Simeon Nichter

Corruption often persists not only because public officials take bribes, but also because many citizens are willing to pay them. Yet even in countries with endemic corruption, few people always pay bribes. Why do citizens bribe in some situations but not in others? Integrating insights from both principal-agent and collective action approaches to the study of corruption, we develop and empirically evaluate an analytical framework for understanding selective bribery . Our framework reveals how citizens’ motivations, costs, and risks influence their willingness to engage in corruption. A conjoint experiment conducted in Ukraine in 2020 predominantly corroborates our pre-registered predictions. By shedding light on conditions that dampen citizens’ readiness to pay bribes, our findings offer insights into the types of institutional reforms that may reduce corruption and ultimately help countries to escape self-reinforcing corruption cycles.

Recent studies of clientelism predominantly focus on how elites use rewards to influence vote choices and turnout. This article shifts attention toward citizens and their choices beyond the ballot box. Under what conditions does clientelism influence citizens’ decisions to express political preferences publicly? When voters can obtain post-election benefits by declaring support for victorious candidates, their choices to display political paraphernalia on their homes or bodies may reflect more than just political preferences. We argue that various factors—such as the size of rewards and punishments, the competitiveness of the election, and whether multiple candidates employ clientelism—affect citizens’ propensity to declare support in response to clientelist inducements. Building on insights from fieldwork, formal analyses reveal how and why such factors can distort patterns of political expression observed during electoral campaigns. We conduct an experiment in Brazil, which predominantly corroborates predictions about declared support and clientelism.

Prominent scholars in recent years have expressed alarm about political polarization, weakened civil liberties, and growing support for authoritarianism in the United States. But discussions of democratic backsliding pay short shrift to the value citizens place on one of the most fundamental democratic institutions: the act of voting. Drawing on nationally representative survey data, we show that despite traditional portrayals of the U.S. as the embodiment of a democratic “civic culture,” a substantial share of Americans express readiness to sell their votes for cash: 12% of respondents would do so for just $25, as would nearly 20% for $100. Citizens who place low importance on living in a democracy are significantly more willing to sell their votes. We argue that heightened attention to US voters’ attitudes toward clientelism would provide an additional barometer of democratic skepticism, help to integrate the study of American and comparative politics, and stimulate novel research agendas about the historic decline of vote buying in the United States.

Politicians often buy votes with impunity. Brazil outlawed vote buying for many years, but prosecutions were rare. However, popular pressure mounted against the practice in the late 1990s. Over one million Brazilians signed a petition against vote buying, leading to the country’s first law by popular initiative passed by the national legislature. The law not only surmounted key obstacles to the popular initiative process but also dramatically increased prosecutions for clientelism during elections. Campaign handouts became the top reason that politicians were ousted in Brazil, with over a thousand removals from office. This study examines the role of civil society and the judiciary in the enactment and implementation of this important legislation.

Background: Various studies suggest that corruption affects public health systems across the world. However, the extant literature lacks causal evidence about whether anti-corruption interventions can improve health outcomes. We examine the impact of randomized anti-corruption audits on early-life mortality in Brazil. Methods: The Brazilian government conducted audits in 1,949 randomly selected municipalities between 2003 and 2015. To identify the causal effect of anti-corruption audits on early-life mortality, we analyse data on health outcomes from individual-level vital statistics ( DATASUS ) collected by Brazil’s government before and after the random audits. Data on the audit intervention are from the Controladoria-Geral da Uniao , the government agency responsible for the anti-corruption audits. Outcomes are neonatal mortality, infant mortality, child mortality, preterm births, and prenatal visits. Analyses examine aggregate effects for each outcome, as well as effects by race, cause of death, and years since the intervention. Results: Anti-corruption audits significantly decreased early-life mortality in Brazil. Expressed in relative terms, audits reduced neonatal mortality by 6.7% (95% CI −8.3%, −5.0%), reduced infant mortality by 7.3% (−8.6%, −5.9%), and reduced child mortality by 7.3% (−8.5%, −6.0%). This reduction in early mortality was higher for nonwhite Brazilians, who face significant health disparities. Effects are greater when we look at deaths from preventable causes, and show temporal persistence with large effects even a decade after audits. In addition, analyses show that the intervention led to a 12.1% (−13.4%, −10.6%) reduction in women receiving no prenatal care, as well as a 7.4% (−9.4%, −5.5%) reduction in preterm births; these effects are likewise higher for nonwhites and are persistent over time. All effects are robust to various alternative specifications. Interpretation: Governments have the potential to improve health outcomes through anti-corruption interventions. Such interventions can reduce early-life mortality and mitigate health disparities. The impact of anti-corruption audits should be investigated in other countries, and further research should further explore the mechanisms by which combating corruption affects the health sector.

Traditional accounts of clientelism typically focused on patron–client relations with minimal scope for citizen autonomy. Despite the heightened agency of many contemporary citizens, most studies continue to depict clientelism as a phenomenon that is firmly under elite control. The prevailing tendency is to view clientelism as a top-down process in which machines target citizens with offers of material benefits. Without denying the importance of elites, we emphasize the role of citizen demands in clientelism. Citizens often approach machines of their own volition to ask for help and may vote for a competitor if requests are unfulfilled. In response to these citizens, machines often engage in what we call “request fulfilling.” Interviews with citizens and politicians, coupled with cross-national survey data from Africa and Latin America, suggest the importance of this phenomenon. In addition, Argentine survey data in studies by Stokes and Nichter are better explained by request fulfilling than alternative explanations.

Although many studies of clientelism focus exclusively on vote buying, political machines often employ diverse portfolios of strategies. We provide a theoretical framework and formal model to explain how and why machines mix four clientelist strategies during elections: vote buying, turnout buying, abstention buying, and double persuasion. Machines tailor their portfolios to the political preferences and voting costs of the electorate. They also adapt their mix to at least five contextual factors: compulsory voting, ballot secrecy, political salience, machine support, and political polarization. Our analysis yields numerous insights, such as why the introduction of compulsory voting may increase vote buying, and why enhanced ballot secrecy may increase turnout buying and abstention buying. Evidence from various countries is consistent with our predictions and suggests the need for empirical studies to pay closer attention to the ways in which machines combine clientelist strategies.