IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/osf/socarx/u34pr_v1.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Eat Widely, Vote Wisely? Lessons from a Campaign Against Vote Buying in Uganda

Author

Listed:
  • Blattman, Christopher

    (University of Chicago)

  • Larreguy, Horacio
  • Marx, Benjamin
  • Reid, Otis

Abstract

We study a large-scale intervention designed by civil society organizations to reduce vote buying in Uganda’s 2016 elections. We study this intervention in light of a model where incumbents benefit from a first-mover and valence advantage, vote buying and campaigning are complementary, and voter reciprocity increases the effectiveness of vote buying. The intervention undermined reciprocity as well as the valence advantage of incumbents. As a result, challengers not only campaigned more intensively but also bought more votes in treated locations. Consistent with incumbents being first movers in markets for votes and facing more frictions to adjust their strategies than challengers, their response to the intervention was limited. The intervention ultimately failed to reduce vote buying, but led to short-run electoral gains for challengers and increased service delivery in treated locations.

Suggested Citation

  • Blattman, Christopher & Larreguy, Horacio & Marx, Benjamin & Reid, Otis, 2019. "Eat Widely, Vote Wisely? Lessons from a Campaign Against Vote Buying in Uganda," SocArXiv u34pr_v1, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:u34pr_v1
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/u34pr_v1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://osf.io/download/5d76b18b34e7c200194168fd/
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.31219/osf.io/u34pr_v1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:u34pr_v1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: OSF (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://arabixiv.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.