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Incentivizing Brokers in Clientelist Parties

Author

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  • Agustin Casas

    (Department of Economics/CUNEF)

  • Daniel M. Kselman

    (School Global and Public Affairs/IE University)

Abstract

Local brokers are essential in the implementation of clientelist politics, but their efforts on parties’ behalf are not fully observable. A growing literature studies how parties address this agency problem, highlighting two distinct reward schemes:allocating promotions or prizes based on observed vote shares, or doing so based on inferred effort allocations. This paper develops a formal model to examine the conditions under which one or the other of these reward schemes is optimal forminimizing brokers’ rent-seeking. Intuitively, the effort-based reward mechanism is optimal when broker effort is inferred with relative precision. Less intuitively, the vote-based mechanism will tend to be optimal when a party’s supporters are evenly distributed across regions, and when the prize ß adopts intermediate values, which together lead to high levels of inter-broker competition. When brokers must compete with one another over valued prizes, parties can often minimize rent seeking without directly monitoring broker effort.

Suggested Citation

  • Agustin Casas & Daniel M. Kselman, 2022. "Incentivizing Brokers in Clientelist Parties," Working Papers 150, Red Nacional de Investigadores en Economía (RedNIE).
  • Handle: RePEc:aoz:wpaper:150
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    File URL: https://rednie.eco.unc.edu.ar/files/DT/150.pdf
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    Cited by:

    1. Crutzen, Benoît S.Y. & Flamand, Sabine, 2023. "Leaders, factions and the determinants of electoral success," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).

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