Book

Conditionality and coercion : electoral clientelism in eastern Europe

Mares, Isabela, author, Young, Lauren E., author

2019

Overview

In many recent democracies, candidates compete for office using illegal strategies to influence voters. In Hungary and Romania, local actors including mayors and bureaucrats offer access to social policy benefits to voters who offer to support their preferred candidates, and they threaten others with the loss of a range of policy and private benefits for voting the \"wrong\" way. These quid pro quo exchanges are often called clientelism. How can politicians and their accomplices get away with such illegal campaigning in otherwise democratic, competitive elections? When do they rely on the worst forms of clientelism that involve threatening voters and manipulating public benefits? 'Conditionality and Coercion: Electoral Clientelism in Eastern Europe' uses a mixed method approach to understand how illegal forms of campaigning, including vote buying and electoral coercion, persist in two democratic countries in the European Union. It argues that we must disaggregate clientelistic strategies based on whether they use public or private resources, and whether they involve positive promises or negative threats and coercion. We document that the type of clientelistic strategies that candidates and brokers use varies systematically across localities based on their underlying social coalitions. We also show that voters assess and sanction different forms of clientelism in different ways. Voters glean information about politicians' personal characteristics and their policy preferences from the clientelistic strategies these candidates deploy.

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Subject: Elections Corrupt practices Europe, Eastern. / Hungary Politics and government 1989- / Romania Politics and government 1989-
• ISBN: 9780198832775, 019883277X, 9780198832782, 0198832788

Item info:

1 item available

1 item total in all locations

Holdings :

Call Number	Copies	Material	Location
JN2183.M37 2019	1	BOOK	AUTOSTORE