Marco Gonzalez-Navarro (Toronto) will present:
"Vulnerability and Clientelism"
at 3:20pm on Wednesday, April 26, 2017 in 310 Silsby.
Please sign up for a meeting, lunch, or dinner at:
Abstract
Political clientelism is often deemed to have perverse consequences for democratic accountability and representation. In this paper, we argue that economic vulnerability causes households to participate in clientelist
exchanges. We test this hypothesis by implementing a randomized control trial of development intervention that reduces household vulnerability: the construction of residential water cisterns in drought prone areas of Northeast Brazil. Reduced vulnerability
significantly decreases requests for private benefits from local politicians, especially among citizens more likely to participate in clientelist exchanges. Furthermore, we link program beneficiaries to electronic voting machine outcomes, and show that reduced
vulnerability undermines the electoral performance of incumbent mayors, who tend to have more resources for clientelism. Our evidence points to a persistent reduction in clientelism, given that findings are observed not only during the election campaign but
also a full year later.