Buying Informed Voters: New Effects of Information on Voters and Candidates

Abstract

Abstract Despite the prominence of information in theories of electoral accountability, providing voters with information often fails to improve politician performance. Using two experiments in the Philippines, we show that when voters are unfamiliar with basic government capabilities, merely informing them of what politicians could do is sufficient to decrease support for incumbents. However, politicians can counteract this decrease in support by increasing clientelistic practices such as vote buying. Our work shows how even neutral information campaigns can improve the leverage of voters vis-à-vis their politicians, offering guidance for the design of interventions to change the electoral equilibrium in clientelistic countries.