Community carrots and social sticks : why the poor vote in a dominant-party system
Name
1052612681-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
19.62 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
4d496707cbbfdfe53ecc28c4da896e21
Author(s)
Rosenzweig, Leah R
Advisor(s)
Lily L. Tsai.
Alternative Title
Why the poor vote in a dominant-party system
Date Issued
2018
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
In dominant-party states, why do individuals vote in elections with foregone conclusions when they are neither bought nor coerced? It is especially curious in these cases why the rural poor decide to cast their ballots. I posit that communities that collectively rely on the government for public services foster social norms of voting to influence turnout. Motivated by the perception that regimes reward high turnout areas with public goods, communities use esteem "carrots" and social "sticks" to overcome free-rider incentives and increase the likelihood of receiving services. The norm is strongest in less politically-competitive areas, precisely where the puzzle of participation is most obvious. At the individual level, those who rely on their local community for non-material goods, such as information and kinship, are more likely to comply with the norm in order to secure their access to these social benefits. Findings from a lab-in-the-field voting experiment in rural Tanzania indicate a strong influence of the social norm of voting. In the experiment, when turnout is public to their neighbors, respondents are 11 percentage points more likely to vote, compared to when they are in private. The theory, which applies broadly to many patronage-based regimes, explains how communities sustain social norms of voting even when elections lack legitimacy, elucidating the paradox of high turnout in dominant-party systems.
Description
Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Political Science, 2018.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 167-176).
Subjects
Political Science.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science
Terms of Use
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