Can Clientelism Yield Accountability? Bloc Voting and Public Goods Provision in Senegal

Abstract

Clientelism, the exchange of particularistic rewards for voter support, is a dominant electoral strategy in many emerging democracies. While clientelism can mar the democratic process, it can also engender accountability if client voters discipline their patron politicians to provide goods they care about. This project assesses if and when clientelism yields accountability by studying village-level voting patterns in Senegal. The nature of clientelism as a contingent exchange requires that parties can monitor the behavior of their supporters. If polling stations are organized at the level of a politically relevant group or bloc, politicians can easily monitor and reward entire groups for high levels of electoral support. I exploit the fact that polling stations in most of rural Africa are located at the village-level, a well-organized social unit, to test whether voters can use the strategy of bloc voting at the village level to garner subsequent political benefits – a form of accountability. Using a panel of village-level data on public goods provision in Senegal from 2000 and 2009 as well as village-level electoral results from an intervening election, I examine whether villages voting at high rates for a winning politician receive higher levels of local public goods as a result.