The illicit benefits of local party alignment in national elections

Borcan, Oana (2020) The illicit benefits of local party alignment in national elections. The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 36 (3). 461–494. ISSN 8756-6222

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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 through, inter alia, electoral fraud. A regression discontinuity design with Romanian local elections and a president impeachment referendum in 2012 uncovers higher referendum turnouts in localities aligned with the government coalition - the impeachment initiators. Electoral forensics tests present abnormal vote count distributions across polling stations, consistent with ballot stuffing. The alignment effect, driven by rural localities, may explain the clientelistic government transfers found in this context and documented worldwide.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	economics and econometrics,organizational behavior and human resource management,law ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/2000/2002
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Economics
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Centres > Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Sciences Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Applied Econometrics And Finance Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Behavioural Economics Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Behavioural and Experimental Development Economics
Related URLs:	http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	07 Jan 2020 04:13
Last Modified:	12 Jun 2023 08:33
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/73499
DOI:	10.1093/jleo/ewaa005

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