Political Agency, Election Quality, and Corruption

How does electoral manipulation affect elected officials' willingness to satisfy their constituents? Although the literature has highlighted the role of elections as mechanisms of accountability, we do not know how elections whose integrity is compromised influence elected officials' actions in office. We present a model of accountability that allows for electoral manipulation and derive three results: i) rent extraction increases with the level of electoral manipulation, ii) the value of holding office is positively related to rent extraction for high values of office, and iii) electoral manipulation increases with the value of office. Using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design that exploits rules determining the sizes of polling stations in Colombia, we estimate a positive causal effect of vote buying on the likelihood of the election winner being sanctioned for violating the disciplinary code of public officials. We also find that higher values of office are not linked to fewer sanctions, but are associated with more vote buying