Clientelism and Identity

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 mobilization may contribute to this, enabling support to be won with clienteli...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors:	Habyarimana, James, Houser, Daniel, Khemani, Stuti, Brech, Viktor, Choi, Ginny Seung, Roy, Moumita
Format:	Journal Article
Published:	Taylor and Francis 2021
Subjects:	CLIENTELISM SOCIAL IDENTITY LEADERSHIP LABORATORY EXPERIMENT POLITICAL STRATEGY
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35874

id	okr-10986-35874
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-358742021-07-20T18:55:40Z Clientelism and Identity Habyarimana, James Houser, Daniel Khemani, Stuti Brech, Viktor Choi, Ginny Seung Roy, Moumita CLIENTELISM SOCIAL IDENTITY LEADERSHIP LABORATORY EXPERIMENT POLITICAL STRATEGY 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 mobilization 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. 2021-06-30T17:03:05Z 2021-06-30T17:03:05Z 2021-01 Journal Article Economic and Political Studies 2095-4816 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35874 CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank Taylor and Francis Publications & Research :: Journal Article Publications & Research
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
topic	CLIENTELISM SOCIAL IDENTITY LEADERSHIP LABORATORY EXPERIMENT POLITICAL STRATEGY
spellingShingle	CLIENTELISM SOCIAL IDENTITY LEADERSHIP LABORATORY EXPERIMENT POLITICAL STRATEGY Habyarimana, James Houser, Daniel Khemani, Stuti Brech, Viktor Choi, Ginny Seung Roy, Moumita Clientelism and Identity
description	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 mobilization 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.
format	Journal Article
author	Habyarimana, James Houser, Daniel Khemani, Stuti Brech, Viktor Choi, Ginny Seung Roy, Moumita
author_facet	Habyarimana, James Houser, Daniel Khemani, Stuti Brech, Viktor Choi, Ginny Seung Roy, Moumita
author_sort	Habyarimana, James
title	Clientelism and Identity
title_short	Clientelism and Identity
title_full	Clientelism and Identity
title_fullStr	Clientelism and Identity
title_full_unstemmed	Clientelism and Identity
title_sort	clientelism and identity
publisher	Taylor and Francis
publishDate	2021
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35874
_version_	1764483965329080320

Clientelism and Identity

Similar Items