Democracy, Credibility and Clientelism

By Philip Keefer, Razvan Vlaicu. 2005

525 citations recorded by the source corpus.

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. (JEL D720, H110, H300, H400, H500, O100)

Subfields: Political Science and International Relations, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bf6ce97a8908683955204a553f099b33fd658a2a

Citations in the corpus

• What accountability pressures do MPs in Africa face and how do they respond? Evidence from Ghana* (2010, unknown): “…on political clientelism has emphasised factors like the illegitimacy of the state (e.g. Englebert 2000), a lack of credible politicians (e.g. Keefer & Vlaicu 1997), the role of political machines capable of effective monitoring (e.g. Cox & McCubbins 1993; Stokes 2005), the autonomy of…”
• The limits of democracy in tackling climate change (2018, unknown): “Independent uncorrupt public administration and courts free from political influence, on the other hand, can impose checks and balances on the political leaders and prevent them from pursuing short-term goals that electoral cycles impose (Keefer and Vlaicu 2007, Cornell and Lapuente 2014).”
• The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Peace and Conflict (2012, unknown): “In an early effort, Keefer and Vlaicu (2008) argue that politicians compare the costs of building political credibility to the political advantages of being able to make broadly credible commitments to them.”
• Earthquake propensity and the politics of mortality prevention (2010, unknown): “Democracies in which this is not the case are less likely to provide public goods (Keefer and Vlaicu 2008).”