On the Vote Purchasing Behavior of Incumbent Governments

Matz Dahlberg () and Eva Johansson ()
Additional contact information
Eva Johansson: Department of Economics, Postal: Uppsala University, P.O. Box 513, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Eva Mörk ()

No 1999:24, Working Paper Series from Uppsala University, Department of Economics

Abstract: A couple of months before the Swedish election in 1998, the incumbent government distributed 2.3 billion SEK to 42 out of 115 applying municipalities. This was the first wave of a four-year long grant program intended to support local investment programs aimed at an ecological sustainable development. This temporary grant program differs from traditional intergovernmental grants in several aspects, most importantly in the sovereign decision making power given to the incumbent central government. In this paper we investigate whether there were any tactical motives behind the distribution of these grants. We find support for the hypothesis that the incumbent government used the grant program under study in order to win votes. In particular, we find strong support for the Lindbeck-Weibull/Dixit-Londregan model in which parties distribute transfers to regions where there are many swing voters. This result is statistically as well as economically significant. We do however not find any support for the model that predicts that the incumbent government transfer money to its own supporters.

Keywords: Political economy; Intergovernmental grants; Vote purchasing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H73 H77 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 1999-12-15
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mic, nep-pbe and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Published in American Political Science Review, 2002, pages 27-40.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nek.uu.se/pdf/1999wp24.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.nek.uu.se/pdf/1999wp24.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.nek.uu.se/pdf/1999wp24.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.uu.se/institution/nationalekonomiska/pdf/1999wp24.pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: On the Vote-Purchasing Behavior of Incumbent Governments (2002)
Working Paper: On the Vote Purchasing Behavior of Incumbent Governments (1999)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:uunewp:1999_024

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series from Uppsala University, Department of Economics Department of Economics, Uppsala University, P. O. Box 513, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ulrika Öjdeby ().