It is widely believed that clientelism-the giving of material goods in return for electoral support-is associated with poorer development outcomes. However, systematic cross-country evidence on the deleterious effects of clientelism on development outcomes is lacking. In this paper we examine...

The Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project is generating a new dataset of indicators for various facets of democracy. Although many of the indicators are quite useful by themselves, most users of V-Dem data probably require measures of democracy at a higher level of aggregation.This paper...

This paper presents a new approach for studying sequences across combinations of binary and ordinal variables. The approach involves three novel methodologies (frequency analysis, graphical mapping of changes between “events”, and dependency analysis), as well as an established adaptation...

What makes opposition parties win elections in sub-Saharan Africa? The literature on voters in Africa tells us that ballots are won over by clientelism rather than by economic development, thus undermining the quality of collective goods provision and democratic accountability. We challenge this...

A vast literature suggests that voters in new democracies “sell” their vote to patrons providing private or small-scale club goods, or alternatively, that such goods are distributed along ethnic lines to reinforce ethnic voting. In either case the outcome is undermining democratic...