Making votes not count: Strategic incentives for electoral corruption

In many developing countries, the institution of elections differs systematically from the idealized view of elections embodied in most current political economy work, with important consequences for accountability and governance. I study the incentives underlying corrupt elections. I begin by showing that the obvious view, namely that the goal of electoral corruption is to change who wins, cannot account for an important part of the empirical incidence of corrupt elections. The conventional wisdom associates electoral corruption with close contests and with small margins of victory. The logic is that electoral corruption is costly and risky and therefore should be pursued only insofar as it can change the outcome of the election, and only to the extent necessary to win. In fact, however, corrupt elections are often associated with overwhelming victory. In light of existing ideas on electoral corruption this is puzzling: Why engage excessively in the costly practice of electoral corruption? I propose an answer based on the informational effects of electoral corruption. The key insight is that electoral corruption can play a critical role in suppressing political competition not only mechanically through, for example, the direct alteration of ballots but also, less intuitively, by influencing beliefs and expectations about the political process. The belief, for example, that the opposition stands no chance of winning can discourage opposition turnout. A powerful incumbent, such as Mexico's PRI in the twentieth century, may thus benefit from manipulating citizens' beliefs through public acts of electoral corruption or by establishing a precedent of corrupt and/or overwhelming victory. The informational mechanism is especially important in developing democracies, where the electoral playing field, while competitive, is often tilted in favor of powerful incumbents. I use a game-theoretic model to explore the conditions under which informational incentives give rise to electoral corruption as equilibrium behavior. I test observable implications of these ideas using a panel of 88 countries in the period 1975--2000 with an original measure of electoral corruption. I also use individual-level survey data to test the relationship between beliefs and turnout. I discuss my findings in light of recent elections in Venezuela, Mexico, and Ukraine.