Vote buying and the education of a society

Felix Mühe ()
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Felix Mühe: Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich

No 06/58, CER-ETH Economics working paper series from CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich

Abstract: Various studies provide evidence that buying of votes is a widespread instrument of parties in developing countries to influence the outcome of elections. In this paper we examine whether democratic societies which hold votes on educational enhancing redistribution proposals can escape poverty traps if vote buying is possible. We show that if agents can buy or sell votes, then the education of a society is impossible because educational enhancing redistribution will not occur. Hence, society will remain in the poverty trap. We then show that the negative effects of vote buying can be eliminated, for example, by means of a repeated voting constitution in combination with a threshold flexible majority voting rule.

Keywords: vote buying; political economy; poverty traps; economic development; voting rules; repeated voting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D72 O10 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2006-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-edu and nep-pol
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eth:wpswif:06-58

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