Carrots and sticks: Experimental evidence of vote-buying and voter intimidation in Guatemala
| Author | Javier Osorio,David Nickerson,Carlos Meléndez,Chad Kiewiet de Jonge,Ezequiel Gonzalez-Ocantos |
| Date | 01 January 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343319884998 |
| Published date | 01 January 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Research Articles |
Carrots and sticks: Experimental evidence
of vote-buying and voter intimidation
in Guatemala
Ezequiel Gonzalez-Ocantos
Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford
Chad Kiewiet de Jonge
Centro de Investigacio
´n y Docencia Econo
´micas
Carlos Mele
´ndez
Universidad Diego Portales
David Nickerson
Temple University
Javier Osorio
School of Government and Public Policy, University of Arizona
Abstract
How do parties target intimidation and vote-buying during elections? Parties prefer the use of carrots over sticks
because they are in the business of getting voters to like them and expect higher legitimacy costs if observers expose
intimidation. However, their brokers sometimes choose intimidation because it is cheaper and possibly more
effective than vote-buying. Specifically, we contend that brokers use intimidation when the cost of buying votes is
prohibitively high; in interactions with voters among whom the commitment problem inherent to clientelistic trans-
actions is difficult to overcome; and in contexts where the risk of being denounced forviolence is lower. We probe our
hypotheses about the different profile of voters targeted with vote-buying and intimidation using two list experiments
included in an original survey conducted during the 2011 Guatemalan general elections. The list experiments were
designed to overcome the social desirability bias associated with direct questions about illegal or stigmatized behaviors.
Our quantitative analysis is supplemented by interviews with politicians from various parties. The analysis largely
confirms our expectations about the diametrically opposed logics of vote-buying and intimidation targeting, and
illuminates how both are key components of politics in a country with weak parties and high levels of violence.
Keywords
clientelism, Guatemala, Latin America, list experiments, voter intimidation
Introduction
Students of politics in the developing world are aware of
the broad ‘menu of manipulation’ that politicians have at
their disposal to influence elections (Schedler, 2002;
Birch, 2011; Hilgers, 2011). These tactics include inti-
midation (Chatuverdi, 2005; Collier & Vicente, 2008,
2012; Robinson & Torvik, 2009), ballot manipulation
(Lehoucq, 2007), and clientelism (Stokes, 2005; Dı
´az
Cayeros, Magaloni & Estevez, 2016). Among the
Corresponding author:
ezequiel.gonzalez@politics.ox.ac.uk
Journal of Peace Research
2020, Vol. 57(1) 46–61
ªThe Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0022343319884998
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manipulation tactics directly targeted at voters, cliente-
lism and intimidation stand out because they reflect dia-
metrically opposed ways of campaigning: offering carrots
versus resorting to sticks. What determines the way par-
ties target carrot and sticks? This article uses list experi-
ments to explore how vote-buying
1
and intimidation
2
were employed in Guatemala during the 2011 election.
Lessons from this case afford the opportunity to advance
our understanding of electoral mobilization in democra-
cies where clientelism and intimidation coexist.
Vote-buying is a well-s tudied part of parties’ cam-
paign toolkits (Hicken, 2011). Targeting is driven by
factors such as income, partisan identities, and voters’
willingness to comply faithfully with transactions (Calvo
& Murillo, 2004; Stokes, 2005; Nichter, 2008;
Gonzalez-Ocantos et al., 2012; Dı
´az Cayeros, Magaloni
& Estevez, 2016). Research on the micro-targeting of
voter intimidation during elections, by contrast, is still
in a developing stage. A burgeoning literature on the
electoral role of armed actors discusses the conditions
that facilitate their engagement in, and hijacking of,
democratic processes (Dal Bo
´,DalBo
´& Di Tella,
2006; Eaton, 2006; Steele & Schubiger, 2018), as well
as the effects of violence on the electoral performance of
incumbents and insurgent-affiliated parties (de la Calle
&Sa
´nchez-Cuenca, 2013; Birnir & Gohdes, 2018).
New work also develops typologies of interventions by
armed groups in elections and the relationships they
establish with parties (Staniland, 2015; Matanock &
Staniland, 2018). This scholarship focuses on high-
level behaviors by armed groups: creating parties; fund-
ing existing ones; assassinating rivals; pre-electoral ethnic
or ideological cleansing; and boycotts. Intimidation to
support candidates or enforce boycotts is also explored at
an aggregate level. This article focuses on a narrower type
of electoral violence, namely individually targeted threats
of violence, or limited, non-lethal forms of physical vio-
lence, aimed at intimidating voters. This form of elec-
toral violence is not dependent on the presence of armed
groups and is deployed by political parties via their inter-
mediaries. As a result, intimidation does not necessarily
respond to the meta-dynamics of an armed conflict but is
driven by immediate electoral considerations. We there-
fore focus on a form of electoral violence that is not
indiscriminate and responds to the vote-maximizing
goals of partisan organizations that field candidates for
office.
Our study builds on priorfindingsonthemicro-
targeting of intimidation. Weak parties in Africa target
pre-electoral violence at opposition voters with the aim
of suppressing turnout (Collier & Vicente, 2008, 2012;
Bratton, 2008; Robinson & Torvik, 2009; Rauschen-
bach & Paula, 2019). Electoral intimidation has also
been used to influence vote choice, not just abstention,
in contemporary Eastern Europe (Mares, Muntean &
Petrova, 2016) and imperial Germany (Mares, 2015).
A common thread to most studies is that vote-buying
and targeted intimidation operate under very different
logics and involve different risks for those investing in
these tactics. For example, while vote-buying is a
resource-expensive tactic, often requiring the develop-
ment of complex partisan infrastructures to distribute
goods and monitor voters (Kitschelt, 2000; Wang &
Kurzman, 2007; Oliveros, 2016), intimidation is
cheaper (Collier & Vicente, 2008; Cunningham,
2013). Furthermore, vote-buying is usually regarded as
tolerable or ‘politics as usual’, whereas intimidation, even
when not lethal or indiscriminate, cannot be portrayed as
such (Beaulieu & Hyde, 2009; Hyde, 2011). In fact,
scholars have shown that actors involved in vote-
buying transactions often see them as mutually beneficial
(Auyero, 2001; Gonzalez-Ocantos, Kiewiet di Jonge &
Nickerson, 2014). Because intimidation carries a rela-
tively heavier stigma, if denounced it can delegitimize
both an election and the party in whose name violence
is deployed (Van Ham & Lindberg, 2015).
Given these contrasting dynamics, it is unsurprising
that the literatures on the targeting of vote-buying and
intimidation focus on different cases and are largely dis-
jointed.
3
This lacuna is unfortunate, however, because
we know that parties take a portfolio approach to cam-
paigning (Birch, 2011). Just as personalistic campaigns
craft policies to appeal to voters, campaigns engaged in
vote-buying may also stoop to voter intimidation. This
dynamic likely applies even in democracies, where overall
levels of electoral violence tend to be lower than in non-
democracies (Van Ham & Lindberg, 2015). By analyz-
ing the targeting of both vote-buying and intimidation in
the same electoral context, this article provides a more
comprehensive portrayal of parties’ strategies than much
of the existing literature. Crucially, juxtaposing the two
1
Vote-buying is a more particularized form of clientelism involving
the exchange of goods for votes at the individual level during electoral
campaigns.
2
Intimidation refers to the use of violence or the threat of violence by
political campaigns to compel voters to abstain or vote in a particular
way.
3
See Van Ham & Lindberg (20 15) and Rauschenbach & Paula
(2019) for recent exceptions.
Gonzalez-Ocantos et al. 47
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