample was prompted with the smaller sum and half with the larger sum: “Let’s imagine that
a candidate for municipal president offers Gabriel/Gabriela [50/500] pesos11 in exchange for
his/her vote and Gabriel/Gabriela accepts the money. In your opinion, how much obligation
should Gabriel/Gabriela feel to vote for this candidate – a lot, some, a little, or none?” Similar
vignettes were read where the benefit in question was a bicycle, several bags of cement, or
medical treatment for a sick child.
We used hypothetical third-persons to diminish social desirability bias in responses,
given that many of the practices discussed were illegal.12 Interviewers matched the gender of
the person in the vignettes to that of the respondent in order to enhance identification with the
subject of the vignette (King 2004). We also used eight versions of the survey to prevent
answers to one question from affecting answers to another (“contamination bias”).
The results presented in Table 2 show that respondents, in the aggregate, had a clear
11
The exchange rate at the time was approximately 12 pesos per dollar.
12
When asked directly whether they would accept a payoff in exchange for their vote, just 6% of
respondents answered in the affirmative. Yet 32.8% said that they had personally received a
good or service from a party representative in a recent election. The strong presence of social
desirability bias thus made the use of hypothetical third-persons important.
13
ordering of the degree of obligation that a citizen should feel when he or she accepts a benefit in
exchange for political support. (The use of split-sample survey experiments prevents us from
examining individual preference orders over the whole range of items in Table 1.) Small
monetary payments induced the least amount of obligation to support a candidate, with
approximately one quarter of the sample reporting some obligation. Larger monetary payments
generated more in the split-sample experiments, but less than other gifts. A gift of a bicycle
induced obligation among more than one-third of respondents, and a bag of cement (crucial to
people living in poorly constructed homes) raised that proportion to almost two-fifths. As we
would expect, the provision of a doctor’s visit for a sick child was the most powerful inducement,
with nearly half of respondents saying that such an act should create a sense of obligation in the
voter to support the politician providing it. Importantly, both the provision of cement and a
doctor’s visit were valued more highly by respondents than receiving 500 pesos, even though
this sum would typically be more than enough to purchase either benefit. (These differences
were statistically significant at the .01 level.)
[Table 2 about here]
Evidence from a variety of research methods and across several countries thus shows
that clientelist benefits generate feelings of obligation among voters. But do feelings of
obligation actually lead people to choose candidates on the basis of clientelist appeals? In our
2009 survey in Mexico, we asked half the respondents whether they would vote for the party
with which they sympathized or the party that resolved an important legal issue for them in the
past.13 Only 30.2% inclined toward the party with which they sympathized whereas 54.4% chose
13
The other half of the sample was asked the same question, except that voters were told they
did not sympathize with the party of either candidate; we use only the first half of the sample
14
the party that gave them a benefit in the past. (Another 15.4% were uncertain which party to
choose.) In other words, obligation stemming from past receipt of benefits weighed more heavily
on voters than their partisan sympathies. Other research shows that party affiliation powerfully
influences vote choices in Mexico (Lawson and McCann 2003, Domínguez and Lawson 2003,
Domínguez et al. 2008) and that one component of partisanship concerns issues preferences
that underlie prospective programmatic voting (Greene 2007).
As another test of the relationship between obligation and voting, we constructed an
index of political obligation by adding responses from three questions that were asked of all
respondents in our 2010 survey: how much obligation should Gabriel/Gabriela feel to vote for a
party that gave him/her a) 500 pesos, b) a paid doctor’s visit for his/her sick child, and c) a
rooftop water tank in exchange for his/her vote. A separate item on the survey asked
respondents whether a voter who lives in an area that suffers from water shortages should
choose a candidate that offers him/her a week’s worth of water before the election in exchange
for his/her vote or one who offers nothing before the election but promises to improve the water
system in the area if he wins. This question thus asks voters to choose between a pre-electoral
selective benefit that we view as a clientelist good and a post-electoral community benefit. In
logistic regression models where preference over candidates offering one or the other type of
benefit is the dependent variable, the coefficient on the index of political obligation is correctly
signed and significant at the .05 level. (See Table 3.) The magnitude of the effect remains
virtually unchanged when we control for other variables that could plausibly affect orientations
toward clientelism, including family wealth as measured by an inventory of common household
items (Kitschelt and Wilkinson 2007; Stokes 2005), education, feelings of political efficacy (as
here. Not surprisingly, more respondents in the other half of the sample were even more
inclined to support the politicians that had given them a specific benefit.
15
measured by a standard question about whether or not respondents think that politics is too
complicated for them to understand), and feeling thermometer ratings of the main political
parties. (We return to the effect of civic values, also included in the model, in a subsequent
section.) A simulation using the full model (“Model 4” in Table 3) shows that an otherwise
average individual who feels the highest level of political obligation is 12% more likely to choose
the clientelist candidate. This change more than doubles the likelihood that an individual would
support the machine, from 10% to 22%, all else equal.14
[Table 3 about here]
Evidence from a variety of sources thus supports the notion that the (1) the provision of
selective benefits produces feelings of obligation, (2) subjectively more valuable benefits
produce more obligation, and (3) feelings of obligation are associated with clientelist voting.
Clientelism Persists Despite Ballot Secrecy
Instrumental interpretations of clientelism rest on brokers’ ability to circumvent the secret
ballot. In contrast, our norms-based approach implies that voters spontaneously support the
machine, even where ballot secrecy is secure. Ample evidence using several research methods
supports this view.
Field research shows that clientelism persists without policing of voters’ actions in many
contexts. For instance, Van de Walle (2007: 64) points out that individualized monitoring is
14
Political obligation as measured by our index is also associated with other aspects of
clientelist voting. The 10% of respondents who reported asking a politician for a favor evinced
more obligation than those who had never asked for a favor (p < .01). The 6% of the sample
that admitted willingness to exchange their vote for a payoff also felt more obligation than those
unwilling to enter into a clientelist exchange (p < .1).
16
implausible in countries like Nigeria and Benin, which are not generally regarded as strangers to
clientelism. Wang and Kurzman’s (2007: 233) detailed analysis of vote buying in a 1993 contest
for county executive in Taiwan reaches the same conclusion: although the ballot was secret,
operatives from the Kuomintang documented the purchase of 14,090 votes by relying on
networks of trust and obligation. In a number of other countries that lack structured and
enduring political parties that could act as clientelist machines, analysts routinely report high
levels of clientelism. Peru has been referred to as a case of party system collapse (Seawright
2011; Morgan 2011), yet in the 2010 elections, 24.5% of voters reported involvement in
clientelist exchanges (González Ocantos et al. 2011a). More generally, the degree of party
institutionalization across Latin American countries is not related to voters’ reported involvement
in clientelism. Paraguay, Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia, and Guatemala show lower than average
levels of party structuration with higher than average levels of clientelism.15
Nationally representative survey data also show that clientelism extends much further
than monitoring. For instance, in São Tomé e Príncipe, 90% of subjects said that brokers
attempted to buy their political support in parliamentary elections, yet only 14% reported any
attempt at monitoring or sanctioning (Vicente 2008). In a similar vein, survey data from Brazil
indicate that many citizens would be willing to carry through on vote-selling transactions, even
when the questions asked do not imply any policing of voters’ behavior (see Supporting
Materials).
In our surveys, Mexican voters also perceived that the parties had a relatively limited
capacity (or desire) to monitor votes: just 25.5% said that they saw party representatives inside
15
Party institutionalization data come from Jones (2007: 83). Public opinion data come from
Americas Barometer 2010. When unobtrusive measures are used to tap clientelism, rates are
substantially higher (González Ocantos et al. 2011b).
17
polling places trying to determine who voters chose and only 12.1% reported seeing party
representatives threaten to sanction voters. Nevertheless, 71.4% believed that parties regularly
or sometimes try to buy votes in their neighborhood, and 69.3% think that people in their
neighborhood sell their vote (50.4% say that it occurred with frequency and another 18.9% that
it happened sometimes). Thus, far more clientelism occurs than the parties’ monitoring
capabilities would seem to support.
In one particularly clever analysis of heavily clientelist Paraguay, Finan and Schecter
(2009: 17) show that individuals who exhibit greater reciprocity in experimental trust games
devoid of any political content and with no implication of monitoring, were more likely to report
involvement in clientelist exchanges (as measured in separate surveys) than those who evinced
less reciprocity. As Vicente concludes, such findings support “the idea that self-enforcement
may be the main mechanism by which vote buying works” in settings where such behavior is
pandemic (2008: 21).
Voters who believe their own choices are monitored could conceivably underreport
monitoring or over-report obligation in opinion polls. If so, then voters who believe the vote is not
secret should report higher levels of obligation, indicating that our findings are an artifact of
voter fear. As a test, we compared the obligation induced by the items that appear in Table 2
with perceptions of monitoring. Respondents who suspected that voting was monitored reported
slightly greater obligation for three of the five items; however, these differences were minor and
not statistically significant. We also tested whether perceptions of ballot secrecy affected
respondents’ beliefs that a voter should choose a party offering discrete material benefits over
one offering a broader community benefit. Those who believed that brokers can monitor their
vote choices were no more likely to choose the clientelist party. In other words, variation in
reported obligation is not a product of beliefs about whether parties can monitor voters’
behavior.
18
Obligation Produces Purely “Retrospective Voting”
In instrumentalist models of clientelism, voters care about the future payoffs they will
receive from a clientelist party. If voters consider past performance, it is only as an indicator of
the likely future stream of clientelist goods that they may receive by supporting the machine
(Cox and McCubbins 1986; Dixit and Londregan 1986; Lindbeck and Weibull 1986; Kitschelt
and Wilkinson 2007b: 25, 342; Lyne 2007, Stokes 2005). In our norms-based approach, by
contrast, voters may make their choices based on purely retrospective considerations because
they may feel an obligation to support politicians who have done right by them in the past,
regardless of what they stand to gain in the future.
The link between the provision of favors or services and retrospective voting is
commonplace in developed countries under the name “constituency service”. American
congressmen devote enormous attention to this activity – between one quarter and one third of
their time – and their efforts appear to pay handsome dividends (Fenno 1978; Fiorina 1981,
Yiannakis 1981, Cain et al. 1987, Fiorina and Rohde 1989). The dividing line between such
constituency service and clientelism is not always clear. For instance, Japanese politicians
maintain massive personal support networks (koenkai) that dole out cash gifts at funerals and
furnish constituents with material benefits in times of need (Curtis 1971, Fukui and Fukai 1996,
Scheiner 2007). American political machines, as well as constituency service efforts in Ireland
(Komito 1984), Italy (Rossetti 1994, Golden 2003), and Mexico (Hilgers 2005) similarly blur the
distinction between these activities. Both types of retail politics rely on voters’ obligation to pay
back past benefits with political support.
Although systematic investigation on this sort of retrospective voting has been limited,
the survey data that does exist demonstrates the behavior among voters that we predict. For
instance, in a 2002 survey of voters in Argentina conducted by Brusco et al. (2004) and used as
19
evidence in favor of the instrumentalist approach (Stokes 2005), respondents were asked
whether they had received a gift from a local representative of a party or organization during the
campaign. If they responded “yes,” they were asked whether the gift affected their vote.
Respondents who reported being influenced were then asked how the gift affected them in an
open-ended question (with verbatim responses recorded). Among those who reported being
influenced, 14% said that they felt an obligation to vote for the party that gave them the gift; 21%
said they changed their vote because the party “helped” them; 17% said they normally voted for
parties who gave them things; and others reported vague positive sentiments based on
retrospective rather than prospective considerations. None reported using prospective criteria.
Other data cast even more doubt on voters’ use of prospective criteria. If clients think
prospectively, then presumably they would only change their vote intentions to candidates that
they think will actually win election and thus be in a position to offer benefits in future elections.
Testing this hypothesis requires panel survey data that allows observation of respondents’ vote
intentions over time as well as whether they receive a clientelist payoff, and their assessments
about each candidate’s likelihood of winning. We only found one survey that meets these
criteria: the Mexico 2000 Panel Study.
In Mexico’s 2000 elections, 24% of voters polled reported that they received some sort
of a payoff from one of the parties (Greene 2007: 215) and these payoffs affected vote choices.
Those who received payoffs in the crucial period between early June and the July 6 election
were more likely to switch their vote intention to a final vote choice for the candidate who doled
out the benefit. Models that we report in the appendix show that independent voters who
received a gift from the PRI were 6.4% more likely to vote for that party’s candidate (Labastida
7-13.4), Fox 13.6-26.8, CCS 17.1-18.1.
Among voters who received a payoff, 30.9% changed their vote intention to the
candidate that gave them the benefit, even though they thought that this candidate was unlikely
20
to win the presidency. The most striking finding concerns the candidacy of leftist Cuauhtémoc
Cárdenas. As his ill-fated third run for the presidency wore on, voters abandoned him in droves
and belief that he would win plummeted. Yet among voters who reported receiving a payoff from
Cárdenas’s party in the last month of the campaign season and said that they voted for him in
the post-election wave of the panel survey, fully 47.1% thought that he was unlikely to win the
presidency when polled less than a month prior to the election. It is highly improbable that
voters who received payoffs from Cárdenas’s party came to believe that he could win during the
final month of his ill-fated and, by then, flailing campaign. Not only were his prospects dim and
getting dimmer in the national media, but most voters (60% to be exact) who received payoffs
by the end of April believed Cárdenas was less likely to win when re-interviewed at the
beginning of June.
These striking findings cannot be accommodated within the instrumentalist framework.
Voters motivated by future payoff would be foolish to choose a candidate that they think cannot
win office, and therefore cannot leverage the spoils of office to make clientelist payments in
future elections. These findings instead imply that voters are motivated by non-prospective
criteria.
If many clients do not make their vote choices with an eye toward future payoffs, then
what motivates their choices? Our 2009 survey investigated this issue further. Half of the
sample was asked how much obligation a hypothetical third person would feel to support a party
that promised to deliver a particular good or service (e.g., a medical center) in the future; the
other half of the sample was asked how much of an obligation the person would feel to support
a party that had provided a good or service in the past. If voters ignore or discount past benefits,
then they would presumably feel much less inclination to vote for parties that did right by them
previously than they would for parties that promise desirable benefits in the future. Yet the data
show that this is not the case; respondents reported no greater inclination to support a party that
21
promised to build a medical clinic in the neighborhood if it won the election there than one that
reminded them it had built such a clinic in the past.
This null result supports our argument, but it is possible that it emerges from the data
because voters do not believe that candidate’s promises are credible. The structure of our 2010
survey allows us to investigate this issue further. As above, respondents were asked how much
obligation a hypothetical person should feel to vote for a party that promised a medical center in
their community if it won and, separately, the obligation created when a party reminded that it
improved medical services in the community when last in office.16 Immediately preceding these
questions, half of the sample was primed with a question that featured a party that had made
good on a prior promise. Even these respondents reported more obligation for the party that
reminded of a past benefit than one that promised a future one.
If voters are motivated by purely retrospective considerations, then they may also
engage in another form of retrospective voting by repaying past insults or injuries. Because
clientelism rests on voters’ responses to past favors, failure by politicians to deliver selective
benefits will erode the “moral economy” of machine politics, provoking not only detachment from
clientelist parties but perhaps even a sense of moral indignation among those who were part of
the clientelist network. Erstwhile clients who do feel cheated may then turn against the machine,
even if they are still more likely to receive a future payoff from the party they previously
supported than from an opposing party.17
16
These questions were asked consecutively rather than as a split sample.
17
Instrumentalist models that employ a standard punishment path strategy such as grim trigger
(Stokes 2005) yield similar hypotheses; however, instrumentally motivated (and thus futureoriented) voters should not rationally turn against patrons who spurn them in any one election
cycle if such a party might still provide them with benefits in the future.
22
To test for the possibility that voters practice such “altruistic punishment” (Arnold 2001,
Fehr and Gächter 2002), we compare responses to two separate items from our 2010 survey.
The first asked whether a hypothetical voter should feel obliged to vote for a party from which
she normally receives foodstuffs in exchange for support but which did not deliver anything this
year. The second asked respondents whether they agreed with the statement “when someone
takes advantage of me, I get them back” (which was asked without reference to politics). Those
who strongly agreed with the second statement – thus demonstrating a willingness to practice
altruistic punishment in general – were much more likely to think that the spurned voter should
choose a rival party rather than abstain after benefits were withdrawn (chi-squared = 4.14 for
three degrees of freedom, p < .05).
Civic Attitudes Discourage Clientelism
The extent of political clientelism clearly varies across different political contexts and a
viable theory of clientelism must account for such differences. As noted above, even if feelings
of obligation are activated, other feelings might diminish potential clients’ likelihood of following
through on the bargain. We specifically focus on civic attitudes that prompt citizens to see
clientelist exchanges as illegitimate. We present evidence from experiments that prime civic and
anti-civic primes attitudes as well as mass surveys that measure the likelihood that citizens with
different levels of civic values will enter into clientelist exchanges.
Clever field experiments show that civic attitudes influence the effectiveness of clientelist
appeals across sub-national units. For instance, Vicente (2008) demonstrated that exposure to
anti-vote-buying literature in São Tomé e Príncipe increased perceptions that other people in
the neighborhood were voting their conscience and reduced the extent of vote buying. In the
same vein, Wantchekon (2003: fn 20) showed that Beninese villages that were randomly
selected to receive nationally oriented, “programmatic” appeals were more critical of vote-buying
23
than villages that received parochial (regionally-oriented), clientelist appeals.
Surveys that include adequate questions on civic attitudes and clientelism suggest a
strong relationship between the two across individuals. For instance, in the 2002 Brazilian
Election Study, respondents who more strongly favored democracy as a system of government
were significantly more likely to believe that voters should not accept selective benefits in return
for their vote (p < .01). Likewise, respondents in the Mexico 2006 Panel Study who expressed
support for democracy as a system of government were more likely to reject the notion that a
hypothetical third person should be willing to trade his vote for groceries (p <.01).18 In both
cases, these relationships survive controls for potential confounding factors like income,
education and age. (See Supporting Materials for details.)
Our 2009 Mexico survey employed a split-sample experiment to test hypotheses about
civic attitudes more directly. Half of respondents were asked whether they believed that it is
important to live in a democracy (the civic prime) and the other half were asked whether they
agreed that people did not get ahead unless they took advantage of others (the anti-civic prime).
All respondents were then asked whether it would be acceptable or unacceptable for a person
to give his or her vote in exchange for a job for a relative, followed by the question that the other
half of the sample had received first. Thus, all respondents received the same questions, just in
a different order. Despite the subtle nature of the experimental manipulation, differences
between the two groups were large and significant. Whereas 36% of respondents who received
18
A separate survey in Argentina (see Stokes 2005) shows that the correlation between
clientelism and civic attitudes does not reach statistical significance. This null result is the only
finding that does not support our argument from any available survey that contains the requisite
questions; it may be a product of the small number of respondents who believed clientelism to
be legitimate (approximately 13%).
24
the anti-civic prime first were willing to accept the clientelist exchange, only 25% of those who
answered the question on democracy first were similarly inclined (p < .05).
As a further test, we examined both the partial effect of civic attitudes on clientelist voting
and the joint effect of civic attitudes and the index of political obligation presented above on
voting for a clientelist party. These results appear in Table 3 (above). We measured civic
attitudes with a simple additive index of responses to items on how disappointed the respondent
would be in a friend who did not pay his household electric bill, stole a soft drink from a store,
did not pay bus fare, or earned money by selling marijuana.19 In logistic regression models that
also control for feelings of political obligation and efficacy, household income, education, and
partisan identification, the coefficient on the index of civic attitudes was correctly signed and
always significant at the .1 level or better. In simulations based on this model, a voter who is
typical in every way but highly civically minded would be 16% less likely to cast her lot with a
clientelist party than a non-civic voter, cutting in half support for the machine. A voter who
reports the highest levels of political obligation to patrons and the lowest levels of civic
obligation would be more than 33% more likely to support the machine than voters who are
least civic-minded and most clientelist in orientation.20 Thus, whereas feelings of obligation
encourage voters to support a clientelist party, feelings of civic duty discourage them from doing
so.
19
This battery has been used in a number of other surveys sponsored by the Latin American
Public Opinion Project (see http://www.vanderbilt.edu/lapop/).
20
Across all models, first differences for political obligation and the joint effect of political
obligation and civic duty are statistically significant at the 95% level. The effect of civic duty
alone is significant at the 90% level.
25
4. Conclusion: Durable and Self-Enforcing Clientelism
Scholars in the instrumentalist tradition have occasionally acknowledged that clientelist
linkages can involve strong feelings of affect and duty. As Kitschelt and Wilkinson write:
Continued interaction and exchange between patrons and clients over time – for
example, at local celebrations – may eventually make regular monitoring of
voting unnecessary because…the interaction may be sufficient to induce cultural
expectations of reciprocity inherent in any gift-giving situation (2007: 15).
However, instrumentalist accounts treat such examples as isolated exceptions or aberrations,
rather than as manifestations of a separate, solid basis for clientelism. We argue that the
obligation to reciprocate is the basis for a theoretically and empirically well-supported alternative
mechanism for machine politics in a range of settings.
We do not argue that instrumental calculation is unimportant for clientelism; the credible
threat of sanctions and rewards is surely a fundamental feature of machine politics in many
places. Rather, we suspect that there is substantial variation in the foundation of clientelism
across countries (or regions within the same country). In other words, there may be places
where the absence of spontaneous support necessitates close monitoring of voters by the
machine, places where politicians can rely on norms of obligation to garner votes, and places
where brokers find recourse to both mechanisms.
The role of obligation has broad ramifications for relationships between candidates and
voters. Although we have focused on voters, our argument need not be limited to the base of
the machine. Precinct captains, too, may be motivated by feelings of obligation to the parties
and politicians on whose behalf they operate and thus require less monitoring from their bosses.
It is even possible that some types of patrons – e.g., local notables or religious figures who
control discretionary resources – may take obligations to their clients seriously. Ironically, such a
moral sense on the part of intermediaries and patrons would actually strengthen clientelism,
26
because brokers motivated in this fashion would be less likely to steal the funds they were to
distribute (and thus have more resources to distribute) and promises made by politicians who
were perceived to care about their constituents might be viewed as more credible (and thus
more likely to inspire compliance on Election Day).
Another implication of our findings is that the distinction between clientelist exchange
and constituency service is not as clear-cut as observers might assume. Both types of
interactions between politicians and constituents create a sense of obligation toward politicians
who provide selective benefits. The electoral rewards of such personal exchanges make retail
politics a durable element of all democracies.
Self-enforcing clientelism also affects party structures. If voters spontaneously comply
out of obligation, then clientelism may not require the highly organized and deeply rooted
political machines that most analysts now argue is necessary (Kitschelt 2000; Kitschelt and
Wilkinson 2007b; Gyrzmala-Busse 2005). For instance, Stokes (2005: 317) argues that “The
typical political machine (or clientelist party) is bottom-heavy, decentralized, and relies on an
army of grassroots militants.” Such elaborate structures may be useful to would-be patrons, but
they may not be necessary. Personalist politicians who distribute benefits may be able to build
clientelist relationships without building full-fledged monitoring apparatuses. This possibility may
help explain the persistence of clientelist politics in democracies around the globe in a period
when economic austerity and media-centered campaigning has diminished party density (Mair
and Van Biezen 2001), transformed mass parties into “electoral-professional” ones with far
fewer local activists (Panebianco 1988), and undermined traditional political machines in many
countries (Levitsky 2003; Greene 2007; Weyland 1996).
Finally, our conclusions have important implications for efforts to curb machine politics.
One obvious strategy – with which instrumentalist approaches to clientelism would presumably
agree – is to eliminate the discretionary resources available to political parties and candidates.
27
Not only would restricting the flow of selective benefits prevent politicians from generating new
obligations, the withdrawal of resources could also lead voters who had come to rely on such
selective benefits to rebel against the party that suddenly failed to hold up its end of the
traditional bargain between patrons and clients.
As long as such resources remain available, public policies designed to reinforce the
secret ballot may prove insufficient to break up political machines. Rather, efforts to instill civic
values also have a role to play. Where norms of obligation underwrite clientelism, machine
politics faces a serious challenge if citizens come to view clientelist transactions as illegitimate,
feel obligated to vote their conscience, or come to view their patrons’ largesse as a right rather
than an obligation that must be repaid with political loyalty (Rossetti 1994). These shifts in
mindset constitute a key part of the “difficult transition from clientelism to citizenship” (Fox 1994,
Gay 2006) – a transition that is difficult precisely because it requires not only institutional reform
but also attitudinal change.
28
Table 1. Observable Implications of the Reciprocity and Instrumentalist Frameworks
Issue
Feelings of obligation
Monitoring
Retrospective
clientelist voting
Civic attitudes
Reciprocity Predictions
 Citizens feel an obligation to
support politicians that provide
them with selective benefits
 Greater benefits cause greater
feelings of obligation
 Clientelism can exist despite
ballot secrecy
 Purely retrospective voting based
on previous provision of benefits
 Possible “altruistic” punishment
for cessation of benefits
 Civic values undermine
clientelism
Instrumentalist Predictions

Feelings of obligation should
not affect vote choices

Surveillance/lack of ballot
secrecy required for
clientelism to persist
Retrospective considerations
only matter as an indicator of
future payoffs


Attitudes about clientelism
and civic life do not affect
clientelist exchanges
29
Table 2. Degree of Felt Obligation for Benefits Offered, Mexico 2009
50 pesos
Percent who felt “a lot” or
“some” obligation to support
politician providing gift
24.6
Mean
obligation
0.78
Percent of respondents who
thought it correct to accept
the gift
23.9
500 pesos
28.2
0.89
24.9
Bicycle
33.8
1.00
30.2
Cement
39.7
1.15
32.4
Doctor visit
49.9
1.48
71.8
Benefit offered
Note: The mean value is calculated on a scale of 0 to 3 where 0 is no obligation, 1 is little, 2 is
some, and 3 is a lot. The differences between adjacent benefits in the table are not statistically
significant except cement versus medical treatment for which p<.01. Differences between all
other paired comparisons are statistically significant at the .01 level.
30
Table 3. Logistic Regression Models of Support for a Clientelist Party
Variable
Political Obligation Index
Civic Attitudes Index
Political efficacy
SES
Education
PAN feeling thermometer
PRD feeling thermometer
PRI feeling thermometer
Constant
Number of cases
Model 1
B
SE
Sig
0.10 0.04 **
-2.07
0.25 ***
314
Model 2
B
SE
Sig
0.09 0.04 **
-0.09 0.05 *
-0.13 0.33
Model 3
B
SE
Sig
0.10 0.05 **
-0.08 0.05 *
-0.15 0.34
-0.07 0.13
0.10 0.08
-1.12
-1.48
0.55 **
295
0.81 *
294
Model 4
B
SE
0.10 0.05
-0.10 0.05
-0.38 0.36
-0.01 0.13
0.14 0.08
-0.08 0.07
-0.03 0.06
0.05 0.06
-1.50 0.92
284
Sig
**
*
*
Note: Dependent Variable is coded as 1 for voting for a clientelist party and 0 otherwise.
* p<.1, ** p<.05, *** p<.01, two tailed tests.
31
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41
Supporting Materials
In these supporting materials, we present details on the Mexico 2009 and Mexico 2010
Clientelism surveys as well as supplemental analyses that are referred to in the main text.
1. Mexico Clientelism surveys
2009 Mexico Clientelism Survey
The 2009 survey consists of 545 completed interviews with Spanish-speaking Mexican adults,
in six purposively selected sites in the Federal District (Mexico City) and Mexico State (including
areas within the greater Mexico City metropolitan area). Areas were selected for high levels of
electoral competition between different parties (PRI-PAN, PAN-PRD, PRD-PRI, and PRI-PANPRD). Interviews were conducted during September 5-11, 2009 and September 19-21, 2009 by
the firm Data Opinión Pública y Mercados. Eighty percent of interviews were supervised (70% at
the time of the interview, 10% afterward).
2010 Mexico Clientelism Survey
The 2010 survey consisted of 352 completed interviews with adult, Spanish-speaking Mexicans
at four purposively chosen points in the Mexico City metropolitan area. Areas were selected for
high levels of electoral competition between different parties (PRI-PAN, PAN-PRD, PRD-PRI),
with a focus on lower-middle class or poor neighborhoods where some vote-buying is likely.
Interviews were conducted during August 2010 by the firm Data Opinión Pública y Mercados.
Items in the 2010 survey were similar to those in 2009, with the exception that certain
experimental questions that failed to generate an adequate response (e.g., a “blank ballot
question asking respondents to name the price they would charge for their vote) or were judged
confusing by interviewers in 2009 were excluded. As in 2009, 80% of interviews were
supervised (75% at the time and 5% afterwards); to avoid frightening residents in high-crime
42
zones, in some cases the supervisor was stationed in site of the interview but was not physically
next to the interviewer during the interview.
Typical polling sites for both are shown below:
43
2. Comparison of treatment groups on variables of interest
Because the surveys were paper-and-pencil, automated random assignment of
interviewees to treatment groups was not possible. Randomization was accomplished by
interspersing the survey forms that were then used by interviewers. Because a small number of
interviews were not completed and because interviewers could have inadvertently reordered the
questionnaires, we performed the following ex post checks to verify that randomization “worked”
on the spit-sample items referred to in the text (all from the 2009 survey).
Table A1. Treatment versus Control Groups I
Candidate offers Gabriel/a 50 pesos vs. 500 pesos for his/her vote
Variable
Group A
Group B
Mean Std Dev Mean Std Dev
Age
44.7
16.3
43.8
17.1
Self-reported insufficiency of household income
2.83
.89
2.71
.82
Percent female
57%
-58%
-Skin color (interviewer-coded); higher = darker
2.43
.78
2.42
.80
Education
5.28
2.44
5.06
2.36
Social class (interviewer-coded, inverse)
3.90
.85
3.94
.87
Percent with refrigerator in home
38%
34%
Percent voted in July 2009 midterm elections
71%
71%
Efficacy (% saying politics not too complicated)
53%
53%
Believes vote is secret
76%
79%
Attends church once per week or more
.39
.49
.43
.50
Note: N = 545. No differences significant at p < .1 except income (p = .09).
In this split-sample experiment, Group B (in which Gabriel received the 500 peso offer) scored
slightly higher self-reported insufficiency scale (meaning they felt more financially squeezed). If
income affects willingness to accept a clientelist payoff, this disparity in income would tend to
increase the differences between the two group (however slightly). Group B did not score
significantly lower on measures of social class or household item ownership. Because income
insufficiency was asked later in the questionnaire and was subjectively self-reported, a
treatment effect on income (i.e., asking about a higher peso amount subsequently affected
respondents’ views of their own income insufficiency) cannot be ruled out.
44
Table A2. Treatment versus Control Groups II
Retrospective voting: Will construct medical clinic vs. did construct medical clinic
Variable
Group A
Group B
Mean
Std Dev
Mean Std Dev
Age
45
16.8
43
16.6
Self-reported insufficiency of household income
2.75
.82
2.79
.89
Percent female
58%
58%
Skin color (interviewer-coded); higher = darker
2.41
.78
2.44
.80
Education
5.01
2.37
5.33
2.43
Social class (interviewer-coded)
3.89
.87
3.9
.84
Percent with refrigerator in home
37%
32%
Percent voted in July 2009 midterm elections
71%
71%
Efficacy (% saying politics not too complicated)
52%
54%
Believes vote is secret
79%
76%
Attends church once per week or more
42%
40%
Note: N = 545. No differences significant at p < .1.
Table A3. Treatment versus Control Groups III
Civic values experiment: receives civic prime first vs. anti-civic prime first
Variable
Group A
Mean Std Dev
Age
45.1
16.5
Self-reported insufficiency of household income
2.83
.86
Percent female
57%
Skin color (interviewer-coded); higher = darker
2.45
.76
Education
5.03
2.40
Social class (interviewer-coded)
3.92
.83
Percent with refrigerator in home
35%
Percent voted in July 2009 midterm elections
72%
Efficacy (% saying politics not too complicated)
51%
Believes vote is secret
79%
Attends church once per week or more
42%
How disappointed R would be in friend who sold his
1.53
1.45
vote (inverse scale)
Percent who would be very disappointed in a friend
79%
who sold his vote
Note: N = 545. No differences significant at p < .1.
Group B
Mean Std Dev
43.4
16.9
2.71
.85
59%
2.40
.82
5.31
2.40
3.92
.88
34%
70%
55%
77%
42%
1.58
1.54
81%
45
3. Supplemental Analyses
Obligation
On page 16 in the main text, we argued that “survey data from Brazil show that citizens
are willing to carry through on vote-selling transactions, even when the questions asked do not
imply any policing of voters’ behavior.” In the 2002 Brazil Election Study, the relevant question
read:
I am going to read you various scenarios and would like you to say what a
person SHOULD do something and what a person WOULD do.
i.
A candidate offers a handicapped person a wheelchair
a. Accept the wheelchair and vote for the candidate, OR
b. Not accept the wheelchair and vote for another candidate
ii.
A candidate offers a bag of groceries to a very poor and hungry
family…
iii.
A mother cannot get a place for her child in school. A candidate
obtains a place for the child…
iv.
A candidate offers a mother with a sick son money for his medical
treatment…
v.
A candidate offers a truckload of bricks for several families to finish
building their homes…
vi.
A candidate offers to remodel a soccer field for a group of friends who
get together to play soccer each week…
vii.
A candidate offers a bicycle for a child…
Respondents were asked whether the person should (or would) accept the gift and vote for the
politician in question. They were thus not given the option of accepting the gift and not
supporting the party who gave it, nor were they allowed to assume that the politician might
renege on giving the gift if the prospective voter accepted. The results are reported in Table A1.
46
Table A4: Feelings of Obligation in Brazil
Should accept the gift
and vote for candidate
Hypothetical
Benefit offered
Don’t
recipient is..
is…
Yes
No
know
Would accept the gift
and vote for candidate
Don’t
Yes
No
know
Handicapped
person
Wheelchair
40%
54%
6%
76%
17%
7%
Poor family
Groceries
47%
48%
5%
81%
13%
6%
Mother
Spot in school
for her child
52%
43%
5%
82%
13%
5%
61%
35%
4%
86%
10%
5%
46%
50%
5%
80%
15%
6%
39%
56%
5%
--
--
--
30%
65%
5%
--
--
--
Mother
Family
Group of
friends
Parents
Medical care for
her child
Truckload of
bricks for homes
Refurbish a
soccer field
Bicycle for their
child
In Table A4, all differences are significant at the 1% level for whether recipients should accept
the gift and vote for the candidate, except the differences between “Groceries” and “Truckload
of bricks” and “Wheelchair” and “Refurbish a soccer field”, which are significant at the 5% level.
For whether recipients would accept the gift, all differences are significant at the 1% level except
the difference between “Groceries” and “Spot in school” (p = .97). All differences between
“would” and “should” answers are significant for each question at the 1% level. (N = 2,513.)
A similar battery of questions, mentioned on p. 11 of the text, was asked in the
Mexico 2006 Panel Study (Lawson et al. 2007). The question (from Wave 3 of the panel
survey) read:
(INTERVIEWER: USE “Gabriel” IF MALE INTERVIEWEE AND “Gabriela” IF
FEMALE INTERVIEWEE) Let’s imagine that there is a person named
Gabriel/Gabriela who is a person like you and lives in a community like yours. A
representative of a political party ... (READ OUT SCENARIOS) In your opinion,
how much of an obligation should Gabriel/Gabriela feel to vote for this political
party – a lot, some, a little, or none?
a. throws a party for Gabriel(a)’s community
47
b. gives money to Gabriel(a) to buy a week’s groceries
c. promises to build a sewage system in Gabriel(a)’s community if he wins
the election in that neighborhood
Because the panel structure of the sample was complex, and some questions were only
included in some waves, we report separately the results for different subsamples.
Table A5: Feelings of Obligation in Mexico
Cross-section that accompanied Wave 2 (N = 305)
Obligation induced by…
A lot
Some
Neighborhood party
23.6
17.4
Money for groceries
28.5
16.7
Paving streets (retrospective)
28.9
18.7
Sewage (prospective)
31.8
18.7
Employment (prospective)
32.8
19.9
Little
10.8
8.5
12.1
13.1
9.2
None
40.3
39.3
33.4
29.5
32.5
Don’t know
7.9
6.9
6.9
6.9
6.2
Mean
1.3
1.4
1.5
1.6
1.6
Panel Wave 3, all respondents including Mexico City and rural oversamples (N = 1,594)
Obligation induced by…
A lot
Some
Little
None
Don’t know
Mean
Neighborhood party
17.5
14.7
10.9
50.8
6.1
1.0
Money for groceries
24.0
12.6
8.6
48.7
6.1
1.1
Sewage (prospective)
25.5
18.4
10.8
39.6
5.7
1.3
Panel Wave 3, national sample only (N = 1,067)
Obligation induced by…
A lot
Some
Neighborhood party
17.4
15.1
Money for groceries
24.1
13.0
Sewage (prospective)
25.5
19.5
Little
11.5
8.9
11.0
None
51.7
49.1
39.9
Don’t know
4.2
4.9
4.1
Mean
1.0
1.1
1.3
In Table A5, means are a weighted average of the responses, excluding “don’t know” answers,
where “a lot” = 3 and “none” = 0. Differences in means within each sample in the third wave are
statistically significant at the 1% level. For the Cross-Section in Wave 2 (first set of rows), all
differences are significant at the 5% level or better and three are not significant (“Neighborhood
party” and “Money for groceries”, “Money for groceries” and “Paving streets”, and “Sewage” and
“Employment”).
Aside from the surveys mentioned in the text, we are unaware of any surveys from other
countries that contain items which could be used for this sort of analysis.
In p. 11 of the text, we report that: “ the more recipients said that the gifts mattered to
them, the greater the obligation they felt to support the party providing it (r = .51, p < .01, N =
48
79).” Data are taken from the third wave of the Mexico 2006 Panel Study, in which the following
series of questions was included:

Over the last weeks, has a representative of a political party or candidate given you a
gift, money, food, subsidy or any other type of help?

Which party or candidate was it? (INTERVIEWER: AFTER EACH, ASK) What did
they give you? (INTERVIEWER: MARK ALL MENTIONS)

Would you say this gift or assistance from the party or candidate mattered a lot to
you, mattered somewhat to you, or didn’t matter to you?

In appreciation of the gift or assistance, how obliged would you say you felt to vote for
the candidate who gave it -- very, somewhat, a little, or not at all?
The full results from the panel, which includes the national sample plus the rural and Mexico
City oversamples (N = 1594), are shown in Table A6 (below). Rows do not necessarily sum
to the total because four respondents received more than one type of gift from a party.
Table A6: Gifts from parties and candidates in Mexico 2006 Panel Study
Number of
Number saying
Number feeling “some”
respondents
gift mattered
or “a lot” of an obligation
receiving
“some” or “a
to support the party
gifts
lot”
giving the gift
Money
6
2
1
Meals (alimentos)
1
0
0
Bag of groceries (despensa)
25
13
5
Token gift (obsequio)
43
7
5
Other good or service
10
3
2
Don’t remember / Didn’t answer
3
3
1
Total number of respondents
84
28
14
receiving at least one gift
Effect of civic values
On p. 20-21 of the text, we argued that respondents in Brazil “who more strongly favored
democracy as a system of government were significantly more likely to believe that voters
should not accept selective benefits in return for their vote.” To test this claim, we used data
49
from the above items for Brazil (from the 2002 Brazil Election Study); the dependent variable is
an additive index of responses to whether people should accept the following benefits in
exchange for their vote; it is measured on an eight-point scale.
The statistical model includes a series of explanatory variables: education; age; income
as measured by the log of the quantity total monthly household income divided by the number of
people in the household (the scale ranges approximately from .6 to 10); opinion of democracy
as measured by how much the respondent agreed or disagreed with the following statement (on
a five-point scale): “Democracy may have its problems, but it is better than other forms of
government”; and an index of “Rouba-mais-faz” which is an additive sum of responses to a
series of items on how much corruption the respondent appeared willing to accept in public life
(Q105a-k); it ranged from 1 to 45.
The second column of Table A7 shows the results of OLS regressions with p-values in
parentheses. The results hold when the “Rouba-mais-faz” index is excluded. [Data not shown.]
Table A7: Voters’ Orientations toward Clientelism in Brazil and Mexico
Variable
Brazil 2002
Mexico 2006
Education level
.24
.11
(.01)
(.00)
Income
.18
.01
(.01)
(.45)
Age range
-.13
-.04
(.01)
(.05)
Support for democracy
.46
.20
(.00)
(.00)
“Rouba-mais-faz” index
.07
-(.00)
N
1,882
1,326
R-squared
.13
.08
Second, we argued that “respondents in the Mexico 2006 Panel Study who
expressed support for democracy as a system of government were more likely to reject
the notion that a third person (“Gabriel”) should be willing to trade his vote for groceries.”
To test this claim, we used data from the Mexico 2006 Panel Study (Lawson et al., 2007)
50
described above. Specifically, we constructed an index using a four-point scale of
responses to the question about how much obligation a third person should feel to vote
for a party that had provided him or her with groceries for the week. That is, only
answers to the second item (b) in the battery were used; however, the results are similar
for an additive index of responses to all three questions. [Results not shown.]
The explanatory variables are similar to those used in the Brazil model and include
education, age, income (measured by in a ten-point scale),21 and opinion of democracy as
measured by how much respondents agreed or disagreed with the statement: “For me it is very
important to live in a democracy” (also on a five-point scale). The third column of Table A4
shows the results of OLS regressions with p-values in parentheses.
Aside from the surveys mentioned in the text, we are unaware of any surveys from any
other countries that contain items which could be used for this sort of analysis.
21
The non-effect of income in Mexico persists in a range of specifications and with different
proxies for living standards. [Data not shown.]
51