Do Free Food and Beverages Bring People to the Political Meeting? The Survey Experiment of Attendance-Buying
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14789299211047333 |
| Published date | 01 November 2022 |
| Date | 01 November 2022 |
| Subject Matter | The Null Hypothesis |
https://doi.org/10.1177/14789299211047333
Political Studies Review
2022, Vol. 20(4) 691 –701
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/14789299211047333
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Do Free Food and Beverages
Bring People to the Political
Meeting? The Survey
Experiment of Attendance-
Buying
Milan Školník1, Michael Haman1
and Jan Čopík2
Abstract
In this article, we explore a phenomenon we call attendance-buying. Specifically, we investigate
the case of buying the attendance of voters at political rallies. Politicians and political parties
promise voters certain rewards if they come to listen to them at political meetings. Often, these
rewards can be food or valuable prizes. We conducted a survey experiment to discover what
effect this form of attendance-buying has in Czech municipalities with up to 1000 inhabitants.
We focused on small municipalities, where such a strategy can be effective because of the small
number of candidates compared to large towns. We found that the effect of promising free food
and drinks for attending a rally surprisingly did not manifest. With this finding, we contribute
to and extend upon the theme of vote-buying. Our research also has practical implications, as
local-level candidates do not have to make these food and drink expenditures because interested
citizens will attend political rallies regardless of these offers.
Keywords
vote-buying, participation, survey experiment, local politics, Czech Republic
Accepted: 1 September 2021
Introduction
In this article, we address the issue of buying attendance at political meetings in the con-
text of the Czech Republic. In this post-communist country in Central Europe,
it is common for politicians to lure voters using various food items to have them attend
1Department of Political Science, Philosophical Faculty, University of Hradec Králové, Hradec Kralove, Czech
Republic
2Department of Humanities, Faculty of Economics and Management, Czech University of Life Sciences
Prague, Praha, Czech Republic
Corresponding author:
Milan Školník, Department of Political Science, Philosophical Faculty, University of Hradec Králové,
Rokitanského 62, 500 03 Hradec Králové, Czech Republic.
Email: milan.skolnik@uhk.cz
1047333PSW0010.1177/14789299211047333Political Studies ReviewŠkolník et al.
research-article2021
The Null Hypothesis
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