Democracy, Credibility, and Clientelism

Despite having adopted the political institutions of established democracies, democratizing countries display a systematically different pattern of fiscal outcomes. This article attributes these differences to the low credibility of electoral promises in new democracies. We study a model of electora...

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Main Authors:	Keefer, Philip, Vlaicu, Razvan
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	EN
Published:	2012
Subjects:	Models of Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior D720 Network Formation and Analysis: Theory D850
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/4611

id	okr-10986-4611
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-46112021-04-23T14:02:18Z Democracy, Credibility, and Clientelism Keefer, Philip Vlaicu, Razvan Models of Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior D720 Network Formation and Analysis: Theory D850 Despite having adopted the political institutions of established democracies, democratizing countries display a systematically different pattern of fiscal outcomes. This article attributes these differences to the low credibility of electoral promises in new democracies. We study a model of electoral competition where candidates have two costly means to make themselves credible: spending resources to communicate directly with voters and exploiting preexisting patron-client networks. The costs of building credibility are endogenous and lead to higher targeted transfers and corruption and lower public good provision. The analysis demonstrates that in low-credibility states, political appeals to patron-client networks may be welfare enhancing, but in the long run, they delay political development by discouraging direct appeals to voters that are essential for credible mass-based political parties. The model explains why public investment and corruption are higher in younger democracies and why democratizing reforms had greater success in Victorian England than in the Dominican Republic. 2012-03-30T07:28:48Z 2012-03-30T07:28:48Z 2008 Journal Article Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 87566222 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/4611 EN http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank Journal Article
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	EN
topic	Models of Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior D720 Network Formation and Analysis: Theory D850
spellingShingle	Models of Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior D720 Network Formation and Analysis: Theory D850 Keefer, Philip Vlaicu, Razvan Democracy, Credibility, and Clientelism
relation	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo
description	Despite having adopted the political institutions of established democracies, democratizing countries display a systematically different pattern of fiscal outcomes. This article attributes these differences to the low credibility of electoral promises in new democracies. We study a model of electoral competition where candidates have two costly means to make themselves credible: spending resources to communicate directly with voters and exploiting preexisting patron-client networks. The costs of building credibility are endogenous and lead to higher targeted transfers and corruption and lower public good provision. The analysis demonstrates that in low-credibility states, political appeals to patron-client networks may be welfare enhancing, but in the long run, they delay political development by discouraging direct appeals to voters that are essential for credible mass-based political parties. The model explains why public investment and corruption are higher in younger democracies and why democratizing reforms had greater success in Victorian England than in the Dominican Republic.
format	Journal Article
author	Keefer, Philip Vlaicu, Razvan
author_facet	Keefer, Philip Vlaicu, Razvan
author_sort	Keefer, Philip
title	Democracy, Credibility, and Clientelism
title_short	Democracy, Credibility, and Clientelism
title_full	Democracy, Credibility, and Clientelism
title_fullStr	Democracy, Credibility, and Clientelism
title_full_unstemmed	Democracy, Credibility, and Clientelism
title_sort	democracy, credibility, and clientelism
publishDate	2012
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/4611
_version_	1764392113975328768

Democracy, Credibility, and Clientelism

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