Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T02:30:22.976Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Citizens or Clients? Evidence on Opportunistic Voting from a Natural Experiment in Greece*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 September 2015

Konstantinos Matakos  and
Dimitrios Xefteris
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We exploit the act of the conservative Greek government (2004–2009) to fiddle the books as a natural experiment in order to document a causal link between government spending and electoral fragmentation and identify the mechanism via which it operates. The retrospective revision of Greece’s deficit figures just before the 2010 regional elections constituted an information shock, which generated expectations for reduced pork-barrel spending. We decompose the resulting effect and uncover the main mechanism taking place: rent-seeking voting and patronage (client-voters abandoning the dominant parties due to less expected rents). We find that expected spending cuts caused a steep decline (increase) in the electoral support for dominant parties (fragmentation). This effect is significantly more pronounced in patronage-intense regions. Using the size of public sector as a proxy for patronage (Hicken 2011), we find that support for dominant parties declined differentially by 5 percentage points more on those regions. That is, at least one in six voters that abandoned the big parties did so out of purely opportunistic motivations. Overall, our work highlights the importance of institutional constraints in affecting electoral and political power-sharing.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 4 , Supplement 3 , September 2016 , pp. 493 - 531
Copyright
© The European Political Science Association 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Konstantinos Matakos, Assistant Professor (Lecturer) of Economics, Department of Political Economy, King’s College London, London WC2R 2LS ([email protected]). Dimitrios Xefteris, Assistant Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, University of Cyprus, P.O. Box 20537, 1678, Nicosia ([email protected]). The authors would like to thank the participants in various seminars and panels at the University of Warwick, Yale University, the University of Guelph, the University of Rochester, Goettingen University, the 2013 APSA Annual Conference, the 2014 MPSA Annual Conference and the 2014 RES Conference for useful comments and suggestions. Konstantinos Matakos would also like to thank Bhaskar Dutta, Ben Lockwood and Sharun Mukand for invaluable comments and stimulating discussions and Sascha O. Becker, Tasos Kalandrakis, Carlos Noton, Vera Troeger, Fabian Waldinger and three anonymous referees for useful suggestions and comments. Konstantinos Matakos gratefully acknowledges financial support from the “A.G. Leventis Foundation.” All errors remain ours. To view supplementary materials for this article, please visit http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2015.50

References

Acemoglu, Daron, and Robinson, James A.. 2012. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty, 1st ed. New York, NY: Crown.Google Scholar
Anesi, Vincent, and de Donder, Philippe. 2009. ‘Party Formation and Minority Ideological Positions’. Economic Journal 119(3):1303–1323.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Angrist, Joshua D., and Pischke, Jorn. 2009. Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist’s Companion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Campos, Nauro F., Coricelli, Fabrizio, and Moretti, Luigi. 2014. ‘Economic Growth and Political Integration: Estimating the Benefits from Membership in the European Union Using the Synthetic Counterfactuals Method’. Discussion Paper No. 8162, IZA, Bonn, Germany.Google Scholar
Chubb, Judith. 1982. Patronage, Power, and Poverty in Southern Italy. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cox, Gary W., and McCubbins, Mathew D.. 1986. ‘Electoral Politics as a Redistributive Game’. Journal of Politics 48(2):370–389.Google Scholar
Cox, Gary W. 2009. ‘Swing Voters, Core Voters, and Distributive Politics’. In Ian Shapiro, Susan C. Stokes, Elisabeth J. Wood, and Alexander S. Kirshner (eds), Political Representation, 342–357. USA: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dixit, Avinash, and Londregan, John. 1996. ‘The Determinants of Success of Special Interests in Redistributive Politics’. Journal of Politics 58(4):1132–1155.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dziubiński, Marcin, and Roy, Jaideep. 2011. ‘Electoral Competition in 2-Dimensional Ideology Space with Unidimensional Commitment’. Social Choice and Welfare 36(1):1–24.Google Scholar
Elcock, Howard. 2008. ‘Elected Mayors: Lesson Drawing from Four Countries’. Public Administration 86(3):795–811.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fox, Jonathan. 1994. ‘The Difficult Transition from Clientelism to Citizenship: Lessons from Mexico’. World Politics 46(1):151–184.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gans-Morse, Jordan, Mazzuca, Sebastian, and Nichter, Simeon. 2014. ‘Varieties of Clientelism: Machine Politics During Elections’. American Journal of Political Science 58(2):415–432.Google Scholar
Golden, Miriam A., and Picci, Lucio. 2008. ‘Pork-Barrel Politics in Postwar Italy, 1953–94’. American Journal of Political Science 52(2):268–289.Google Scholar
Groseclose, Timothy. 2007. ‘One-and-a-Half Dimensional Preferences and Majority Rule’. Social Choice and Welfare 28(2):321–335.Google Scholar
Hicken, Allen. 2011. ‘Clientelism’. Annual Review of Political Science 14(1):289–310.Google Scholar
Keefer, Philip. 2005. ‘Democratization and Clientelism: Why are Young Democracies Badly Governed?’. Policy Research Working Paper Series 3594, World Bank, Washington, DC.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keefer, Philip, and Vlaicu, Razvan. 2005. ‘Democracy, Credibility and Clientelism’. Policy Research Working Paper Series 3472, World Bank, Washington, DC.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kiewiet, Roderick D. 1983. Macroeconomics and Micropolitics: The Electoral Effects of Economic Issues. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kinder, Donald R., Rosenstone, Steven J., and Hansen, John M.. 1983. ‘Group Economic Well-being and Political Choice’. Report available from Center of Political Studies, ISR, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.Google Scholar
Kitschelt, Herbert, Mansfeldova, Zdenka, Markowski, Radoslaw, and Tóka, Gabor. 1999. Post-Communist Party Systems: Competition, Representation, and Inter-Party Cooperation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Koliopoulos, John. 1997. ‘Brigandage and Irredentism in Modern Greece, 1821–1912’. In Thanos Veremis (ed.), National Identity and Nationalism in Modern Greece, 67–102. Athens: Cultural Foundation of the National Bank of Greece.Google Scholar
Kostis, Kostas P. 2005. ‘The Formation of the State in Greece, 1830–1914’. In Faruk Birtek and Thalia Dragonas (eds), Citizenship and the Nation-State in Greece and Turkey, 18–36. London and New York, NY: Routledge Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krasa, Stefan, and Polborn, Mattias. 2010. ‘The Binary Policy Model’. Journal of Economic Theory 145(2):661–688.Google Scholar
Krasa, Stefan, and Polborn, Mattias. 2012. ‘Political Competition Between Differentiated Candidates’. Games and Economic Behavior 76(1):249–271.Google Scholar
Krasa, Stefan, and Polborn, Mattias. 2014. ‘Social Ideology and Taxes in a Differentiated Candidates Framework’. American Economic Review 104(1):308–322.Google Scholar
Kriner, Douglas L., and Reeves, Andrew. 2012. ‘The Influence of Federal Spending on Presidential Elections’. American Political Science Review 106(2):348–366.Google Scholar
Larcinese, Valentino, Snyder, James M. Jr., and Testa, Cecilia. 2014. ‘Testing Models of Distributive Politics Using Exit Polls to Measure Voter Preferences and Partisanship’. British Journal of Political Science 43(4):845–875.Google Scholar
Lyrintzis, Costas. 1987. ‘The Political and Patronage System in Nineteenth-Century Greece’. Hellenic Society 1(2):157–182 (in Greek).Google Scholar
Matakos, Konstantinos, and Xefteris, Dimitrios. 2013. ‘Exploiting the Bare Necessities: Unemployment, Redistribution and Party-System Fragmentation’. American Political Science Association 2013 Annual Meeting Paper, Chicago, 27–31 August 2013.Google Scholar
Mouzelis, Nicos. 1996. ‘The Concept of Modernization: Its Relevance for Greece’. Journal of Modern Greek Studies 14(2):215–227.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nichter, Simeon. 2008. ‘Vote Buying or Turnout Buying? Machine Politics and the Secret Ballot’. American Political Science Review 102(1):19–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Persson, Torsten, Roland, Gerard, and Tabellini, Guido. 2007. ‘Electoral Rules and Government Spending in Parliamentary Democracies’. Quarterly Journal of Political Science 1:1–34.Google Scholar
Petmezas, Sokratis. 1990. ‘Political Liberation Struggles and National Integration in Greece’. Histor 2(3): 95–107.Google Scholar
Petropulos, John. 1968. Politics and Statecraft in the Kingdom of Greece, 1833–1843. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Pop-Eleches, Cristian, and Pop-Eleches, Grigore. 2012. ‘Targeted Government Spending and Political Preferences’. Quarterly Journal of Political Science 7(3):285–320.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rae, Douglas W. 1968. ‘A Note on the Fragmentation of Some European Party Systems’. Comparative Political Studies 1(2):413–418.Google Scholar
Robinson, James A., and Verdier, Thiery. 2013. ‘The Political Economy of Clientelism’. Scandinavian Journal of Economics 115(2):260–291.Google Scholar
Simitis, Costas. 2014. The European Debt Crisis: The Greek Case. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Stokes, Susan C. 2005. ‘Perverse Accountability: A Formal Model of Machine Politics with Evidence from Argentina’. American Political Science Review 99(3):315–325.Google Scholar
Wilson, James Q., and Banfield, E.. 1963. City Politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Matakos et al. Dataset

Dataset

http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/27809
Link
Supplementary material: File

Matakos and Xefteris supplementary material

Appendix Figures A1-A9 and Table A1

Download Matakos and Xefteris supplementary material(File)
File 1.6 MB
Supplementary material: File

Matakos and Xefteris supplementary material

Appendix B

Download Matakos and Xefteris supplementary material(File)
File 55.8 KB