The illicit beneficts of local party alignment in national elections

Oana Borcan
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Oana Borcan: University of East Anglia

No 2016-10, University of East Anglia School of Economics Working Paper Series from School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.

Abstract: How do central politicians in young democracies secure electoral support at grass-roots level? I show that alignment with local governments is instrumental in swaying national elections via electoral fraud. Using a regression discontinuity design with Romanian local elections and a president impeachment referendum in 2012, I find higher referendum turnouts in localities aligned with the government coalition - the impeachment initiators. A variety of electoral forensics tests uncover abnormal vote count distributions across polling stations, consistent with null ballot stuffing and possibly vote buying. The alignment effect is driven by rural localities, those with weaker opposition party presence, and higher vote buying incidence in past elections. This illicit transfer from local to national government may explain the reverse clientelistic grants found in the intergovernmental transfers literature.

Keywords: political economy; elections; electoral fraud; partisan alignment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D73 H7 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-10-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-law and nep-pol
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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