Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T15:13:54.876Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hitting Them With Carrots: Voter Intimidation and Vote Buying in Russia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2018

Timothy Frye ,
Ora John Reuter  and
David Szakonyi
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Scholars have identified many ways that politicians use carrots, such as vote buying, to mobilize voters, but have paid far less attention to how they use sticks, such as voter intimidation. This article develops a simple argument which suggests that voter intimidation should be especially likely where vote buying is expensive and employers have greater leverage over employees. Using survey experiments and crowd-sourced electoral violation reports from the 2011–12 election cycle in Russia, the study finds evidence consistent with these claims. Moreover, it finds that where employers have less leverage over employees, active forms of monitoring may supplement intimidation in order to encourage compliance. These results suggest that employers can be reliable vote brokers; that voter intimidation can persist in a middle-income country; and that, under some conditions, intimidation may be employed without the need for active monitoring.

Keywords

voter intimidationvote buyingclientelismemployerscoercionRussiaelections
Type
Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 49 , Issue 3 , July 2019 , pp. 857 - 881
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2018 

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

*

Political Science Department, Columbia University (email: [email protected]); Political Science Department, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (email: [email protected]); Political Science Department, George Washington University (email: [email protected]). All three authors are affiliated with the International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development located in Moscow, Russia. The research was prepared within the framework of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE) and supported within the framework of a subsidy granted to the HSE by the Government of the Russian Federation for the implementation of the Global Competitiveness Program. Data replication sets are available in Harvard Dataverse at: https://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/WMRQ16 and online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123416000752.

References

Acemoglu, Daron, and Wolitzky, Alexander. 2011. The Economics of Labor Coercion. Econometrica 79 (2):555–600.Google Scholar
Alina-Pisano, Jessica. 2010. Social Contracts and Authoritarian Projects in Post-Soviet Space: The Use of Administrative Resource. Communist and Post-Communist Studies 43 (4):373–382.Google Scholar
Argersinger, Peter H. 1985. New Perspectives on Election Fraud in the Gilded Age. Political Science Quarterly 100 (4):669–687.10.2307/2151546Google Scholar
Auyero, Javier. 2000. Poor People’s Politics: Peronist Survival Networks and the Legacy of Evita. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Bader, Max. 2013. Crowdsourcing Election Monitoring in the 2011–2012 Russian Elections. East European Politics 29 (3):521–535.Google Scholar
Baland, Jean-Marie, and Robinson, James. 2007. How Does Vote Buying Shape the Economy?. In Elections for Sale: The Causes and Consequences of Vote Buying, edited by Fredrik Schaffer, 176–199. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.Google Scholar
Baland, Jean-Marie, and Robinson, James. 2008. Land and Power: Theory and Evidence from Chile. American Economic Review 98 (5):1737–1765.Google Scholar
Beber, Bernd, and Scacco, Alexandra. 2012. What the Numbers Say: A Digit-Based Test for Election Fraud. Political Analysis 20 (2):211–234.Google Scholar
Blair, Graeme, and Imai, Kosuke. 2012. Statistical Analysis of List Experiments. Political Analysis 20 (1):47–77.Google Scholar
Blaydes, Lisa. 2011. Elections and Distributive Politics in Mubarak’s Egypt. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bratton, Michael. 2007. Vote Buying and Violence in Nigerian Election Campaigns. Electoral Studies 27 (4):621–632.Google Scholar
Caro, Robert A. 1991. The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Chwe, Michael. 1990. Why Were Workers Whipped: Pain in a Principal-Agent Model. Economic Journal 100:1109–1121.Google Scholar
Collier, Paul, and Vicente, Pedro. 2012. Violence, Bribery, and Fraud: The Political Economy of Elections in Sub-Saharan Africa. Public Choice 153 (1):117–147.Google Scholar
Colton, Timothy, and Hale, Henry. 2009. The Putin Vote: Presidential Electorates in a Hybrid Regime. Slavic Review 68 (3):473–503.Google Scholar
Dower, Paul Castaneda, and Pfutze, Tobias. 2015. Vote Suppression and Insecure Property Rights. Journal of Development Economics 114:1–19.Google Scholar
Enikolopov, Ruben, Korovkin, Vasily, Petrova, Maria, Sonin, Konstantin, and Zakharov, Alexei. 2013. Field Experiment Estimate of Electoral Fraud in Russian Parliamentary Elections. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110:2.Google Scholar
Frye, Timothy, Reuter, Ora John, and Szakonyi, David. 2014. Political Machines at Work: Voter Mobilization and Electoral Subversion in the Workplace. World Politics 66 (2):195–228.Google Scholar
Gandhi, Jennifer, and Lust-Okar, Ellen. 2009. Elections Under Authoritarianism. Annual Review of Political Science 12:403–422.Google Scholar
Gans-Morse, Jordan, Mazzuca, Sebastián, and Nichter, Simeon. 2014. Varieties of Clientelism: Machine Politics During Elections. American Journal of Political Science 58 (2):415–432.Google Scholar
Gerber, Alan S, Huber, Gregory A, Doherty, David, Dowling, Conor M, and Hill, Seth J. 2013. Do Perceptions of Ballot Secrecy Influence Turnout? Results from a Field Experiment. American Journal of Political Science 57 (3):537–551.Google Scholar
Gonzalez Ocantos, Ezequiel, Jonge, Chad Kiewiet de, Meléndez, Carlos, Osorio, Javier, and Nickerson, David W.. 2012. Vote Buying and Social Desirability Bias: Experimental Evidence from Nicaragua. American Journal of Political Science 56:202–217.10.1111/j.1540-5907.2011.00540.xGoogle Scholar
Gonzalez Ocantos, Ezequiel, Kiewet de Jonge, Chad, and Nickerson, David W.. 2014. The Conditionality of Vote Buying Norms: Experimental Evidence from Latin America. American Journal of Political Science 102 (1):197–211.Google Scholar
Green, Donald P., and Gerber, Alan S.. 2008. Get Out the Vote: How to Increase Voter Turnout. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.Google Scholar
Hertel-Fernandez, Alexander. 2016. How Employers Recruit Their Workers into Politics – And Why Political Scientists Should Care. Perspectives on Politics 14 (2):410–424.10.1017/S1537592716000098Google Scholar
Hicken, Allen. 2011. Clientelism. Annual Review of Political Science 14 (1):289–310.10.1146/annurev.polisci.031908.220508Google Scholar
Holbrook, Allyson L, and Krosnick, Jon A. 2010. Social Desirability Bias in Voter Turnout Reports: Tests using the Item Count Technique. Public Opinion Quarterly 74 (1):37–67.Google Scholar
Hsieh, Chang-Tau, Edward, Miguel, Daniel, Ortega, and Francisco, Rodríguez. 2011. The Price of Political Opposition: Evidence from Venezuela’s Maisanta . American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 3 (2):196–214.Google Scholar
Jensen, Peter Sandholt, and Justesen, Mogens. 2014. Poverty and Vote Buying: Survey-Based Evidence from Africa. Electoral Studies 33:220–232.Google Scholar
Kreuzer, Marcus. 1996. From Co-Optation to Competition: Changing Forms of Electoral Corruption in Nineteenth Century France. In Political Corruption in Latin American and European Perspective, ed. Walter Little and Eduardo Posada-Carbo, 97–114. London: McMillan.Google Scholar
Kuklinski, James H., Cobb, Michael D., and Gilens, Martin. 1997. Racial Attitudes and the ‘New South’. The Journal of Politics 59 (2):323.Google Scholar
Lehoucq, Fabrice. 2003. Electoral Fraud: Causes, Types, and Consequences. Annual Review of Political Science 6:233–256.Google Scholar
Magaloni, Beatriz. 2006. Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and Its Demise in Mexico. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Malefakis, Edward, Agrarian Reform and Peasant Revolution in Spain. Origins of the Civil War. New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1970.Google Scholar
Mares, Isabela Aurelian Muntean, and Petrova, Tsveta. 2017a. “Economic Intimidation in Contemporary Elections: Evidence From Romania And Bulgaria.” Government And Opposition (Forthcoming).Google Scholar
MaresIsabela, Aurelia Muntean Isabela, Aurelia Muntean, and Petrova, Tsveta. 2017b. Pressure, Favors, and Vote Buying: Evidence from Romania and Bulgaria. Europe Asia-Studies (forthcoming).Google Scholar
Mares, Isabela, and Petrova, Maria. 2014. Disaggregating Clientelism: Examining the Mix of Vote-Buying, Patronage, and Intimidation. New York: Columbia University.Google Scholar
Mares, Isabela, and Zhu, Boliang. 2015. The Production of Electoral Intimidation: Economic and Political Incentives. Comparative Politics 48 (1):23–43.Google Scholar
Myagkov, Mikhail, Ordeshook, Peter, and Shakin, Dmitri. 2009. The Forensics of Election Fraud: Russia and Ukraine. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Nichter, Simeon. 2008. Vote Buying or Turnout Buying? Machine Politics and the Secret Ballot. American Political Science Review 102 (1):19–31.10.1017/S0003055408080106Google Scholar
Oliveros, Virginia. 2016. Making it Personal: Clientelism, Favors, and the Personalization of Public Administration in Argentina. Comparative Politics 48 (3):373–391.Google Scholar
Robinson, James A., and Torvik, Ragnar. 2009. The Real Swing Voter’s Curse. American Economic Review 99 (2):310–315.Google Scholar
Schaffer, Fredrik Charles, ed. 2007. Elections for Sale: The Causes and Consequences of Vote Buying. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.Google Scholar
Sidel, John. 1999. Capital, Coercion, and Crime: Bossism in the Philippines: Contemporary Issues in Asia & the Pacific. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Simpser, Alberto. 2013. Why Governments and Parties Manipulate Elections: Theory, Practice, and Implications. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Stokes, Susan. 2005. Perverse Accountability: A Formal Model of Machine Politics with Evidence from Argentina. American Political Science Review 99 (3):315–325.Google Scholar
Stokes, Susan, Dunning, Thad, Nazareno, Marcelo, and Brusco, Valeria. 2013. Brokers, Voters, and Clientelism: The Puzzle of Distributive Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Szakonyi, David, Reuter, Ora John, and Frye, Timothy. 2017. “Replication Data for: Hitting Them With Carrots: Voter Intimidation and Vote Buying in Russia”, doi: 10.7910/DVN/WMRQ16, Harvard Dataverse, V1.Google Scholar
Weitz-Shapiro, Rebecca. 2012. What Wins Votes: Why Some Politicians Opt Out of Clientelism. American Journal of Political Science 56 (3):568–583.Google Scholar
Weitz-Shapiro, Rebecca, Curbing Clientelism in Argentina: Politics, Poverty, and Social Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.Google Scholar
White, Stephen. 2011. Elections Russian-style. Europe-Asia Studies 63 (4):531–556.10.1080/09668136.2011.566423Google Scholar
Ziblatt, Daniel. 2008. Does Landholding Inequality Block Democratization? A Test of the ‘Bread and Democracy’ Thesis and the Case of Prussia. World Politics 60 (4):610–641.10.1353/wp.0.0021Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Frye et al. supplementary material

Frye et al. supplementary material 1

Download Frye et al. supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 163.9 KB
Supplementary material: Link

Frye et al. Dataset

Dataset

https://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/WMRQ16
Link