Lecture 5.2

Vote Buying

Emmanuel Teitelbaum

Public Goods

What is a Public Good?

• Non-excludable: can’t restrict use once provided
  
• Non-rival (jointly supplied): once available, can be consumed by others at no additional cost
• Opposite of a private good, distinct from “club goods” and “common pool resources”

Examples

Relevance

• Public goods associated with programmatic politics
• Clientelism associated with club goods and private benefits

Geography of Clientelism

• On the whole SE Asia is pretty clientelistic, but there are some bright spots in terms of social programs.
• Lets take a moment to explore some of these.

Vote Buying in Indonesia

Discussion

• What is a “success team”?
• How does clientelism in Indonesia differ from clientelism in Latin America?
  • What changed in 1999?
• What is a “ground war” and how is it fought?
• What does “margin error” refer to?
• When is vote buying successful? What does it achieve?

Electoral Systems

Closed and Open-list PR

• PR versus SMD
• Closed-list PR (most systems)
  • Party controls who is on list, and ranking of candidates
  • Generates loyalty to party
• Open-list PR (Indonesia)
  • Vote for individuals not parties
  • Candidates with most votes get seats

Ballot Example

2014 DPR (People’s Representative Council) ballot for Bali. One punch for party and one for a candidate

Election Results

Source: Aspinall, 2014

Brokers

Tim Sukses

• “Success teams”
• Important due to general weakness of parties
• Hierarchical, pyramid-like structures
• Brokers are notoriously unreliable
  • Predation, defection, duplicity

Effectiveness

• Base areas
  • Tim sukses, vote buying more effective
  • But required to stay relevant
• In non-base areas
  • Community gifts and become more important
  • Success depends on influence of community leaders
  • Quid pro quo is expected but difficult to enforce

Comparisons

• Argentina
• India
  • North vs. South
• Sub-Saharan Africa
  • Similar variation
• Hypothesis: clientelism is stronger where parties are weaker

Exercise

• Bobby Nasution is running for governor of North Sumatra.
• You are his tim sukses (success team). How will you…
  • Manage brokers?
  • Decide where to focus your resources?
  • Choose what types of gifts to give (individual vs. community)?
  • Minimize “margin error”
  • Prevent rivals from poaching your resources?

Welfare States in SE Asia

Welfare States in Developing Countries

• Noncontributory social assistance
  • Direct transfers, frequently conditional
• Social insurance
  • Protection against loss of employment
• Health care schemes
• Labor market policies
  • Minimum wage, terms and conditions of work, resolution of industrial disputes, etc.
• Education spending

Southeast Asia Examples

• Malaysia
  • Universal healthcare alongside private system
  • Free primary and junior secondary education
• Thailand
  • “30-bhat scheme”
  • Free education through secondary school

• Indonesia
  • Jaminan Kesehatan Nasional (JKN)
  • Universal healthcare scheme introduced in 2014
  • Covers > 200 million people, largest single payer scheme in the world (Augustina et. al. 2019)