This chapter argues that contemporary electoral clientelism focused on vote buying is more vulnerable to failure than robust prior forms of political clientelism. Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century oligarchic clientelism, as well as mid twentieth-century corporatist clientelism, entangled the provision of benefits with employment and social protection. They thus raised the costs of defection so high that opposed recipients had strong incentives to comply. In contrast, contemporary electoral clientelism offers much lower-value gifts and limits the costs of noncompliance to foregone future benefits. Under these conditions, recipients’ personal political dispositions weigh more heavily in their vote choices, leading vote-buying attempts to fail when the conditions that I characterize in the rest of the book activate those dispositions. The chapter also describes Mexico’s transition from corporatist clientelism during most of the twentieth century under Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) rule to the new practice of electoral clientelism since national-level democratization in 2000.

This final chapter on mechanisms argues that recipients of electoral gifts have a partisan view of ballot secrecy. When opposition recipients only see machine representatives in their voting place on Election Day, they fear that ballot secrecy could be compromised and are more likely to believe the machine’s threats to impose costly sanctions for voting their sincere preferences. Recipient compliance is thus more likely in machine-dominant constituencies. When recipients also see opposing-party representatives at the polls, they are prone to believe that ballot secrecy is preserved and that they can vote their true preferences without incurring costs. This argument provides a new rationale for the protective influence of poll watchers and adds nuance to the standard institutional claim that de jure ballot secrecy alone undermines vote buying. Tests use observational survey data, survey experiments, and fieldwork in Mexico.

This introductory chapter describes the stakes of successful vote buying for new democracies and the deep pessimism of current perspectives. Despite the standard assumption embedded in existing theories that politicians only buy votes when the practice is guaranteed to be effective, meta-analyses of empirical research show that it typically fails. I introduce my partisan competition theory of electoral clientelism, which can better explain why vote-buying attempts success or fail. I argue that competitive elections can shift the balance of power from political machines to citizens, implying more optimistic outlook on elections, the voting behavior of poor citizens, and political representation in new democracies. Before outlining the remainder of the book, I introduce Mexico as a typical case of a new democracy awash in vote buying with subnational variation in the degree of partisan competition over time. I also introduce Argentina, Colombia, and Turkey as critical case tests of the mechanisms implied by the partisan competition theory.

The concluding chapter discusses the optimistic implications of my findings for the quality of elections, the voting behavior of poor citizens, the conceptualization of clientelist democracies, and the viability of political representation and accountability in new democracies. Vote buying still represents a drain on public budgets and inefficient social investment, but because competition makes poor voters more resistant to electoral clientelism than currently assumed, the electoral connection that underwrites democratic governance can operate in competitive constituencies. I draw out the public policy implications of my findings for opposition political parties, election management bodies, and democracy promotion efforts to fight vote buying and help transform clients into citizens.

This chapter tests the book’s main argument and the three proposed mechanisms by analyzing the effectiveness of vote-buying schemes in Argentina, Colombia, and Turkey. To avoid repetition, I highlight one mechanism per country, using a critical-case approach. In Colombia’s 2022 elections, weak partisanship and an atomized party system imply that recipients might respond instrumentally to electoral gifts. Nevertheless, using a conjoint experiment, I show strong partisan response, thus highlighting the low bar for partisan affinity to disrupt machine politics. Competitive authoritarianism in Turkey should bias elections in the incumbent’s favor, but I show that local competition for the Kurdish vote and intensive campaigns in the 2015 elections caused the incumbent party to target many unbuyable voters and made the vote buying strategy to fail nationally. Finally, in Argentina the use of partisan ballots should increase recipient compliance. Employing observational data and a photo-based survey experiment from the 2021 elections, I instead show that recipients believe in ballot secrecy and vote their true preferences where prior local electoral competition was vibrant but comply by voting for the machine where it had been locally dominant. The findings from these three critical-case tests show the surprisingly weak conditions that can make vote buying ineffective and imply that my argument generalizes to other competitive systems rife with clientelism.

This is the first of three chapters on the mechanisms that translate the effects of electoral competitiveness into the success or failure of vote buying. Here, I provide a new argument for recipients’ responses to vote-buying offers. Existing theory rooted in instrumentalist microfoundations predicts that all demographically similar voters respond equally to electoral gifts of a given value, thus making all voters potentially buyable. Drawing on the motivated reasoning literature in political science and the gifting literature in behavioral economics, I argue that responses to electoral gifts are conditioned by preexisting partisanship. Even though all recipients appreciate the gift’s economic value, partisans assign it different symbolic value due to inferences about the machine’s rationale for targeting them. Initial supporters respond positively, inferring that the machine cares about their welfare, whereas initial opponents respond negatively, inferring that the machine seeks to manipulate their vote. Partisan responses limit the market for votes by putting many opposed recipients out of the machine’s reach. Tests compare the predictions of standard “equal response” theory to my partisan response model using fieldwork observations, survey data, and conjoint experiments in Mexico.

This chapter provides a bookend test of my main hypothesis that the intensity of local electoral competition conditions the effectiveness of vote-buying attempts. I use specialized election-season panel surveys of Mexican citizens to assess the impact of electoral gifts on vote choices from the onset of national-level democracy in 2000 until 2018. Results show that vote buying typically fails in competitive constituencies and only succeeds where the machine was already electorally dominant for nonclientelist reasons. The rest of the chapter provides robustness tests. I use multiple approaches to measure vote-buying attempts, including direct and indirect self-reports from recipients and the PRI’s intent to treat constituencies with electoral gifts. Tests for endogeneity include sensitivity analysis and instrumental variables models, as well as time series and fixed effects models at the municipal level.

This second chapter on mechanisms argues that competitive elections cause machines to target many unbuyable voters with electoral gifts. Vote buying is effective when recipients vote for the machine but would have voted for a rival party had they not received a gift. Existing research shows that machines select clients based on citizens’ observable pre-campaign dispositions. Yet the unknowable effects of the subsequent campaigns can shift recipients’ vote-relevant attitudes enough to make some initially buyable voters unbuyable by Election Day. Machines in competitive constituencies thus make many unavoidable targeting errors. Campaign effects are muted in constituencies that the machine already dominates electorally, leading to more efficient targeting and more effective vote buying. Tests use a variety of measurement techniques and election-season panel surveys from Mexico between 2000 and 2018.

This chapter introduces the concept of promissory representation: the idea that democratic accountability hinges on political actors making and keeping campaign promises. We trace the development of this concept through key scholarly contributions, distinguishing between mandate and trustee models of representation, and arguing that the former provides stronger mechanisms of accountability. We also address several critiques: that voters may not remember promises, lack the information to evaluate fulfillment, or prioritize other factors. Drawing on comparative research, particularly from the Comparative Pledges Project, we show that election promises remain central to democratic politics and that voters do consider promise fulfillment when evaluating parties. We also discuss how ideology and partisanship shape these assessments and argue that promissory representation remains a valuable framework for understanding the effects of globalization on democratic accountability.

Chapter 3 examines how the Economist Mental Model (EMM) influenced voting behavior in the 2016 Brexit referendum. Using British Election Study data, the chapter shows that individuals with higher economic knowledge – a proxy for the EMM – were 11 percentage points more likely to vote than those with lower economic knowledge – a proxy for Alternative Mental Models. The effect of economic knowledge on Brexit preferences is comparable in size to established predictors like income and regional exposure to globalization, underscoring its importance. Robustness checks confirm the relationship remains strong after accounting for media consumption patterns. Moreover, EMM-oriented individuals also favor other welfare-enhancing policies, such as free trade and immigration, yet do not differ from others on noneconomic social issues like LGBTQ+ rights. Thus, economic reasoning specifically shapes economic policy preferences, rather than reflecting broader ideological leanings.