On the Buyability of Voting Bodies

July 1, 2007

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Format: Chicago

Felix J Vardy, and John Morgan. On the Buyability of Voting Bodies, (USA: International Monetary Fund, 2007) accessed December 26, 2024

Disclaimer: This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF.The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate

Summary

We study vote buying by competing interest groups in a variety of electoral and contractual settings. While increasing the size of a voting body reduces its buyability in the absence of competition, we show that larger voting bodies may be more buyable than smaller voting bodies when interest groups compete. In contrast, imposing the secret ballot---which we model as forcing interest groups to contract on outcomes rather than votes---is an effective way to fight vote buying in the presence of competition, but much less so in its absence. We also study more sophisticated vote buying contracts. We show that, regardless of competition, the option to contract on both votes and outcomes is worthless, as it does not affect buyability as compared to contracting only on votes. In contrast, when interest groups can contract on votes and vote shares, we show that voting bodies are uniquely at risk of being bought.

Subject: Competition, Corruption, Crime, Financial markets, Tax incentives

Keywords: Competition, Contract lead, Contracts contingent, Corruption, Elections, Lobbying, Recruited voter, Simple majority, Study contract, Vote buying, Voter specific, WP

Publication Details

Pages:

32
Volume:

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DOI:

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Issue:

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Series:

Working Paper No. 2007/165
Stock No:

WPIEA2007165
ISBN:

9781451867299
ISSN:

1018-5941

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