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Vote-buying, anti-corruption campaigns, and identity in African elections

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DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2022.106064

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 World Development 160 (2022) 106064

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

World Development
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/worlddev

Vote-buying, anti-corruption campaigns, and identity in African

elections
Kristen Kao a,⇑, Ellen Lust b, Lise Rakner c
a
Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
b
Governance and Local Development Institute, Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
c
Department of Government, University of Bergen, Senior Research Fellow Chr. Michelsen Institute, Norway

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The literature on democracies in the developing world paints a picture of rampant vote buying. A growing
Accepted 1 August 2022 research field has shed light on how politicians decide whom to target, how individuals view vote buying,
and the consequences of such practices. Yet, most research compares support for candidates offering
handouts to those who do not. It fails to explore how offering handouts compares to other campaign
Keywords: strategies – promising future targeted goods or community goods, explicitly eschewing vote buying cam-
Vote-buying paign tactics, or garnering support based on ethnic or local social ties. In this study, we employ a conjoint
Elections
experiment fielded in Malawi (n = 1,166) to examine the relative power of vote buying versus other cam-
Clientelism
Identity politics
paign tactics. Our experimental results reveal that respondents view candidates who promise community
Localism service provision or criticize vote buying more positively than those who offer handouts. We also find
Africa that the magnitude of the effects for community service provision and anti-vote buying campaigns are
greater than that of platforms associated with coethnicity and local social ties. These findings are both
substantively and theoretically important. Policymakers and practitioners engaged in voter education
efforts may counter vote buying by informing candidates of the potential electoral benefits to champi-
oning anti-vote buying platforms and providing community services. Likewise, scholars can better under-
stand elections, representation and democracy by further exploring how different types of voters respond
to various campaign appeals in Africa.
Ó 2022 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

1. Introduction
Studies of elections in the Global South paint a picture in which
campaign handouts are both rampant and successful in winning
voters’ support. Vote buying and clientelism, or the exchange of
material goods or targeted services for votes,1 is thought to affect
voter turn-out (Vicente, 2014), the fairness of elections (Stokes,
2007; Bratton, 2008), and the legitimacy of election outcomes
(Kramon, 2018), and thus to undermine democracy (Gonzalez
et al., 2014; Stokes, 2005, 2007). Consequently, Western donor agen-
⇑ Corresponding author at: Department of Political Science, University of
Gothenburg, Box 711, SE 405 30, Gothenburg, Sweden.
E-mail addresses: kristen.kao@gu.se (K. Kao), ellen.lust@gu.se (E. Lust), lise.
rakner@uib.no (L. Rakner).
1
As Nichter (2008) notes, ‘‘vote buying” is used in varied ways in the literature. In
this study, we do not demonstrate the contingency of handouts for votes required for
clientelistic exchanges, but rather see the handouts we discuss to fit the form of ‘‘non-
binding vote buying’” discussed by other authors. Thus, following others (Kramon
2016, Diaz-Cayeros et al., 2009), we use the term ‘‘vote buying” to highlight how our
discussion lends insight into that scholarship.
cies and their partners on the ground have implemented voter edu-
cation campaigns to raise awareness of the negative consequences of
vote buying (EC-UNDP, 2018; ACE, n.d.). Moreover, some politicians
have sought to undermine the effectiveness of opponents’ vote buy-
ing strategies. For instance, in the 2011 Zambian election, the oppo-
sition Popular Front (PF) party used the campaign slogan ‘donchi
kubeba’ (Bemba for ‘don’t tell’), encouraging its supporters to accept
the gifts handed out by the then-incumbent Movement for Multi-
Party Democracy (MMD) without disclosing that they intended to
vote for the PF (Cheeseman & Lamer, 2015).2 Similarly, in 2014,
the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) campaigned on the basis of ending
handouts – perhaps spurred by the party’s own financial constraints
(Dulani & Dionne, 2014).
Empirical research on vote buying has added new insights into
when, how, and from whom candidates attempt to purchase votes
2
‘Don’t kubeba’ was used as a reaction to the ruling MMD’s clientelistic campaign
strategies. Clearly outmatched by financial and material resources at the ruling
MMD’s disposal, the PF used the don’t kubeba catchphrase to urge the electorate to
willingly receive any form of clientelist rewards from the MMD but vote for their
preferred candidate.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2022.106064
0305-750X/Ó 2022 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
K. Kao, E. Lust and L. Rakner
(Weitz-Shapiro, 2012; Stokes et al., 2013; Cox & McCubbins, 1986;
Grossman & Helpman, 1996; Corstange, 2018; Justesen & Manzetti,
2017). The picture of why voters accept hand-outs is also becoming
clearer (Gonzalez Ocantos et al., 2014; Erlich, 2020: Schaffer,
2007); however, there are only limited efforts aimed at under-
standing voter opposition to the practice (Weitz-Shapiro, 2012).
Scholars have examined the impact of anti-vote buying campaigns
led by civil society, but they have primarily considered the impact
on voter turnout and support for incumbent parties (Blattman
et al., 2019). To our knowledge, scholars have not examined how
politicians running on anti-vote buying appeals compare, in the
voter’s calculus, with other candidates and competing platforms
and strategies. Furthermore, particularly in Africa, scholars gener-
ally assume that campaigns are not issue-based (Wantchekon,
2003; Kramon, 2018), even though valence issues around anti-
corruption, democracy, and good governance feature in most Afri-
can election campaigns (Bleck & van de Walle, 2013, 2018). Impor-
tant questions therefore remain regarding how voters react to
politicians who explicitly campaign on anti-vote buying messages
or other appeals.
In this article, we employ a single profile, conjoint experiment
(Hainmueller et al., 2014) to address these questions. In the real
world, candidates present bundles of appeals – they declare that
they will combat corruption and deliver roads, provide access to
water, and fortify health clinics with staff and supplies; they claim
to represent key localities and interests; they emphasize their eth-
nic or social ties; and at times they pass out bags of sugar and rice.
These bundled campaign appeals impede our ability to compare
the impact of offering material benefits to that of anti-vote-
buying messages or other appeals. The conjoint experiment allows
us to isolate the relative importance of different appeals in deter-
mining voter choice, and to do so in the absence of direct ques-
tions, thereby reducing the social desirability bias associated
with vote buying. Focusing the respondent’s attention on a single
profile limits sensitivity bias that showing multiple candidates
(and their vote buying appeals) may trigger. Finally, the experi-
ment allows us to vary other important candidate characteristics
that might factor into how voters respond to clientelistic appeals,
including ethnicity and local social ties.
Our experimental results show that candidates who criticize
vote buying or promise community services are likely to do better
at the ballot box than those who offer targeted handouts. More-
over, we find that the magnitude of the effects for anti-vote buying
campaigns and community service provision are greater than those
associated with coethnicity and local social ties. Electing a candi-
date who spent his whole life in the village is significant, while
coethnicity with the candidate was not found to be statistically sig-
nificant in our study. These findings are both substantively and
theoretically important. Practitioners engaged in voter education
efforts can encourage candidates to gain support by running
against vote buying and for community services, and scholars
can benefit by turning attention to how voters evaluate various
campaign strategies.
The article proceeds as follows. It first examines the literature
on vote buying and clientelism in the Global South. We find that
scholars recognize but do not compare the range of campaign
strategies employed, and that they rarely examine whether candi-
dates who embrace messaging aimed at rooting-out vote buying
can succeed. Next, the article outlines Malawi’s political context,
focusing on how it affected design choices in the experiment. Then
we present the experiment and our findings. In particular, the anal-
yses show that voters support candidates who campaign on anti-
vote buying appeals and who promise community goods, and that
these appeals appear more important to voter choice than ethnic-
ity and social ties. Finally, the conclusion considers the implica-
tions of our findings for future electoral programming and
2
World Development 160 (2022) 106064
scholarship, emphasizing the need to explore the effects of anti-
vote buying campaigns at the candidate level on elections in the
Global South.
2. Mobilizing support: the roles of anti-vote-buying campaigns,
material handouts, and identity appeals
The literature on democracies in the developing world paints a
picture of rampant vote buying and ethnic voting (Bratton, 2008;
Conroy-Krutz, 2013; Nugent, 2007; Posner, 2005; Mares & Young,
2016). Voters are expected to prefer direct, tangible benefits in
elections over campaign promises of public goods or national pol-
icy (Keefer & Vlaicu, 2017; Khemani, 2015) and to distrust candi-
dates outside their own identity groups to deliver such goods
(Stokes, 2007; Kitschelt, 2000; Chandra 2007; Jensen & Justesen,
2014). Yet, recent studies draw such assumptions into question.
Studies find that political performance and issue-based campaigns
may be more important than identity (Gadjanova, 2017, Lindberg
& Morrison, 2008; Weghorst & Lindberg, 2013; Bleck & van de
Walle, 2011; Carlson, 2015) and that at least some voters eschew
vote buying (Weitz-Shapiro, 2012). Such findings suggest that
politicians may gain support through offering anti-vote buying
appeals or community services.
Given the considerable time, money, and effort that develop-
ment practitioners invest into combatting vote buying, another
strand of literature evaluates the impact of pro-democracy pro-
gramming on voters’ activities. Some of this research finds that
anti-vote buying appeals reduce voter turnout (Vicente, 2014)
and decrease vote shares for incumbent candidates (Blattman
et al., 2019; Vicente, 2014). For instance, employing a field exper-
iment in the Philippines, Hicken et al. (2018) find that information
appeals in which voters promise not to take money from candi-
dates can reduce vote-selling, while the promise to take vote buy-
ing payments but vote according to one’s preferences can have a
smaller effect, and even possibly increase vote-selling. There is also
evidence that such programs lower support for parties believed to
engage in vote buying (Hicken et al., 2018; Schechter & Vasudevan,
2021; Vasudevan, 2019; Vicente, 2014). More generally,
Murugesan’s (2020) review of experimental studies on vote buying
and clientelism posits that the impact of anti-vote buying cam-
paigns may depend on the framing and approaches that they
utilize.
There is also evidence that non-government-driven, anti-vote
buying campaigns influence voters’ perceptions. Erlich (2020) finds
that providing Kenyan voters with information about the detri-
mental effect of vote selling (public service predation) or telling
them that their community members will look down on them if
they engage in the practice (social sanctioning) may shape vote-
selling attitudes in emerging democracies. Similarly, Hicken
et al.’s (2018) field experiment found that the voter education pro-
ject in the Philippines diminished the reported perception that
votes were cast according to money received. These studies are
important, but they do not explore how individuals respond to
politicians that incorporate such appeals into their campaigns,
nor, for that matter, how candidates’ other characteristics influ-
ence voter responses to anti-vote buying efforts.
Moreover, voters react to politicians on the basis of their ethnic
identity or local social ties. Coethnicity and other shared identities
appear to help solve commitment problems associated with vote
buying during elections. Coethnicity may shape the moral obliga-
tion between patrons and clients (Ekeh, 1975), be linked to favor-
itism in service provision (Posner, 2005; Carlson, 2015; Kramon,
2016; Lust-Okar, 2006; Kao, Forthcoming), and weaken obstacles
to collective action (Habyarimana et al., 2009). Kasara (2007) pro-
vides evidence that coethnics may not benefit as uniformly as
K. Kao, E. Lust and L. Rakner
expected; she finds that executives tax coethnic farmers at higher
rates than non-coethnics. Nevertheless, there is reason to believe
coethnicity both mobilizes support and shapes how voters’ per-
ceive candidates’ appeals. According to Posner (2007), ‘‘voters seek
access to state resources by allocating their electoral support to
members of their own ethnic groups, who they assume will be
more likely than non-coethnics to redistribute those resources to
them.” Or, as Chandra put it, ‘‘the only credible promises are those
made by coethnics” (Chandra, 2007, p.62). It is perhaps then not
surprising that Kramon (2018) found that targeted handouts of
money during campaign rallies increased support for a coethnic
candidate in comparison to non-coethnics.3
Local social ties may have a similar impact. Politicians, like
sports teams, often expect and receive hometown support.
Research on elections has uncovered a local electoral advantage
in Canada (Blais et al., 2003), Finland (Raunio, 2005), Ireland
(Marsh, 2007), Italy (Katz & Bardi, 1980), Japan (Horiuchi et al.,
2017), and the UK (Evans et al., 2017). A similar advantage appears
in the Global South. Candidates generally receive disproportionate
vote shares in their home village (Blaydes, 2010), and would-be
candidates often anticipate that their home village will turn out
to support them even if they have lived away for many years.
Hodler and Raschky (2014) find that voters benefit when co-
locals win. Analyzing night-light data from 126 countries over
17 years, they provide evidence that leaders’ home regions benefit
disproportionately, and particularly in weakly institutionalized
countries with poorly educated populations, as found in Malawi.
This may be the result of a higher capacity for monitoring and
sanctioning unresponsive officials, or reflect that voters hold other
voters accountable, punishing them if they do not support their
own. In either case, it is not surprising that candidates often have
a hometown advantage, or that politicians often employ vote bro-
kers with strong ties in the community (Auyero, 2000; Stokes,
2005; Szwarcberg, 2012).
In short, the literature suggests that campaign appeals and can-
didates’ identities impact the likelihood that voters express sup-
port for candidates. However, it lends few insights into how
voters compare various appeals, the extent to which candidates
can gain from taking anti-vote buying positions, and how identity
may interact with appeals to impact voter support. We explore if
voters’ support for a given candidate depends on his or her cam-
paigning on selective handouts, community services, or anti-vote
buying platforms. We also anticipate that voters are more likely
to support candidates who share their ethnicity or with whom they
have strong local ties.
3. The Malawian political context
Malawi provides a meaningful context in which to explore how
politicians’ campaign appeals and identities influence voter sup-
port. The country has a democratic system of government with
high political engagement4 and frequent power alternation, but
one in which vote buying is widespread, and ethnic identities and
local ties are salient. Malawi’s electoral context, much like other Afri-
can settings, allows us to run a credible survey experiment which
pits vote buying against other campaign appeals and considers the
ways in which ethnicity and local ties influence reported political
support.
Malawi’s democratic system offers electoral choices. Citizens are
free to cast their vote, and elections are competitive. Despite set-
3
Of course, there are other reasons to vote for coethnics as well. Individuals may
feel that they have shared interests with coethnics, or that their status is reflected in
the status of their ethnic group (Chandra, 2007).
4
Since 2014, turnout in Malawi for presidential and parliamentary elections has
been between 63 and 74% (IFES, n.d.).
3
World Development 160 (2022) 106064
backs and flaws, Malawi has maintained a durable democratic sys-
tem since the return to multiparty rule after 1993; three peaceful
transfers of power after incumbent losses and continued judicial
independence indicate resilient democratic norms. Malawian elec-
tions are also highly competitive (Dionne & Dulani, 2013; Patel &
Wahman, 2015; Johnson, 2020).
Parliamentarians focus primarily on providing constituent benefits
over programmatic policymaking. Legislative capacities are limited,
and parliamentary oversight of the executive is weak (Patel &
Tostensen, 2007; Dionne & Dulani, 2013). The parliament does
not control its own budget, determine its calendar, or dictate the
duration of its sessions. At the same time, parliamentarians enjoy
significant financing power, owing to legislation in 2006 which
gave MPs access to Constituency Development Funds. These dis-
cretionary funds totaled about 18 million Malawi MWK (approxi-
mately 32,000 USD) per constituency in 2015/16 (Chiweza, 2016,
p.107), in a country where the per-capita GDP was about 349
USD (World Bank, 2021). Parliamentarians show a preference for
disbursing pork-barrel funding to their own districts or offering
particularistic benefits to individual constituents over determining
broader-based legislation (Rakner & Svåsand, 2013; Ejdemyr, et al.,
2018).
The electoral system reinforces this tendency. Malawi employs
a single-member district electoral system which promotes the per-
sonal vote, in which voters cast ballots based on the personal rep-
utation and responsiveness of individual candidates (Carey &
Shugart, 1995). Independents are prevalent, and thus, political par-
ties are important but not the sole vehicles of campaigns. Finally,
Malawi’s political landscape is fragmented. In the 2014 parliamen-
tary elections, there was a relatively high number of candidates per
seat (approximately 1 per 4000 registered voters) and high vari-
ance in votes that candidates won (from 34 to over 24,000 bal-
lots).5 This suggests there are low barriers to entry in politics,
meaning that voters can conceive of an individual from their village
running in the elections.
Candidates can employ handouts, credibly promise community ser-
vices, and campaign against corruption to gain support. Money plays
an important role in Malawian politics, both during and after elec-
tions. Until 2018, Malawi did not have legislation regulating cam-
paign finance, and to our knowledge there were no voter education
programs prior to the 2014 tripartite elections that explicitly
addressed vote buying.6 Moreover, the practice of vote buying
(the distribution of private benefits in exchange for electoral sup-
port) is common (Birch, 2011; Ballington & Kahane, 2014; Mpesi &
Muriaas, 2012; Hamer & Seekings, 2017).7 Reports on the 2014 elec-
tion campaign, the most recent elections prior to our study, found all
main parties provided material hand-outs (e.g., t-shirts, caps, food-
stuffs, or money) to attend events (Patel & Wahman, 2015). Eighteen
focus groups conducted with 147 Malawians found that candidates
offered them gifts such as salt, money, sugar, and clothes as part
of their campaigns, thus informing the items we used as selective
incentives in the experiment. (See Online Appendix C for more infor-
mation on these focus groups.) One focus group participant from a
5
Authors’ calculations from data available in Malawi Electoral Commission (2018).
6
International donors withheld USD 150 million in November 2013 when the
Cashgate corruption scandal unfolded, leaving organizations which normally imple-
ment voter education without the financial means to carry out such programs
(Mbowela and Mwalubunju, 2015: 127).
7
According to the Malawi Electoral Support Network (MESN) Observer report of
the 2014 elections: ‘‘In the campaign rallies before the 2014 elections it was observed
that most of the main parties provided audiences with material hand-outs such as
campaign t-shirts, caps and sometimes financial incentives to attend the events. The
People’s Party visibly had more resources than other parties, as they gave hand-outs
such as bags of maize, motorbikes and bicycles, blankets and shoes in many districts”
(quoted in Patel, 2015, p. 111). The EU electoral observation team made similar
observations (EU EOM, 2014: 20).
K. Kao, E. Lust and L. Rakner
village in the Dedza district explained, ‘‘During campaign periods it
is our time to eat from politicians.” (Nyengo yakampeni nmdi nthawi
yoti nafenso tiwadyere.) Another said, ‘‘When they bring the things,
we receive and eat.” (Munthu uja akabwera nazo timangolandira
nkudya.)8 In response to a direct question in our survey, 66% of
Malawians in our sample confirm that candidates pass out goods
and promise targeted services during elections.
Candidates can also win support by offering community ser-
vices. We find evidence in the survey for the salience of community
goods in citizens’ ideals of governance; where we ask respondents
directly which of the following activities they would like current
MPs to prioritize – a) soliciting funds to finance projects in their
constituency (for example, funds for hospitals or schools), b) pass-
ing national laws, or c) providing individual services to citizens of
your constituency (helping them to obtain licenses, find jobs, edu-
cate children, etc.) – the majority (59% of the respondents) prefer
that MPs focus on financing community projects. This is compared
to 27% of the sample who prefer MPs to provide individual services
and only 9% who want them to spend their time passing national
laws.9 Consequently, candidates can garner support by promising
community goods, which they can fund, at least in part, through
Constituency Development Funds. These funds allow candidates to
credibly campaign to improve health clinics, schools, and other local
services.
Finally, candidates may attempt to gain support by campaign-
ing against vote buying, whether immediate or future handouts.
Currently, civil society organizations and international donors
appear to implement most anti-vote buying campaigns as part of
the voter education programs.10 Yet, as described in the introduc-
tion, Malawian candidates have also employed anti-vote buying
messaging in attempts to win support. Such messages appear to be
less prevalent than vote buying or promises of community services,
but they still exist.
Thus, Malawi allows us to focus our study on comparing
appeals regarding vote buying with promises of immediate selec-
tive incentives (e.g., cash, sugar), future selective incentives (e.g.,
fertilizer subsidies, assistance with services), and community
goods (e.g., schools, clinics). Such appeals reflect the reality of
Malawi’s political system and voters’ expectations.
Ethnicity is salient. Malawi is home to eleven major ethnic
groups, which are viewed as the basis of political support. Despite
party fractionalization (Rakner et al., 2007), Malawian voters have
tended to remain loyal to parties associated with their ethno-
regional affiliations (Posner, 2004; Ferree & Horowitz, 2010). Suc-
cessive election cycles demonstrate an ethno-regional voting pat-
tern in Malawian elections (Dionne & Horowitz, 2011). Moreover,
in the survey we find that 74% of Malawians reported that they feel
it is important or very important to elect someone from their eth-
nic group. About 76% of Malawians in our sample feel very or
somewhat obligated to help out coethnics, compared to just 54%
who feel obligated to help others with whom they have no connec-
tions. Additionally, 90% of Malawians think it is very important to
uphold the reputation of their ethnic group,11 and 56% agree or
agree strongly that MPs respond more quickly to their coethnics
compared to others; just 41% believe that MPs respond more quickly
to those who voted for them.
8
Focus group discussions, Gunzuzi village, Malawi, September 12, 2017.
9 12
These figures come from a randomly selected sub-sample of 1,463 respondents
within the larger survey. They include 2% of respondents who wanted something else
and 2% who said they did not know.
10
Malawi is heavily aid dependent with foreign aid contributing close to 40% of the
government budget from 1994 until today (Chasukwa and Banik, 2019: 107). Due to
its aid-dependency, major aid trends have had a strong impact on domestic policy and
programs in Malawi (Page, 2019).
11
The respondent’s ethnic group in this question was input from an earlier question
in the survey.
4
World Development 160 (2022) 106064
Voters value candidates with local ties. Finally, local ties are impor-
tant in Malawi. Our survey finds that 69% of Malawians feel some-
what or very obligated to help co-locals.12 Regarding elections, 59%
agree or agree strongly that MPs respond more quickly to their vil-
lage members, and 79% of Malawians reported that they feel it is
important or very important to elect someone from their village. It
is not unrealistic for citizens to consider candidates running from
their village or a village nearby. As noted previously, there are a rel-
atively high number of candidates per population, with a large num-
ber of parties and candidates often running as independents; as a
result, voters often encounter candidates who hail from their village
or ward.
4. Experimental design
We employ a rating-based, single vignette experimental design
in which the respondent rates their likelihood of voting for a single
candidate on a four-point scale.13 We have good reasons for selecting
this design. First, we were concerned that seeing differing vote buying
offers might invite social desirability bias in our responses as people
are unlikely to admit they prefer material handouts at election time.
A single profile reduces this concern by better hiding this treatment
among the other profile attributes. One might be concerned that we
sacrificed external validity with our choice of this design. Yet, recent
work on elections in Africa shows that voters are rarely faced with a
two-candidate run-off within their districts; Duvergerian logic often
does not hold in low-information contexts where ethnic identities
play an outsized role in party affiliation (Moser & Scheiner, 2012;
Ferree et al., 2019; Kao, Forthcoming). Moreover, studies employing
both a forced-choice model and a single-profile rating to test for
robustness of results have found few differences in outcomes between
the two designs (e.g., Hainmueller & Hopkins, 2015). Finally, a rating of
likelihood allows the respondent to add nuance to their response,
compared to a blunt ‘‘yes” or ‘‘no” outcome.
The experiment was embedded within a national face-to-face
survey of 8,100 Malawians carried out using tablet computers in
March of 2016; the experiment was seen by a random subsample
of 1,166 of the survey respondents. The survey was conducted in
269 villages, with probability proportional to size (PPS) sampling
designed to be representative at the local and national levels.
(More details on the survey are provided in Online Appendix C.)
Our experimental setup involves randomly altering candidate
characteristics. To ensure that the profiles were realistic, we devel-
oped the experimental arms based on a review of the literature,
reports on African elections, our fieldwork in Malawi in 2016,
and close consultation with our local partners. We use a fully-
randomized conjoint analysis to non-parametrically identify the
average marginal component effect (AMCE) of each of the attribute
levels on the probability of choosing a profile (Hainmueller et al.,
2014). We also designed the experiment such that our attributes
would be independent of one another and cover a wide range of
realistic possibilities, in accordance with the methodological liter-
ature on conjoint analysis (Green & Srinivasan, 1978).
The independently randomized assignment of profile character-
istics in conjoint analysis allows us to test the effects of numerous
candidate characteristics at once, while maintaining a low number
of respondents.14 Candidate characteristics varied in a number of
Specifically, 37% are very obligated, 32% somewhat obligated, and 30% not
obligated to help a co-local, while 45% are very obligated, 31% somewhat obligated,
and 23% not obligated to help a coethnic.
13
See Hainmueller et al. (2014) for further explanation of this method.
14
Conjoint analysis still requires large sample variants on all characteristics, a
requirement that our design is admittedly thin on (see Appendix Table A3 displaying
the distribution of appeals). For this reason, we are not strongly confident in our
power to detect differences for heterogeneous effects. We limit these sorts of analyses
below.
K. Kao, E. Lust and L. Rakner World Development 160 (2022) 106064

ways including campaign offers of immediate targeted goods, future Table 1

targeted goods, future public goods, or criticisms of candidates who Randomized Features of Hypothetical Parliamentary Candidates.

engage in these practices; strong (weak) local ties to the community; Characteristic Choices
and (non–)coethnicity with the respondent (see Table 1). The exact Platform  Pro-Immediate Goods – bags of sugar,
wording of these candidate features is provided in Table 1. salt, and K500 bills.
The experiment led respondents through a series of steps. The  Pro-Future Goods – promise of fertilizer
experiment began with an introductory prompt. This read: ‘‘I am subsidies/financial aid for funerals, and
help with personal problems
about to read you the descriptions of a candidate for parliament.  Pro-Community Goods – promise of more
Then I will ask you how likely you would be to vote for this parlia- schools, improved healthcare, digging of
mentary candidate.” Examples of full experimental prompts are boreholes
presented in Table 2, where items in parentheses are randomized  Anti-Immediate Goods: Criticism of can-
didates who offer immediate targeted
components. (Note, this table represents only some examples as
goods
the experiment yields 24 different profiles.) The interviewer read  Anti-Future Goods: Criticism of candi-
the description and then asked the respondent: ‘‘How likely is it dates who offer future targeted goods
that you would vote for this parliamentary candidate: very likely,  Anti-Community Goods: Criticism of can-
somewhat likely, not likely, not at all likely. Or would you like didates who offer future club goods
Ethnicity  Coethnic
me to read the description of the candidate again?” When the
 Non-coethnic
respondent indicated that he or she was ready to answer, the inter- Strong/weak local ties to  Born in (the village/ward) and has lived in
viewer recorded the answer. the community to the area for a long time
Immediate and Future Incentives, Community-Oriented Goods, and village  Has recently moved to back to (the vil-
lage/ward) after many successful years
anti-Vote-Buying Messaging. We test the effect of different candi-
living abroad
date platforms on respondents’ expressed likelihood to vote for
the candidate. We test two types of vote buying appeals often wit-
nessed at public rallies: 1) the immediate distribution of kilo bags
and has lived in the area for a long time versus a candidate who
of sugar, half-kilo bags of salt, and K500 bills to citizens in
was originally from the village but has only recently moved back
exchange for votes; and 2) the promise of future goods, including
after many successful years living abroad. In asking this question,
fertilizer subsidies, financial aid for funerals, and help with other
we brought in the name of the village or neighborhood from an
personal problems once elected in exchange for their votes.15 A
earlier survey item.
platform of community-oriented goods provision promises con-
It is important to note that this treatment focuses on local social
stituents the passing of legislation to improve healthcare, building
ties. In both cases, the candidates hail from the village and are cur-
more schools, and digging more boreholes once elected in exchange
rently living there. That is, both candidates are local in terms of
for their votes. The anti-vote buying appeals criticize each of these
place. Where they differ, and what we test, is the extent to which
platforms.16 We kept negative campaigns of all three offers in order
they have developed strong local ties. The candidate who grew up
to maintain balance and to test a fully factorialized model.
and remained in the village signals more dense and stronger com-
Coethnicity. In order to examine whether coethnicity drives
munity ties than the one who has recently moved back into the vil-
voter preferences, we include the candidate’s ethnic background
lage. Conversely, there is some evidence that those who have left
in the description. For coethnics, this background is brought in
the village may be associated with greater wealth, as many Malaw-
from an earlier question to the respondent about his or her ethnic-
ians who leave the country to work in South Africa or elsewhere
ity. We were able to include the nine largest ethnic groups, which
return wealthier. We inevitably have varied both the candidate’s
together make up 97% of the population of Malawi, in the random-
years in residence in the village and wealth at the same time, but
ization.17 If the respondent is a member of one the nine largest
if anything, this should bias respondents toward voting for the can-
Malawian ethnic groups -- by which we mean the respondent asso-
didate who is more capable of offering them goods; that is, they
ciated him or herself with either the Lomwe, the Yao, the Ngoni, the
should be biased toward the candidate who lived successfully
Tumbuka, the Mang’anja, the Sena, the Tonga, the Nkonde, or the
abroad. Thus, this item provides a ‘hard’ test of the importance of
Chewa -- then he or she had a 50% chance of seeing a coethnic. Any-
local ties. Nearly 48% of the sample saw a candidate who was born
one who is not a member of one of these nine largest ethnic groups
in their village versus one who recently returned to the village.
was equally likely to see each of the possible ethnicity conditions, all
of which were non-coethnics. About 47% of the respondents received
a coethnic candidate with the respondent’s ethnicity piped into the
5. Results
description of the candidate.
Local Ties. As described above, an understudied feature of candi-
We employ the four-point Likert scale to rate responses to can-
dates that may be important in determining voter behavior is
didates. The respondents displayed strong convictions in the
whether the candidate shares strong local ties to the same commu-
experiment. More than 75% of the sample chose one of the extreme
nity as the respondent. To test if local ties play an important role in
categories of either not at all likely or very likely to vote for the
determining vote choice in Malawian parliamentary elections, we
presented candidate.18 For ease of interpretation, we rescaled this
offered respondents the choice of a candidate who is a local resi-
four-point outcome (from not at all likely to very likely) to range
dent who was born in the respondent’s village or neighborhood
between 0 and 1.19
We follow Hainmueller et al. (2014) who show that Ordinary
15
The items and platforms chosen were informed by pre-survey focus group Least Squares (OLS) regression analysis is a consistent estimator
discussions (see Online Appendix C), and are also found in reports of the 2014 of the Average Marginal Component Effect (AMCE) of different can-
elections (see Malawi Electoral Support Network, 2014. See also Patel (2015).
16
The platforms of public goods provisions are informed by focus group respon-
dents and qualitative interviews with Malawian MPs who in conversations explained
what voters expected of their MP in terms of community development (see Rakner
18
and Svåsand, 2013). The full distribution of results across appeals is available in Online Appendix A.
17 19
See Berge et al. (2014, Table 1) for a complete listing of the ethnic groups and See the Online Appendix for the original scale and to verify that results are robust
their percentages of the population. to the use of this scale as well as alternative ordinal analyses.

5
K. Kao, E. Lust and L. Rakner
Table 2
Examples of Full Experimental Prompts.
Example Candidate 1: A man (of respondent’s ethnicity) who (was born in this village and has lived in the area for a long time) is running as a candidate for the
parliamentary elections. At public rallies, he (hands out kilo bags of sugar, half-kilo bags of salt, and K500 bills to citizens) in exchange for votes).
Example Candidate 2: A man (of a non-coethnic ethnicity) who (has recently moved to back to after many successful years living abroad) is running as a candidate for
the parliamentary elections. At public rallies, he (criticizes candidates who offer citizens fertilizer subsidies, financial aid for funerals, and help with other personal
problems once elected) in exchange for their votes.
Example Candidate 3: A man (of a non-coethnic ethnicity) who (was born in and who has lived in the area for a long time) is running as a candidate for the
parliamentary elections. At public rallies, he (emphasizes to citizens that he will pass legislation to improve schools, improve healthcare, and dig more boreholes
once elected) in exchange for their votes.
didate attributes on the probability of a respondent voting for the
candidate.20 One level of each attribute is omitted to serve as the ref-
erence category. Fig. 1 presents the impact of campaign appeals,
strong local ties and coethnicity.21
6. Findings
Promising Community Goods and anti-Vote-Buying Campaigns
Outperform Immediate Vote-Buying Offers. Voters in our sample pre-
ferred candidates who campaigned on promises of community
goods (statistically significantly at p < 0.000) more than those
who offered immediate targeted handouts (i.e., cash, bags of sugar
and salt). The outcome is rescaled to range between 0 and 1 for
ease of interpretation. Respondents were more likely to prefer pro-
mises of community goods by 0.28 points compared to the baseline
of immediate targeted goods. Promises of future goods increase the
likelihood of voting for a candidate by 0.18 points (p < 0.01). Yet,
importantly, our findings show that candidates can also garner
support by criticizing those who engage in direct vote buying; neg-
ative campaigning against politicians handing out immediate
goods is a strategy that increases likelihood of supporting a candi-
date by 0.11 points (p < 0.05). There is also a marginally significant
effect of negative campaigning surrounding future targeted goods
provision by 0.10 points (p < 0.10) (see Fig. 1 and Online Appendix
Table A1).
Strong Local Ties Gain Support, Coethnicity Does Not. Our sample
demonstrates a statistically significant effect of strong local ties on
voters’ likelihood of supporting a candidate, in contrast to a non-
significant effect for coethnicity. Voters prefer long-time local can-
didates over those who have returned to the village after many
successful years abroad. Compared to the baseline of a candidate
who was born in this village (with village name input from an ear-
lier question), we find that voters are about 0.07 points (p < 0.01)
more likely to prefer candidates who are long-time locals. We do
not find a significant effect of coethnicity on voter preferences
among our sample of Malawians. (For the full results, see
Table A1 in the Appendix.).
Exploring Effects of Appeals by Coethnicity and Wealth. There are
two large literatures on voting in Africa which suggest that appeals
may matter differentially for (non)coethnics and for the (wealthy)
poor. As noted above, in part because individuals are perceived to
value the success of their own group over others, coethnicity gen-
erates expectations of favoritism (Posner, 2005; Ferree, 2006;
Carlson, 2015; Kramon, 2016). Studying vote buying in Kenya,
Kramon (2016) substantiates earlier findings in other contexts
(e.g., Stokes, 2005) and a broad theoretical literature underscoring
that vote buying is more popular among the poor compared to
wealthier classes (e.g. Kitschelt, 2000; Scott, 1969). In this section
we explore these two hypotheses, examining whether coethnics
20
We found no substantive differences in the estimated marginal effects analysis
from an ordinal logit model.
21
We do not run an analysis of the Complier Average Causal Effect (CACE) because
we assume that we have all compliers or never compliers in this survey experiment.
6
World Development 160 (2022) 106064
have an advantage specifically when promising goods and if the
poor will prefer handouts more than the wealthy.
To understand if the appeals employed in the experiment have
differential causal effects depending on whether or not the candi-
date is a coethnic, we run interactions between our experimental
arms to generate average component interaction effects (ACIEs).
Coethnic candidates offering community goods are the most popu-
lar appeal of all possible combinations. This is the only conditional
effect that is significant (p < 0.05).22 The estimated marginal effects
of a coethnic on the likelihood of voting for the candidate is 12 per-
centage points (pp) compared to a non-coethnic offering community
goods. (See Online Appendix Table B9 for full results of interactions
between experimental arms.) Our study provides evidence that
coethnics have an advantage over non-coethnics when it comes to
promises of community goods, confirming previous literature with
these expectations (e.g., Carlson, 2015).
To test for possible heterogeneous effects by wealth, we interact
our experimental appeals arm with a measure of respondent
wealth. In the survey, we ask respondents for a measure of their
household’s ability to pay bills and save money.23 We do not find
any significant differences between the effects of our candidate
appeals conditional upon wealth groups.24
7. Discussion and alternative explanations
Our most significant finding is that anti-vote buying campaigns
are viable platforms for politicians to garner electoral support com-
pared to candidates who offer handouts.25 This stands in direct con-
trast to beliefs expressed in interviews with some candidates during
our preliminary fieldwork, who argued that voters will not take
them seriously if they campaign empty-handed. This may lead to
questions about why voters view strategies as they do and why
vote-buying persists, as well as concerns that alternative explana-
tions may drive the results.
One may wonder why voters in our sample distinguish so
strongly between immediate targeted handouts and other types
of campaigning strategies. We cannot provide a definitive answer
22
Lack of significance should not be interpreted to mean that other interactions lack
meaningful effects; our inability to detect other significant effects could be the result
of lack of power due to a small sample size. (See Appendix Table A3 displaying the
distribution of appeals). For this reason, we are not strongly confident in our power to
detect differences for ACIEs and heterogeneous effects. As a result, we limit these
analyses in this paper.
23
For question wording and distributions of this variable, see Table B2 in the
Appendix.
24
In earlier analyses of this experiment, we found that when we subsample our
results by wealth indicators, the poor rejected handouts to a significant degree and
the wealthy did not. Interacting the experimental arm with the respondent wealth
category, which provides better estimates of the effects taking into account the
differential sample sizes, we find that differences between wealth respondent wealth
categories are not statistically significant.
25
Campaigning against immediate targeted handouts is our third most popular
appeal according to an estimated marginal means analysis. Voters preferred
candidates who offer community goods significantly more than this appeal, and
they preferred offers of future targeted goods more on average though not to a level
where we can detect statistical significance at traditional levels.
K. Kao, E. Lust and L. Rakner
Fig. 1. Effects of Candidate Appeals. Note: Point estimates (circles) from OLS of candidate appeals regressed on likelihood of vote with 95% confidence intervals (horizontal
lines). Immediate goods (bags of money, sugar, and salt), recent returnee, and non-coethnic are the baseline comparison categories at 0 (vertical dashed line). Results are
clustered by Traditional Authority administrative district.
here, but we can infer a deeper understanding of voter attitudes
towards vote buying by drawing upon twelve focus group discus-
sions which included Malawian women, men, and youth. These
focus group discussions were conducted shortly after the imple-
mentation of our survey, with a total of 99 participants.26 (See
Online Appendix C for more information.)
Both male and female members of focus groups expressed the
opinion that candidates who try to sway them by offers of money
or goods are not honest politicians and therefore do not deserve
one’s vote.27 Youth in Dedza claimed that giving out money or items
to voters is a sign of dishonesty. Some qualified their negative atti-
tudes towards material campaign offers, suggesting that at least
these strategies help community members during campaign cycles.
That said, according to them, material handouts are not a sign that
the candidate will actually deliver after elections. Voters were will-
ing to accept offers of cash, sugar and other handouts at election
time, but they questioned the candidates’ motives, seeing them as
more interested in winning elections than in the community’s
welfare.
Moreover, few focus group discussants report feeling obligated
to vote for a candidate who gave them money or gifts, despite their
willingness to accept handouts from politicians during the cam-
paign period. It is not unusual for voters to accept handouts from
multiple candidates, even though they can vote for only one. Our
survey results reflect these findings: 88% of respondents report
that accepting money, food, or gifts from a candidate does not obli-
gate one to vote for the candidate; likewise, 87% of our sample do
not feel obligated to vote for a candidate who promises future tar-
geted services and benefits.
26
The discussions centered around the following main themes: 1) Local/National
Elections, 2) vote buying, 3) Local Origin vs Local Residence vs Ethnicity, 4)
Ethnicization (Importance of Ethnic Group, Obligation to help: Ethnicity vs Religion,
Importance of working with co ethnics, 5) diverse people working together, Roles in
Ensuring quality education and health services), 6) Mixed Ethnicity. A total of 12 FGD
sessions - three in each of the four sample sites - were held. The highest participation
rate was ten respondents, while the minimum group had seven. Overall, a total of 34
men, 33 women, and 32 youth in the FGDs.
27
Focus group, Malivenji village, Mzuzu, September 11, 2017; focus group, Kabinda,
Dedza, Malawi, September 12, 2017.
7
World Development 160 (2022) 106064
Our results also bring into question how one can reconcile
widespread vote buying with its apparent ineffectiveness. Why
do candidates still engage in vote buying if it is disliked by voters?
It may be that the belief that campaign handouts are critical is so
prevalent that, even if incorrect, it is candidates who are well-
resourced and can give campaign handouts that run. It may also
be that the distribution of goods and services is effective if it is part
of long-term clientelistic relationships, or coupled with more
acceptable, community-based goods. In such cases, promises of
community welfare may diminish some of the negative associa-
tions with immediate handouts, allowing voters to benefit from
handouts while justifying their vote choice on the basis of con-
comitant appeals to community welfare. Finally, candidates may
employ vote buying because it is a successful strategy when it is
part of a communal activity, mediated by locally known brokers
who deliver votes based on their personal networks. We cannot
rule out this explanation, but it nonetheless suggests that vote
buying does not work in the way that many theorists believe it
does.
Some may also be concerned that social desirability bias drives
our results. Are Malawians reluctant to report support for candi-
dates who offer targeted goods because this is seen as socially
undesirable? The research design alleviates this problem to some
extent, as conjoint experiments avoid direct questions regarding
one’s willingness to vote for a candidate offering targeted goods
(Horiuchi et al., 2018), and thus diminish the problems of social
desirability bias. Moreover, we do not use the phrase ‘vote buying’
in the experiment; rather, we describe various appeals and actions
commonly witnessed in Malawi’s political campaigns. By showing
respondents a set of candidate characteristics rather than asking
them to directly evaluate each characteristic separately, the exper-
imental design mitigates issues of sensitivity bias (Hainmueller &
Hopkins, 2015).
Alternatively, readers may be worried that Malawian voters
‘‘impute” offers of vote buying, even to those offering other
appeals. This is based on the assumption that vote buying is a min-
imum offer, and thus candidates who make other appeals would be
seen as offering handouts as well. We have little reason to believe
this is the case. Vote buying definitely exists in Malawian elections,
K. Kao, E. Lust and L. Rakner
as noted above, but it is not ubiquitous. There are candidates who
abstain from offering handouts of cash and food. Only 24% of the
survey sample reported that they had personally received gifts,
food, or money from a candidate; similarly, the Varieties of Democ-
racy data suggests that vote buying in the 2014 elections was
somewhat low with experts placing it at 0.98 on a scale ranging
from 0 to 4 (Coppedge et al., 2021). We are unable to address this
concern fully but based on our survey results and focus groups it
does not appear that all candidates offer targeted handouts. More-
over, it is worth reiterating that our findings suggest not only that
offers of immediate targeted handouts are less effective in garner-
ing support than other appeals, but also that negative campaigning
against such vote buying is significantly more appealing than offer-
ing immediate targeted goods.
Another concern regards the relationship between local ties and
coethnicity. Many may anticipate that villages are homogeneous;
thus a preference for a long-time local resident is the same as a
preference for coethnics. First, it is important to recall that both
the long-time and returning local residents are from the village,
and thus where villages are homogeneous, would be expected to
hail from the same ethnic group. What varies is the extent of their
social ties with the community. Moreover, our survey data demon-
strates that villages in Malawi are empirically less homogeneous
than one may expect as ethnolinguistic fractionalization calculated
at the village-level remains high. (See Table B6 in the Online
Appendix.)
Finally, one may be concerned that we gauge expressed willing-
ness to support a candidate, rather than actual voting at the ballot
box. We accept this concern but note that there is evidence from
other contexts that survey experiments may indeed mirror real
world behavior. Hainmueller et al. (2015), for instance, find a high
correspondence between acceptance of migrants in Switzerland on
a conjoint survey and real-world acceptance rates. Similarly, sur-
vey evidence tends to find high correspondence between stated
intention to vote in pre-election surveys and electoral outcomes.
Actual behavior would be an ideal measure, but as discussed pre-
viously, this is not feasible given the difficulties in unbundling var-
ious components of campaign strategies and randomizing appeals.
8. Conclusions and future research
Vote buying receives a great deal of scholarly attention and may
even be empirically widespread, but it does not appear to be as
effective in garnering voters’ support as often assumed. In Malawi,
campaign handouts may be expected, and perhaps they worked to
gain votes in the past (Dionne & Dulani, 2013). However, our study
suggests that candidates gain more support from promising com-
munity goods, future services, or even campaigning against the
practice of vote buying than they do from promising immediate
handouts. The strength of a candidate’s local social ties are also
important to voters. Finally, promises of community goods are par-
ticularly popular when issued by a coethnic candidate.
There is evidence that voters enjoy electoral handouts but they
do not support candidates on the basis of what they receive. Voters
appear to have learned that they can take advantage of handouts
from multiple candidates while still voting their preference in elec-
tions. Our findings are in line with what Blattman et al. (2019, p. 5)
find in Uganda, where voters facing multiple vote buying offers
‘‘eat widely, but vote wisely.” As noted above, voters do not feel
obligated to support candidates who give them gifts or targeted
service provision, and most believe there is more to elections than
28
About 31% and 33% of respondents believe immediate and future targeted goods
are the only thing one can get out of the elections, respectively, with just 4% of the
sample declining to answer the question.
8
World Development 160 (2022) 106064
just handouts: only about one-third of our respondents stated that
immediate goods were the most that one could expect from the
elections.28 In our focus groups they often expressed distrust in can-
didates who campaign on the basis of immediate handouts.
Importantly, not only do voters punish candidates for immedi-
ate handouts, but they support those who campaign against vote
buying. To date, civil society organizations and international
donors run most anti-vote buying programs; arguably, more candi-
dates engage in vote buying than campaign against it. However,
our results suggest that candidates can gain voter support when
they have anti-vote buying messages in their campaigns. This
opens avenues for candidates to engage in anti-vote buying
campaigns.
These results have significant policy implications. The voters’
reactions to candidates campaigning on anti-vote buying cam-
paigns opens avenues for including candidates in electoral pro-
gramming. Policymakers and development practitioners may
have an opportunity to engage politicians in voter education
efforts. They may also provide information that encourage the
entry of new candidates who may have refrained from running
due to lack of resources for vote buying efforts. By campaigning
on anti-vote buying appeals and focusing on community goods,
candidates could simultaneously win voters and help to strengthen
a social norm against this behavior. In doing so, both the voter
bases of career politicians and democracy itself can be fortified.
The study also raises a number of additional questions and
paths for research. Given the findings on vote buying, we join
Hicken and Nathan (2020) in calling for more research focused
on understanding the conditions under which vote buying is effec-
tive and why it occurs. About 48% of our sample saw offers of gifts,
food and money or services and 46% saw offers of fertilizer subsi-
dies, financial aid to pay funeral fees, and/or other help with per-
sonal problems as ‘‘corrupting the democratic process.” Given the
findings on the advantages of local ties as well as coethnicity when
candidates promise community goods, we second the call for
scholars to move beyond ethno-regional vote buying as we seek
to understand elections, particularly in Africa (Bleck & Van de
Walle, 2013, 2018; Weghorst & Lindberg, 2013). More work needs
to be done to disentangle the impact of ethnicity and localism on
candidate viability, paying particular attention to how different
voters may respond differently to candidate appeals.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Kristen Kao: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Vali-
dation, Formal analysis, Data curation, Investigation, Visualization,
Supervision, Project administration, Writing - original draft, Writ-
ing - review & editing. Ellen Lust: Methodology, Writing – original
draft, Writing – review & editing, Investigation, Resources, Supervi-
sion, Project administration, Funding acquisition. Lise Rakner:
Investigation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing,
Funding acquisition.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to thank the Swedish Research Council
(Grants No. E0003801 and No. 2016-01687), FORMAS (Grant No.
2016-00228) in collaboration with the Governance and Local
Development Program and the Norwegian Research Council (Grant
K. Kao, E. Lust and L. Rakner World Development 160 (2022) 106064

No. 233803) funding this research. We would also like to acknowl- Dionne, K. Y., & Horowitz, J. (2011). The Distributional Logic of Government
Transfers in Malawi. APSA 2011 Annual Meeting Paper.
edge Boniface Dulani at the Institute for Public Opinion Research
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ika Bauhr, Sarah Brierley, Ruth Carlitz, Alexander Coppock, Karen assistance. Retrieved from https://www.ec-undp-electoralassistance.org/
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