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Clientelism and Voting Behavior: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Benin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Leonard Wantchekon
Leonard Wantchekon
Affiliation:
New York University
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Abstract

The author conducted a field experiment in Benin to investigate the impact of clientelism on voting behavior. In collaboration with four political parties involved in the 2001 presidential elections, clientelist and broad public policy platforms were designed and run in twenty randomly selected villages of an average of 756 registered voters. Using the survey data collected after the elections, the author estimated the effect of each type of message by comparing voting behavior in the villages exposed to clientelism or public policy messages (treatment groups) with voting behavior in the other villages (control groups). The author found that clientelist messages have positive and significant effect in all regions and for all types of candidates. The author also found that public policy messages have a positive and significant effect in the South but a negative and significant effect in the North. In addition, public policy messages seem to hurt incumbents as well as regional candidates. Finally, the evidence indicates that female voters tend to have stronger preference for public policy platforms than male voters.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 55 , Issue 3 , April 2003 , pp. 399 - 422
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 2003

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References

1 See, among others, Bates, Robert, Markets and States in Tropical Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Bayart, Jean-François, L'Etat en Afrique: la politique du ventre (Paris: Fayard, 1989)Google Scholar; Scott, C. James, “Patron-Client Politics and Political Change in Southeast Asia,” American Political Science Review 66 (March 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Bratton, Michael and Walle, Nicolas van de, “Neopatrimonial Regimes and Political Transitions in Africa,” World Politics 46 (July 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 For a review, see Cain, Bruce, Ferejohn, John, and Fiorina, Morris, The Personal Vote: Constituency Service and Electoral Independence (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

3 Maurice Kugler and Howard Rosenthal, “Checks and Balances: An Assessment of the Institutional Separation of Powers in Colombia,” Working Paper, no. 9 (Department of Economics and Econometrics, University of Southampton, 2000). According to Valeria Brusco, Marcelo Nazareno, and Susan Stokes, a clientelist model is characterized by present-oriented interaction, where people trade their votes for immediate payoffs such as rice, a steak, and a job; Brusco, Nazareno, and Stokes, “Clientelism and Democracy: Evidence from Argentina” (Paper presented at the Yale Conference on Political Parties and Legislative Organizations in Parliamentary Democracies, 2002) Thus, clientelism is contrasted with forward-looking choices over programs and backward-looking evaluation of past performance. In my view, clientelist electoral politics can involve as much forward-looking or backward-looking choices as does programmatic politics. In addition, for the purpose of the experiment, I focus on constituency services and patronage jobs instead of direct payment (rice, steak, or cash).

4 For an analysis of the effects of income inequality, low productivity, and poverty on clientelism, see James Robinson and Thierry Verdier, “Political Economy of Clientelism,” Working Paper (University of California, Berkeley, 2001).

5 Government statistics indicate that in 1997 women in Benin represented only 18 percent of the low-level public sector workforce and 6 percent of the high-level public sector workforce.

6 For instance, a major government reshuffling took place during the two years preceding the 2001 elections with key portfolios such as Foreign Affairs, Economy, and Finances being allocated to natives of politically important districts such as Djougou in the Northwest and Ketou in the Southeast. Also, several government projects (construction of city halls, roads, schools, and so on) in a number of districts started a couple of months before the March 2001 election, with local representatives of the incumbent parties claiming openly that their completion is contingent on the outcome of the election.

7 Kitschelt, Herbert, “Linkages between Citizens and Politicians in Democratic Polities,” Comparative Political Studies 33 (August-September 2000), 869.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Kitschelt (fn. 7) suggests that we label a polity as clientelist if we find that programmatic parties are incohesive and the experts attribute high scores of corruption to that country (p. 871). This is clearly not a solution. Even if clientelism and corruption were correlated, they are two separate political categories. Moreover, current measures of corruption are subjective assessments by foreign investors and businessmen.

9 Heilbrunn, John R., “Social Origins of National Conferences in Benin and Togo,” Journal of Modern African Studies 31 (June 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nwajiaku, Kathryn, “The National Conferences in Benin and Togo Revisited,” Journal of Modern African Studies 32 (September 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 That is, if no candidate reaches this majority during the first round, a second round is organized for the top two of the list and the one who gets the majority wins the election.

11 For instance, the political leaders in Benin were the first to introduce the rotating presidency formula to curb ethnic strife in 1969. They also invented the national conference formula in 1989 as a way of facilitating a peaceful postauthoritarian transition. See Boulaga, Eboussi, Les Conferences nationales en Afrique noire (Paris: Editions Karthala, 1993)Google Scholar.

12 In 1991 Soglo obtained 27.2 percent of the vote, Kerekou obtained 36.30, and the next candidate, Tevoedjre, obtained 14.21 percent. In 1996 Soglo received 35.69 percent of the vote, Kerekou, 33.94 percent, and Houngbedji, 19.71 percent.

13 Lindbeck, Assar and Weibull, Jorgen, “Balanced Budget Distribution as Outcome of Political Competition,” Public Choice 52 (June 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Dixit, Avinash and Londregan, John, “The Determinants of Success of Special Interest in Redistributive Politics,” Journal of Politics 58 (November 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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16 Two competitive districts have also been selected. As I explain below, the procedures and the theoretical foundation of the experiment in those two districts are different from the ones in the noncompetitive districts.

17 Gerber, Alan and Green, Donald, “The Effects of Canvassing, Telephone Calls, and Direct Mail on Voter Turnout: A Field Experiment,” American Political Science Review 94 (September 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Christopher Clapham defines government patronage jobs as the “common currency” of clientelism; Clapham, , Patronage and Political Power (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1982)Google Scholar.

19 We could have differentiated the messages by opposing a purely clientelist message to a purely ethnic or religious message or to urban bias. However, neither religion nor urban bias is a salient political issue in Benin, as evidenced by the actual parties' platforms. In addition, purely ethnic messages would be too disconnected from the campaign strategies of the leading candidates (Kerekou and Soglo) and would be perceived as incitement to ethnic conflict.

20 The evidence from the weekly reports by the activists suggests that programmatic meetings tend to last much longer than clientelist meetings. Some participants would criticize vote buying and electoral corruption by other candidates while others would want details on how the party's program would translate into specific promises for their districts. In response, the local team of activists would stress the need for a coordinated national development program. In clientelist meetings, participants would typically review past government projects implemented in their localities and make specific demands for the future.

21 The confidence interval of the village sample means indicate that the samples of respondents are fairly representative of the voting population.

22 This was the case, for example, in Come, where the dominant campaign was run by Kerekou, a nonexperimental candidate in that district.

23 The district-level breakdown indicates that clientelism was very effective in Perere, a district controlled by Lafia, a regional candidate.

24 See Institut National de la Statistique et de l'Analyse Economique, Tableau de Bord Social (Cotonou, Benin: Publication gouvernementale, 2000)Google Scholar. Another possible explanation could be that the North is more ethnically homogeneous than the South. However, the evidence suggests that the two provinces have a nearly identical degree of ethnic homogeneity (92 percent).

25 Marcel Fafchamps and Elini Gabre-Madhin, “Agricultural Markets in Benin and Malawi,” Working Paper 2734 (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, Development Research Group, 2001)Google Scholar.

26 In a recent study of electoral clientelism in Benin, Richard Banegas finds that politicians consistently engage in vote buying and that voters come to expect these largesses and actually use them to assess their likely postelection generosity; Banegas, , La Démocratic a pas de camélé'on (Paris: Editions Karthala, 2002)Google Scholar. One might thus conclude that the negative impact of the nationally oriented message was a reflection of voters considering such a message as suspicious and unusual. However, there is evidence suggesting that political campaigns of all the major candidates have always involved many national themes such as corruption eradication, women's rights, and educational reform. Thus an experimental platform stressing those themes should not have been perceived as unusual, and we find no evidence from the field suggesting otherwise.

27 Lindbeck and Weibull (fn. 13).

28 Dixit and Londregan (fn. 14).

29 Dixit, Avinash and Londregan, John, “Ideology, Tactics, and Efficiency in Redistributive Politics,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 113 (May 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Chattopadyay, Raghabendra and Duflo, Esther, “Women's Leadership and Policy Decisions: Evidence from a National Randomized Experiment in India,” Working Paper (Cambridge: MIT, 2001)Google Scholar.

31 Ibid.

32 Lemarchand, René, “Political Clientelism and Ethnicity in Tropical Africa: Competing Solidarities in Nation-Building,” American Political Science Review 66 (March 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Fisher, Ronald, The Design of Experiments (London: Oliver and Boyd, 1935)Google Scholar.

34 Grosnell, Harold, Getting Out the Vote:An Experiment in the Stimulation of Voting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1927)Google Scholar; Elderveld, Samuel J., “Experimental Propaganda Techniques and Voting Behavior,” American Political Science Review 50 (March 1956)Google Scholar; Adams, William C. and Smith, Dennis, “Effects of Telephone Canvassing on Turnout and Preferences: A Field Experiment,” Public Opinion Quarterly 44 (Autumn 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Miller, Roy E., Bositis, David, and Baer, Denise, “Stimulating Voter Turnout in a Primary with a Precinct Committeeman,” International Political Science Review 2, no. 4 (1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and more recently Gerber and Green (fn. 17).

35 Gerber and Green (fn. 17).