Eat Widely, Vote Wisely? Lessons from a Campaign Against Vote Buying in Uganda

Christopher Blattman, Horacio Larreguy, Benjamin Marx, Otis R. Reid

NBER Working Paper No. 26293
Issued in September 2019
NBER Program(s):Development Economics Program, Political Economy Program

We estimate the effects of one of the largest anti-vote-buying campaigns ever studied — with half a million voters exposed across 1427 villages—in Uganda’s 2016 elections. Working with civil society organizations, we designed the study to estimate how voters and candidates responded to their campaign in treatment and spillover villages, and how impacts varied with campaign intensity. Despite its heavy footprint, the campaign did not reduce politician offers of gifts in exchange for votes. However, it had sizable effects on people’s votes. Votes swung from well-funded incumbents (who buy most votes) towards their poorly-financed challengers. We argue the swing arose from changes in village social norms plus the tactical response of candidates. While the campaign struggled to instill norms of refusing gifts, it leveled the electoral playing field by convincing some voters to abandon norms of reciprocity—thus accepting gifts from politicians but voting for their preferred candidate.

You may purchase this paper on-line in .pdf format from SSRN.com ($5) for electronic delivery.

Supplementary materials for this paper:

• randomized controlled trials registry entry

Acknowledgments and Disclosures

Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX

Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w26293