On the buyability of voting bodies

John Morgan and Felix VÃ¡rdy
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Felix VÃ¡rdy: Haas School of Business and International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC, USA, fvardy@haas.berkeley.edu

Journal of Theoretical Politics, 2011, vol. 23, issue 2, 260-287

Abstract: 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 is an effective way to fight vote buying in the presence of competition, but much less so in its absence. Regardless of competition, the option to contract on both votes and outcomes is worthless, as it does not affect buyability compared to contracting only on votes. The option to contract on votes and vote shares, on the other hand, is extremely valuable: it allows the first mover to effectively nullify competition and obtain its preferred policy at almost the monopoly cost.

Keywords: corruption; elections; lobbying; vote buying. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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Related works:
Working Paper: On the Buyability of Voting Bodies (2007)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:23:y:2011:i:2:p:260-287

DOI: 10.1177/0951629811400472

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