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Leonard Wantchekon

World Politics, Volume 55, Number 3, April 2003, pp. 399-422 (Article)

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DOI: 10.1353/wp.2003.0018

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v55.3.3.wantchekon.399 7/29/03 2:41 PM Page 399

CLIENTELISM
AND VOTING BEHAVIOR
Evidence from a Field Experiment
in Benin
By LEONARD WANTCHEKON*

I. INTRODUCTION

C OMPARATIVE politics scholars have long considered electoral

politics in Africa to be systematically and inherently clientelist.
African rulers, whether self-appointed or democratically elected, rely
on the distribution of personal favors to selected members of the elec-
torate in exchange for ongoing political support.1 This observation re-
lies on the implicit assumption that African voters invariably have a
much stronger preference for private transfers than for public goods or
projects of national interest. This article reports on the use of experi-
mental methods to test several hypotheses pertaining to electoral clien-
telism in Benin in order to investigate the determinants of the voters’
demand for public goods.
The strategy consists of a unique field experiment organized in the
context of the first round of the March 2001 presidential elections in
Benin and in which randomly selected villages were exposed to “purely”
clientelist and “purely” public policy platforms. The experiment is
unique in the sense that it involves real presidential candidates compet-

* I would like to thank Kuassi Degboe, Mathias Hounkpe, Gregoire Kpekpede, Gilles Kossou,
Herve Lahamy, Francis Laleye, the leaderships of the political parties involved in the experiment (RB,
UDS, FARD-Alafia, and PSD), many others at the Institut National de la Statistique et de l’Analyse
Economique and at the Institut Geographique National in Benin whose logistical support and assis-
tance made the experiment possible. Thanks also to Jennifer Gandhi for superb research assistance, to
Tamar Asadurian, Sophie Bade, Feryal Cherif, Donald Green, Paul Ngomo, Adam Przeworski,
Melissa Schwartzberg, Susan Stokes, Carolyn Warner, and seminar participants at Stanford University
for comments. Finally, special thanks to the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University
for generous financial support and to Donald Green for continuous encouragement.
1
See, among others, Robert Bates, Markets and States in Tropical Africa (Berkeley: University of Cal-
ifornia Press, 1982); Jean-François Bayart, L’Etat en Afrique: la politique du ventre (Paris: Fayard, 1989);
C. James Scott, “Patron-Client Politics and Political Change in Southeast Asia,” American Political Sci-
ence Review 66 (March 1972); and Michael Bratton and Nicolas van de Walle, “Neopatrimonial
Regimes and Political Transitions in Africa,” World Politics 46 ( July 1994).

World Politics 55 (April 2003), 399–422

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400 WORLD POLITICS

ing in real elections. To the best of my knowledge, it is the first ever na-
tionwide experimental study of voter behavior involving real candidates
using experimental platforms. A number of questions are considered.
Given ethnic affiliation, does the type of message (clientelist or public
policy) have an effect on voting behavior? Is clientelism always a win-
ning strategy? Which types of message give incumbents or opposition
a comparative advantage? Are female voters as likely as male voters to
respond to clientelism? Are younger voters more likely than older vot-
ers to respond to clientelism?
Clientelism is defined as transactions between politicians and citi-
zens whereby material favors are offered in return for political support
at the polls. Thus, clientelism is a form of interest-group politics that
has been the focus of a large body of literature in American and Euro-
pean politics.2 However, while the standard interest-group politics
takes place in the context of organized competition among groups that
could eventually lead to the representation of a variety of interests by
one political party, clientelism is characterized by the representation of
narrow corporatist and local interests. In addition, while the influence
of interest groups tends to be filtered by the mechanisms of checks and
balances, those mechanisms tend to be absent or ineffective in the con-
text of clientelism.3
A large body of the comparative politics literature has investigated
the nature of patron-client relationships, the inefficiency of various
forms of clientelist redistribution, and conditions for its decay. The
common conclusion is that clientelist politics is most attractive in con-
ditions of low productivity, high inequality, and starkly hierarchical so-
cial relations.4 Others stress the importance of culture, historical
factors, levels of economic development, and the size of the public sec-
tor economy. While studies of the social and economic determinants of
2
For a review, see Bruce Cain, John Ferejohn, and Morris Fiorina, The Personal Vote: Constituency
Service and Electoral Independence (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).
3
Maurice Kugler and Howard Rosenthal, “Checks and Balances: An Assessment of the Institu-
tional Separation of Powers in Colombia,” Working Paper, no. 9 (Department of Economics and
Econometrics, University of Southampton, 2000). According to Valeria Brusco, Marcelo Nazareno,
and Susan Stokes, a clientelist model is characterized by present-oriented interaction, where people
trade their votes for immediate payoffs such as rice, a steak, and a job; Brusco, Nazareno, and Stokes,
‘’Clientelism and Democracy: Evidence from Argentina’’ (Paper presented at the Yale Conference on
Political Parties and Legislative Organizations in Parliamentary Democracies, 2002) Thus, clientelism
is contrasted with forward-looking choices over programs and backward-looking evaluation of past
performance. In my view, clientelist electoral politics can involve as much forward-looking or back-
ward-looking choices as does programmatic politics. In addition, for the purpose of the experiment, I
focus on constituency services and patronage jobs instead of direct payment (rice, steak, or cash).
4
For an analysis of the effects of income inequality, low productivity, and poverty on clientelism, see
James Robinson and Thierry Verdier, ‘’Political Economy of Clientelism,’’ Working Paper (University
of California, Berkeley, 2001).
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CLIENTELISM AND VOTING BEHAVIOR 401

clientelism can help us understand its origins and derive some general
conditions for its decline, they are not very helpful in explaining vari-
ance in the intensity of clientelist linkages within countries and the
prevalence of clientelism in advanced and affluent democracies.
A parsimonious study of the impact of clientelism on voting behav-
ior is important to social scientists for a variety of reasons. First, clien-
telism generates excessive redistribution at the expense of the provision
of public goods, as politicians wastefully divert government resources to
favored segments of the electorate. Second, since budgetary procedures
in many countries either lack transparency or are discretionary, clien-
telism tends to favor those already in control of the government and
therefore consolidates incumbency advantage in democratic elections.
Such advantage and the ensuing decline in political competition could
incite the opposition to political violence, thereby generating political
instability and possibly the collapse of the democratic process. Third, a
methodical study of electoral clientelism could reveal the existence of
gender or generation gap(s), incumbency effects, and other results that
could have important policy implications.
Consider, for example, the issue of a gender or generation gap. In a
given region or within a given ethnic group, promise of government
jobs might be less appealing to women than to men because men are
more likely to be the beneficiaries.5 By contrast, electoral promises re-
lated to public health or child welfare such as vaccination campaigns
could have a greater impact than patronage jobs on women’s voting be-
havior. Income transfers could be less appealing to younger voters be-
cause such transfers disproportionately benefit older voters. In other
words, younger voters or rural women might be systematically excluded
from the most common forms of clientelist redistribution, and those
groups might therefore be more responsive to a platform of public
goods. This would imply that initiatives to promote women’s participa-
tion in the political process at all levels of government are likely to help
improve the provision of public goods.
On the supply side of clientelist goods, it could well be that incum-
bents are more credible about delivering on those goods than are oppo-
sition candidates. Such credibility could be enhanced if the incumbent
has some discretion over distributive policies. Discretion over when and
how to spend government resources allows the incumbent to under-
mine the credibility of opposition candidates by, for instance, making
up-front payments to voters, as in the following example. Suppose that
5
Government statistics indicate that in 1997 women in Benin represented only 18 percent of the
low-level public sector workforce and 6 percent of the high-level public sector workforce.
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402 WORLD POLITICS

the incumbent wants to secure votes from a given district. Suppose that
both the incumbent and the opposition make identical offers to voters
at the political campaign stage, for example, for the government to hire
five natives from the district. The incumbent could then spend some
current government resources to hire two natives from the district and
claim that he would hire three more if elected. Such a move clearly
makes the incumbent more credible than the opposition: in the event
of an opposition victory, the two native officials are likely to lose their
jobs and the district might end up empty-handed, while an incumbent
victory already guarantees two patronage jobs, with three more to fol-
low after the election. In other words, the incumbent could use his dis-
cretionary power over current government spending to create a lock-in
effect in resource allocation and dominate the opposition at the polls.6
In any case, if incumbency advantage over clientelism is empirically val-
idated, it would imply that term limits and limited incumbent discretion
on budgetary procedures would improve the delivery of public goods.
Another important question raised in the literature is the extent to
which clientelism reinforces or weakens ethnic voting. In this article I in-
vestigate this question by selecting ethnically homogeneous experimental
districts and measuring how much a candidate vote share would change
if he were to switch from a clientelist platform to a broad public policy
platform. The result provides a measure of the level of intensity of eth-
nic identity as well as of the strength of clientelist appeals. It is an im-
portant and novel exercise, since according to Kitschelt, “The rigorous
operationalization of linkage mechanisms, particularly clientelism is
absent from the comparative politics literature.”7 In addition, survey
methods do not provide reliable and unbiased measures of clientelism
because it (clientelism) is perceived by most politicians and voters as
morally objectionable. So we are left with subjective assessments of the
intensity of clientelist appeals based on competing value judgments by
social scientists.8
6
For instance, a major government reshuffling took place during the two years preceding the 2001
elections with key portfolios such as Foreign Affairs, Economy, and Finances being allocated to na-
tives of politically important districts such as Djougou in the Northwest and Ketou in the Southeast.
Also, several government projects (construction of city halls, roads, schools, and so on) in a number of
districts started a couple of months before the March 2001 election, with local representatives of the
incumbent parties claiming openly that their completion is contingent on the outcome of the election.
7
Herbert Kitschelt, “Linkages between Citizens and Politicians in Democratic Polities,” Compara-
tive Political Studies 33 (August–September 2000), 869.
8
Kitschelt (fn. 7) suggests that we label a polity as clientelist if we find that programmatic parties are
incohesive and the experts attribute high scores of corruption to that country (p. 871). This is clearly
not a solution. Even if clientelism and corruption were correlated, they are two separate political cate-
gories. Moreover, current measures of corruption are subjective assessments by foreign investors and
businessmen.
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CLIENTELISM AND VOTING BEHAVIOR 403

The main contributions of this article are first to address key empir-
ical questions pertaining to clientelist politics (like the ones discussed
above) using unique experimental data and second to help provide an
empirical foundation for the growing theoretical literature on redistrib-
utive politics and clientelism. The experiment empirically validates the
view that electoral politics in Benin is dominated by clientelism. The
results further develop and expand the conventional wisdom in African
politics by establishing that (1) clientelist appeals reinforce ethnic vot-
ing (not the other way round) and that (2) voters’ preference for clien-
telist or public goods messages depends in large part on political factors
such as incumbency and on demographic factors such as gender. Before
I describe the nature of the experiment and discuss the results and their
relation to the literature, I briefly present some background informa-
tion on electoral politics in Benin, followed by a discussion of the theo-
retical foundation of the experiment.

II. THE CONTEXT

The Republic of Benin (former Dahomey) is located in West Africa
between Togo and Nigeria with a southern frontage on the Atlantic
Ocean. The majority of the country’s population of 6,200,000 falls
within four major ethnolinguistic groups: Adja in the Southwest,
Yoruba in the Southeast, Fon in the South and Center, and Bariba in
the North. Benin was colonized by France in 1894 and gained inde-
pendence in 1960. The first twelve postindependence years were char-
acterized by political instability and alternating civilian and military
rule. The country experienced its fifth and last military coup in 1972.
The coup paved the way for eighteen years of dictatorial regime led by
Mathieu Kerekou.
In February 1990 mass protest and economic pressure by France led
the military regime to convene a national conference (of representatives
of all the political groups of that time) that gave birth to a democratic
renewal.9 A transition government and parliament were created and a
new constitution was written and approved by referendum, providing
for a multiparty democracy. Since then Benin has experienced three
parliamentary and two presidential elections. The president is elected
through simple majority with runoff elections.10
9
John R. Heilbrunn, “Social Origins of National Conferences in Benin and Togo,” Journal of Mod-
ern African Studies 31 ( June 1993); Kathryn Nwajiaku, “The National Conferences in Benin and Togo
Revisited,” Journal of Modern African Studies 32 (September 1994).
10
That is, if no candidate reaches this majority during the first round, a second round is organized
for the top two of the list and the one who gets the majority wins the election.
v55.3.3.wantchekon.399 7/29/03 2:41 PM Page 404

404 WORLD POLITICS

The unicameral parliament consists of legislators elected under a

system of closed-list proportional representation (the proportionality is
per electoral district). The seats are distributed according to a district
quotient that is obtained by dividing the votes effectively expressed per
district by the district magnitude. Then the number of seats by a party
or coalition of parties is obtained by dividing its vote by the district
quotient; the remaining seats are allocated to the party or coalition with
the largest remainder. A party or coalition of parties is allowed to take
part in an election if it is able to present lists in every single electoral
district. Since January 1999 the total number of seats in the parliament
has been eighty-three, distributed over eighty-four electoral districts.
The country’s first presidential election took place in 1991 and was
won by Nicéphore Soglo, a former World Bank official. He was prime
minister in the transition government that governed the country from
1990 to 1991. The country had its second regular presidential contest
on March 3, 1996, when Soglo lost to Mathieu Kerekou, the former
autocrat. Kerekou won again in March 2001 for what will be his last
term in office.
There are currently six main political parties in Benin, with three of
them in the opposition coalition and the other three in the government
coalition. The main government parties are the Action Front for Re-
newal and Development (FARD-Alafia) led by Saka Salley, which pro-
vides the main grassroots support for the current government in the
northern region, the Social Democratic Party (PSD), which is led by
Bruno Amoussou and based in the Southwest, and the Our Common
Cause party led by Albert Tevoedjre and based in the Southeast. The
opposition coalition comprises the Benin Renaissance party (RB) based
in the southern and central regions and led by the former presidential
couple Nicéphore and Rosine Soglo, the Union of Democracy and Na-
tional Solidarity (UDS), led by Saka Lafia and based in the northeastern
region, and finally the Party for the Democratic Renewal (PRD), led by
the current National Assembly president Adrien Houngbedji and based
in the southeastern region.
Benin presents a number of advantages for an experiment on clien-
telism. It is considered one of the most successful cases of democratiza-
tion in Africa and has a long tradition of political experimentation.11

11
For instance, the political leaders in Benin were the first to introduce the rotating presidency for-
mula to curb ethnic strife in 1969. They also invented the national conference formula in 1989 as a
way of facilitating a peaceful postauthoritarian transition. See Eboussi Boulaga, Les Conferences na-
tionales en Afrique noire (Paris: Editions Karthala, 1993).
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CLIENTELISM AND VOTING BEHAVIOR 405

Moreover and very important, the distribution of votes in previous
elections was such that the risk of a field experiment seriously affecting
the outcome of the 2001 election was nonexistent. This is because (1)
the nationwide election outcomes have always revealed a significant gap
between the top two candidates (Kerekou and Soglo) and the remain-
ing candidates and (2) electoral support for those top two candidates
has always been between 27 and 37 percent.12 As a result, a second-
round election opposing Kerekou and Soglo in the 2001 presidential
elections was a near certainty. This, together with the fact that the ex-
periment took place mostly in the candidates’ stronghold means the
experiment is not risky for the parties, which explains why they agreed.

III. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN

The analytical framework of the experiment is the standard model of
redistributive politics developed by Lindbeck and Weibull,13 Dixit and
Londregan,14 and more recently Lizzeri and Persico.15 There are three
political actors in these models: two political parties and a set of citi-
zens/voters. Parties can differ in their ideological position or their elec-
toral platforms. The platforms can take the form of redistributive
transfers to one or several groups of voters, the form of public goods
provision, or both. Each voter has an ideological affinity for one of the
parties, with the level of this affinity known only to the voter. Under
these assumptions, electoral outcomes are uncertain and determined by
the distribution of voters’ ideological affinities and the parties’ plat-
forms. In this article, I simply replace ideological affinities with ethnic
affinities and assume that citizens have ethnic affiliations or affinities
and care about the fact that a member of their ethnic group or someone
relatively close to their ethnic group is elected. The citizen might in fact
also dislike the fact that a candidate from a specific ethnolinguistic ori-
gin is elected. The aim of this project is to measure the relative electoral
gain or loss associated with campaign promises based on clientelism
(transfer) as opposed to the ones based on public policy (public goods),
given that voters have ethnic affinities.
12
In 1991 Soglo obtained 27.2 percent of the vote, Kerekou obtained 36.30, and the next candidate,
Tevoedjre, obtained 14.21 percent. In 1996 Soglo received 35.69 percent of the vote, Kerekou, 33.94
percent, and Houngbedji, 19.71 percent.
13
Assar Lindbeck and Jorgen Weibull, “Balanced Budget Distribution as Outcome of Political
Competition,” Public Choice 52 ( June 1987).
14
Avinash Dixit and John Londregan, “The Determinants of Success of Special Interest in Redis-
tributive Politics,” Journal of Politics 58 (November 1996).
15
Alessandro Lizzeri and Nicola Persico, “The Problem of Public Goods under Alternative Elec-
toral Incentives,” American Economic Review (March 2001).
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406 WORLD POLITICS

EXPERIMENTAL DISTRICTS AND VILLAGES

Voters in Benin are divided into eighty-four electoral districts, of which
five or six are fairly competitive. Thus, for the purpose of the experi-
ment, eight noncompetitive districts were selected.16 Of these eight,
four were incumbent dominated and four were opposition dominated.
In each noncompetitive district villages were partitioned into three sub-
groups. The first subgroup, composed of one village, was the clientelist
treatment group, in which candidates were exposed to a clientelist mes-
sage. The second subgroup, also composed of one village, was the pub-
lic policy treatment group, in which voters were exposed to broad,
nationally oriented messages. And the third subgroup was the control
group; it was composed of the remaining villages of the district and
both types of messages were run in it.
The main candidates competing in the election were Kerekou, the
incumbent president endorsed by the FARD-Alafia, Amoussou Bruno
from the PSD, Nicéphore Soglo from the RB, Saka Lafia from the UDS,
and Adrien Houngbedji of the PRD. In order to take into consideration
the regional competition between the opposition coalition and the in-
cumbent coalition, I selected for the experiment Lafia and Kerekou
(two northern candidates), and Soglo and Amoussou (two southern
candidates). Kerekou and Soglo were the two leading candidates and
national figures. With the help of a team of consultants, I contacted the
leadership of the selected parties to secure their participation in the
subsequent stages of the project. I define an experimentalist candidate
as one who has been selected and has agreed to run an experimental
political campaign in a given district.
In collaboration with the campaign managers of the four selected
parties, past election results were used to identify the districts that were
strongholds of each of the parties and districts that were competitive.
A district is a stronghold of a party if the candidate endorsed by the
party has won at least 70 percent of the votes in the two past presiden-
tial elections; otherwise, it is competitive. In addition a candidate is de-
fined as a regional candidate if all of his strongholds are located in only
one of the six provinces of the country. If his strongholds are located in
at least two provinces, he is considered a national candidate. Thus, the
national candidates are Kerekou and Soglo and the regional candidates
are Lafia and Amoussou.
16
Two competitive districts have also been selected. As I explain below, the procedures and the theo-
retical foundation of the experiment in those two districts are different from the ones in the noncom-
petitive districts.
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CLIENTELISM AND VOTING BEHAVIOR 407

Among the six strongholds of FARD-Alafia, Kerekou, Kandi, and

Nikki have been selected. Using the same procedure we have selected
Perere and Bimbereke for UDS/Saka Lafia, Abomey-Bohicon and
Pahou-Ouidah for RB/Soglo, and finally Aplahoue and Dogbo/
Toviklin for PSD/Amoussou. Two districts of competition (Come and
Parakou) have been selected. Come is located in the Southwest, jointly
controlled by Amoussou and Soglo; Parakou is located in the North
and is jointly controlled by Kerekou and Lafia.
Two villages were selected within each experimental district. In any
noncompetitive district one village was exposed to a clientelist plat-
form, the other one to a public policy platform; the other villages of the
district served as the control group. In a competitive district there were
also two experimental villages. In the first village one candidate was
running on clientelism while the other was running on public policy.
The roles were reversed in the second village. As in the noncompetitive
case, the remaining villages in the district served as the control group.
All villages and districts involved in the experiment are defined as ex-
perimental or treatment villages and districts. The aggregate sample in
the noncompetitive districts is 6,633 registered voters for clientelist vil-
lages, 6,983 voters for public policy villages, and 28,376 for the control
group. The sample size of the experimental villages in the two compet-
itive districts is 4,503 voters and about 80,000 for the control group.
Noncompetitive districts are ethnically homogenous and have the
advantage of being less likely to be exposed to the regular, nonexperi-
mental national campaign. They tend to have similar political and even
demographic characteristics such as past electoral behavior, age, gender,
education and income. Two randomly selected villages could therefore be
perceived as identical, facilitating an identification of the treatment effect.
To ensure that those who were assigned to clientelism were not ex-
posed to public policy and vice versa, sixteen of the twenty selected vil-
lages were at least twenty-five miles apart with seven to ten villages
separating them. The remaining four were approximately five miles
apart, separated by two to five villages. The risk of contagion between
the two treatment groups was thereby minimized so that the two treat-
ments remained mutually exclusive and uncorrelated. Table 1 presents
the list of experimental districts and some of their political and demo-
graphic characteristics. The first column presents the districts, followed
by the candidates, the villages, and the types of treatment. The final
columns present the dominant ethnic groups.
Evaluating the treatment effect by simply comparing voting behavior
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408 WORLD POLITICS

TABLE 1
DESCRIPTION OF THE EXPERIMENTAL DISTRICTS
Exp. Exp.
District Candidate Villages Treatment Ethnicity
Kandi Kerekou Kassakou clientelism Bariba (92%)
Keferi public policy Bariba (90%)
Nikki Kerekou Ouenou clientelism Bariba (89%)
Kpawolou public policy Bariba (88%)
Bembereke Saka Lafia Bembereke Est clientelism Bariba (86%)
Wannarou public policy Bariba (88%)
Perere Saka Lafia Tisserou clientelism Bariba (93%)
Alafiarou public policy Bariba (94%)
Abomey-Bohicon Soglo Agnangnan clientelism Fon (99%)
Gnidjazoun public policy Fon (99%)
Ouidah-Pahou Soglo Acadjame clientelism Fon (99%)
Ahozon public policy Fon (99%)
Aplahoue Amoussou Boloume clientelism Adja (99%)
Avetuime public policy Adja (96%)
Dogbo-Toviklin Amoussou Dékandji clientelism Adja (99%)
Avedjin public policy Adja (99%)
Parakou Ker./Lafia Guema competition Bariba (80%)
Thiam competition Bariba (82%)
Come Am./Soglo Kande competition Adja (90%)
Tokan competition Adja (95%)

of those in a clientelist treatment group and those in the public policy

or the control group could lead to an underestimation of such an effect.
This could be the case if voters who have been reached by campaign
workers were more likely to favor one candidate or another. The effect
is underestimated simply because only a fraction of the intent-to-treat
group is actually treated. Following Gerber and Green’s17 solution to
similar problems in the context of their canvassing experiment, one
could identify the treatment effect in a given district by subtracting the
voting rate for the relevant candidate of, say, the clientelist village from
the voting rate for the relevant candidate in the control villages and di-
vide the difference by the observed contact rate.
DESIGN OF EXPERIMENTAL PLATFORMS
Once the selection of the villages was complete, the different types of
campaigns were designed with the active collaboration of the parties’
17
Alan Gerber and Donald Green, “The Effects of Canvassing, Telephone Calls, and Direct Mail
on Voter Turnout: A Field Experiment,” American Political Science Review 94 (September 2000).
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CLIENTELISM AND VOTING BEHAVIOR 409

campaign managers. It was decided that any public policy platform

would raise issues pertaining to national unity and peace, eradicating
corruption, alleviating poverty, developing agriculture and industry,
protecting the rights of women and children, developing rural credit,
providing access to the judicial system, protecting the environment,
and/or fostering educational reforms. A clientelist message, by contrast,
would take the form of a specific promise to the village, for example, for
government patronage jobs or local public goods, such as establishing a
new local university or providing financial support for local fishermen
or cotton producers. Thus, the public policy message and the clientelist
message would stress the same issues such as education, infrastructures
development, and health care. But they would differ in that the former
stressed the issue as part of a national program, or projet de société, while
the latter stressed the issue as a specific project to transfer government
resources to the region or the village. In addition, while national unity
is a recurrent nationally oriented theme, the recurrent clientelist theme
is government patronage jobs.18 Finally, it is worth stressing that a typ-
ical platform is a mixture of clientelist and public policy messages. For
the purpose of the experiment, however, the parties have kindly offered
to disentangle their platform in the experimental districts into one that
is purely clientelist and one that is purely public policy. Thus, just as in
any regular political campaign, the parties in the experiment were run-
ning on their own platforms. The only difference is that they have gen-
erously adapted the campaign messages that they intended to run in
some villages to fit the objectives of the experiment.19
Following the design of the campaign messages, in December 2000
ten teams of campaign workers were created and trained at the Institut
National de la Statistique et de l’Analyse Economique (INSAE), located
in Cotonou, the commercial capital of the country. Each team had two
members, one a party activist and the other a research assistant on the
project with no party affiliation. The training consisted of the presenta-
tion of the goal of the project and an exposition of the different types of
messages, as well as of various campaign techniques.
The training, monitoring, and supervision of the campaign workers
18
Christopher Clapham defines government patronage jobs as the “common currency” of clien-
telism; Clapham, Patronage and Political Power (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982).
19
We could have differentiated the messages by opposing a purely clientelist message to a purely
ethnic or religious message or to urban bias. However, neither religion nor urban bias is a salient po-
litical issue in Benin, as evidenced by the actual parties’ platforms. In addition, purely ethnic messages
would be too disconnected from the campaign strategies of the leading candidates (Kerekou and
Soglo) and would be perceived as incitement to ethnic conflict.
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410 WORLD POLITICS

was provided by a four-member team of supervisors and consultants

based at the INSAE. Two of the consultants were statisticians, and the
other two had done graduate work in political science. They also served
as intermediaries between the party leadership and the project.
Each district was assigned to a group of two activists, who ran clien-
telism in one experimental village and ideology in the other. For in-
stance, the group in Kandi represented the FARD-Alafia and ran
clientelism in Kassakou and public policy in Keferi. Assignment of ac-
tivists to villages took into consideration their ethnic origin and their
ability to speak the local languages. The activists sent individual weekly
reports of their campaign activities to the team of supervisors. The
team of supervisors also visited the campaign workers three times be-
tween January and March to make sure that the two types of treatment
were not confused.
PUBLIC POLICY AND CLIENTELIST TREATMENTS
During each week for three months before the election, the campaign
workers (one party activist and one social scientist) contacted voters in
their assigned villages. With the help of the local party leader, they first
settled in the village, contacted the local administration, religious or
traditional authorities, and other local political actors. They then con-
tacted individuals known to be influential public figures at home to pre-
sent their campaign messages. They met groups of ten to fifty voters at
sporting and cultural events. They also organized public meetings of
fifty to one hundred people. On average, visits to households lasted half
an hour and large public meetings about two hours.
A clientelist meeting took place in Tissierou on February 2, 2001.
The meeting started with the following introduction by our local team:
“We are the representatives of the candidate Saka Lafia, who is running
for president in the March 3, 2001, election. As you know, Saka is the
only Bariba candidate, actually the first since 1960. Saka is running be-
cause the northeast region, Borgou-Alibori, is very underdeveloped:
low literacy rates, poor rural infrastructure and health care, etc. . . . If
elected, he will help promote the interests of the Borgou-Alibori re-
gion, by building new schools, hospitals, and roads and more impor-
tantly, hiring more Bariba people in the public administration.’’
The following day, the team went to Alafiarou and held the public
policy meeting: “We are representative of Saka Lafia, our party the UDS
stands for democracy and national solidarity. Saka is running the oppo-
sition candidate in the North. If elected, he will engage in a nationwide
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CLIENTELISM AND VOTING BEHAVIOR 411

reform of the education and health care system with emphasis on

building new schools, new hospitals, and vaccination campaigns. In
conjunction with other opposition leaders, we will fight corruption and
promote peace between all ethnic groups and all the regions of Benin.”
The introductory statement was followed by a discussion period during
which detailed explanations were provided on the public policy or
clientelist platforms of the parties.20
Thus, a clientelist message highlighted the candidate’s ethnic affilia-
tion, singled out the interests of his region of origin, and promised pork
barrel projects and patronage jobs. Meanwhile, a public policy message
emphasized the candidate’s affiliation with the incumbent or opposi-
tion coalition and outlined a socioeconomic and political project for the
country. In order to avoid tensions among the activists participating in
the project, we avoided attacks of the candidate’s record or character as
much as possible.
The local teams also provided information on alternative campaigns
run in the experimental districts by nonexperimental candidates. For
instance, the reports reveal that the main alternative campaign in Perere
was run by Kerekou and was mostly nationally oriented.

IV. DATA COLLECTION AND EMPIRICAL RESULTS

After the elections a survey was conducted in all ten experimental dis-
tricts. In each district a representative sample of voters was interviewed
in the clientelist village, the public policy village, and the control vil-
lages. The questionnaires are available upon request from the author.
The data were collected in three main groupings. Questions were asked
about demographic characteristics such as gender, marital status, edu-
cation, and ethnic affiliation. There were also questions about the de-
gree of exposure to messages. Finally, and perhaps more importantly,
data were collected on voting behavior. For instance, questions were
asked about turnout, knowledge of the main candidates, the rank order
of the candidates, and voting behavior in the 2001 and 1996 presiden-
tial elections. Table 2 presents information about the survey, for ex-
20
The evidence from the weekly reports by the activists suggests that programmatic meetings tend
to last much longer than clientelist meetings. Some participants would criticize vote buying and elec-
toral corruption by other candidates while others would want details on how the party’s program
would translate into specific promises for their districts. In response, the local team of activists would
stress the need for a coordinated national development program. In clientelist meetings, participants
would typically review past government projects implemented in their localities and make specific de-
mands for the future.
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412 WORLD POLITICS

TABLE 2
COMPARING VOTING BEHAVIOR OF SURVEY RESPONDENTS WITH
AGGREGATE VOTING BEHAVIOR IN EXPERIMENTAL DISTRICTSa
Reg. Sample Sample Population
District Candidate Exp. Villages Voters Size Mean Mean
Kandi Kerekou clientelist 1133 61 1.00 (0) 0.81
public policy 1109 60 0.49 (.50) 0.60
control 3896 61 0.96 (.18) 0.75
Nikki Kerekou clientelist 462 60 0.95 (.21) 0.90
public policy 1090 60 0.93 (.24) 0.85
control 2979 60 0.95 (.20) 0.82
Bembereke Lafia clientelist 999 60 0.92 (.26) 0.94
public policy 931 60 0.89 (.30) 0.93
control 5204 61 0.91 (.28) 0.74
Perere Lafia clientelist 657 59 0.76 (.42) 0.81
public policy 442 60 0.13 (.33) 0.25
control 4477 61 0.52 (.40) 0.58
Abomey Soglo clientelist 1172 60 0.98 (.13) 0.91
public policy 1199 60 0.98 (.13) 0.90
control 5204 61 0.74 (.15) 0.86
Ouidah Soglo clientelist 321 60 0.93 (.25) 0.86
public policy 701 61 0.92 (.26) 0.72
control 2414 60 0.73 (0.44) 0.64
Aplahoue Amoussou clientelist 492 59 0.98 (.13) 0.87
public policy 511 60 0.91 (.28) 0.77
control 4037 61 0.98 (.20) 0.72
Dogbo Amoussou clientelist 1397 60 0.64 (.48) 0.65
public policy 736 61 0.50 (.50) 0.47
control 1161 59 0.45 (0.44) 0.84
a
The vote choice variable takes the value 1 if the voter of a given type (male or female) chooses a
candidate of a given type (for example, northern or southern) running experimental platforms in his or
her district and 0 otherwise.

ample, sample size and comparison of voting behavior among respon-

dents and actual aggregate voting behavior in the experimental districts
and the control villages.21 The means reported in Table 2 (also in Ta-
bles 3 and 4 below) are calculated by using a vote choice variable that
takes a value of 1 if the voter votes for the experimentalist candidate
running a campaign in the district, 0 otherwise. For example in
Abomey, the choice variable takes the value 1 if the voter chooses Soglo
and 0 otherwise.

21
The confidence interval of the village sample means indicate that the samples of respondents are
fairly representative of the voting population.
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CLIENTELISM AND VOTING BEHAVIOR 413

ESTIMATION OF TREATMENT EFFECTS
Random or near-random assignment of villages to treatments makes
the empirical strategy fairly straightforward. The average treatment ef-
fect could be obtained by comparing the mean of voting behavior in
each treatment group with the mean in the control group. More pre-
cisely, define by yk a measure of the vote for candidate k in a given dis-
trict, where 0≤ yk ≤1. Define by CL, PB, and C dummy variables that
take values 1 if the voter is clientelist, public policy, and control group
respectively, and 0 otherwise. Let Ê(.) be the estimated conditional
mean of yk. The clientelist treatment effect is given by
Ê(yk | CL = 1) – Ê(yk | C = 1)
and similarly for the public policy treatment effect.
The difference-in-means procedure is followed by a probit analysis
that helps check its robustness. The main dependent variable is vote for
a type of candidate (national versus regional, northern versus southern,
incumbent versus opposition). The main independent variables are
gender, age, past voting behavior, and types of treatment.
The empirical analysis is based on the data collected in the eight
noncompetitive districts. This is because the candidates involved in the
experiment in those districts fully complied with the procedures of the
experiment and outside or nonexperimental influence on voters in
those areas was very limited. By contrast, compliance was only partial in
the two competitive districts, with outside influence in those areas sig-
nificant and sometimes overwhelming.22
To compute the treatment effects, I first use the actual vote returns in
the districts involved in the experiment presented in Table 2. The results
indicate positive treatment effects in each individual district, except
Dogbo. On aggregate, the mean of voting returns for experimentalist
candidates (with standard deviation in parentheses) in the clientelist vil-
lages, public policy villages, and control villages are respectively 0.84
(0.05), 0.69 (0.30), and 0.74 (0.25). The results thus indicate a positive
clientelist treatment effect on average. The public policy treatment ef-
fect is on average negative, though it is positive in some individual dis-
tricts, for example, Ouidah and Abomey.
Table 3 presents the results of estimation using the survey data. The
results also indicate a significant and positive clientelist treatment ef-
fect for all candidates. In addition, there is a significant and negative

22
This was the case, for example, in Come, where the dominant campaign was run by Kerekou, a
nonexperimental candidate in that district.
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414 WORLD POLITICS

TABLE 3
DIFFERENCE IN MEANS BETWEEN TREATMENT AND CONTROL
VILLAGES FOR EACH T YPE OF CANDIDATEa
Type of Public- Clientelist-
Candidate b Public Clientelist Control Control Control
Northern .322 (.032) .674 (.032) .565 (.035) –.243 (.048)*** .109 (.047)**
.208 .218 .200
Southern .840 (.025) .890 (.021) .741 (.029) .099 (.039)*** .149 (.036)***
.219 .228 .224
Incumbent .693 (.032) .897 (0.21) .835 (.027) –.141 (.042)*** .062 (.033)*
.202 .214 .194
Opposition .493 (.033) .681 (.033) .509 (.031) –.015 (.047) .172 (.045)***
.225 .232 .230
Local .385 (.032) .603 (.033) .509 (.033) –.124 (.046)*** .094 (.047)**
.226 .224 .230
National .816 (.027) .968 (.012) .835 (.027) –.019 (.038) .133 (.028)***
.201 .222 .194

*** significant at 99%; ** significant at 95%, * significant at 90%

a
The first column presents the types of candidates; the following three columns present the means
of voting behavior in the public policy and the clientelist treatment groups and the control groups, re-
spectively. Sample sizes are indicated right below the means, and standard errors are in parentheses.
The last two columns present the public policy treatment effect and the clientelist treatment effect.
The vote choice variable takes the value 1 if the voter of a given type (male or female) chooses a can-
didate of a given type (for example, northern or southern) running experimental platforms in his or
her district and 0 otherwise.
b
Northern is Kerekou, Lafia; southern is Soglo, Amoussou; incumbent is Kerekou, Amoussou; op-
position is Soglo, Lafia; national is Kerekou, Sogolo; regional is Amoussou, Lafia.

public policy treatment effect for northern candidates, regional candi-

dates, and incumbent candidates. By contrast, there is a positive treat-
ment effect for southern candidates. A direct comparison of the
treatment effects—that is, of clientelism versus control (not shown)—
reveals that clientelism is more effective for northern candidates.
GENDER GAP
Table 4 presents voting behavior by gender for each group of candi-
dates. Under public policy treatment, the difference in means of voting
behavior between female and male is positive and significant for the
northern candidates (0.261) and for national candidates (0.306).
Women have a stronger preference for the opposition candidates in
both treatment groups. However, the effect is stronger in the public
policy treatment group (0.382) than in the clientelist treatment group
(0.186).
 TABLE 4
DIFFERENCE IN MEANS ACROSS GENDER UNDER EACH
T YPE OF TREATMENTa
v55.3.3.wantchekon.399

Clientelist Public Policy

Female Male Fem-Male Female Male Fem-Male
7/29/03

Northern 0.714 (0.061) 0.660 (0.037) 0.053(0.073) 0.500 (0.062) 0.239 (0.036) 0.261 (0.067)***
56 162 66 142
Southern 0.956 (0.022) 0.847 (0.031) 0.109(0.042)*** 0.878 (0.032) 0.806 (0.038) 0.075(0.049)
91 137 107 112
Local 0.679 (0.063) 0.577 (0.038) 0.101(0.075) 0.382 (0.059) 0.386 (0.039) –0.004 (0.071)
2:41 PM

56 168 68 158
National 0.978 (0.015) 0.962 (0.017) 0.016(0.024) 0.962 (0.019) 0.656 (0.049) 0.306(0.050)***
91 131 105 96
Incumbent 0.939 (0.029) 0.878 (0.027) 0.061(0.045) 0.770 (0.049) 0.648 (0.042) 0.122 (0.067)*
Page 415

66 148 74 128
Opposition 0.802 (0.044) 0.616 (0.040) 0.186 (0.063)*** 0.707 (0.046) 0.325 (0.042) 0.382 (0.062)***
81 151 99 126

*** significant at 99%; **significant at 95%; *significant at 90%

a
The table presents the mean for male and female voters in each treatment group followed by a comparison between female and male voters (that is, difference be-
tween means for female voters and means for male voters). The standard errors are in parentheses. The sample sizes are indiated below the means. As in Tables 2 and
3, the vote choice variable takes the value 1 if the voter of a given type (male or female) chooses a candidate of a given type (for example, northern or southern) run-
ning experimental platforms in his or her district and 0 otherwise.
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416 WORLD POLITICS

District-level breakdown (not shown) suggests that gender gap

under public policy treatment was apparent in the two experimental
districts where Soglo ran. In Abomey-Bohicon the candidate had
slightly lower electoral support with men in the public policy village
than in the clientelist village. In Ouidah (Soglo’s other stronghold)
women’s support for the candidate remains strong in both treatment vil-
lages (0.97 in the clientelist village and 1.00 in the public policy village).
PROBIT ANALYSIS
I now provide a more comprehensive analysis of the treatment effect with
multivariate analysis. The analysis provides an estimation of the treat-
ment effect by controlling for past voting history and other variables.
For the basic specification, I assume that the variable measuring the
expected utility of voter i when he or she votes for k in the current elec-
tion can be modeled as

y1*i,k = α + β Xi + λ y0i,k + γ CLk + δ PBk+ εi

The variable y1*i,k is not observable. However, one observes that

y1i,k = 1 if y1*i,k > 0 and y1i,k = 0 if y1*i,k ≤ 0.

where y1i,k = 1 means that i voted for k, and 0 otherwise. For instance
the variable Northern takes the value 1 if the respondent voted for
Kerekou in Kerekou’s experimentalist districts or the respondent voted
for Lafia in Lafia’s experimentalist district, and 0 otherwise. Xi is a
vector of individual traits such as gender, and age, that is, X = {AGE,
SEX} where SEX denotes the gender of the voter and takes the value 1 if
the voter is male and 0 if she is female. AGE is continuous variable.
The crucial independent variables are past voting behavior and treat-
ment (clientelist, public policy). To control for past voting behavior, I
include y0i,k which is a dichotomous independent variable taking the
value 1 if the individual voted for the experimentalist candidate in the
1996 presidential elections, 0 otherwise.
To evaluate the treatment effect, I use the variables CLk, PBk and Ck
that take the value 1 if the voter is in the clientelist, public policy, and
control group of candidates k respectively, and 0 otherwise. In order to
test the existence of gender gap(s), I introduce the variable SEXi*CLk and
SEXi*PBk.
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CLIENTELISM AND VOTING BEHAVIOR 417

TABLE 5
PROBIT ANALYSIS OF VOTE FOR T YPE OF CANDIDATES IN
TREATMENT VILLAGES
Southern Northern Local National Incumbent Opposition
Constant –0.946** –0.513 –0.367 –0.741 –0.186 0.222
(0.395) (0.374) (0.306) (0.469) (0.415) (0.271)
Sex –0.513* –0.516*** –0.424 –0.828** –0.415 0.024
(0.200) (0.194) (0.330) (0.332) (0.370) (0.231)
Age 0.006 –0.003 –0.009* 0.011* 0.004 0.002
(0.006) (0.005) (0.005) (0.006) (0.006) (0.005)
Past 2.139*** .865*** 1.555*** 2.057*** 1.893*** 0.966***
(0.203) (0.235) (0.201) (0.271) (0.180) (0.215)
Public policy 0.309** –0.372*** –0.594* 0.429 –0.287 0.512*
(0.333) (0.365) (0.318) (0.427) (0.387) (0.290)
Clientelist 1.004** 0.264 0.444 0.550 0.344 0.754**
(0.447) (0.391) (0.342) (0.457) (0.468) (0.319)
Sex*Client. –0.502 –0.191 –0.348 0.489 0.208 –0.324
(0.505) (0.435) (0.379) (0.548) (0.539) (0.364)
Sex*Public Pol. 0.167 –1.050** 0.147 –0.572 –0.111 –0.773**
(0.402) (0.414) (0.358) (0.482) (0.450) (0.345)
N 524 543 596 510 472 602
log-L –145.250 –208.538 –284.0500 –115.986 –146.161 –244.583

*** significant at 99%; ** significant at 95%; * significant at 90%

Table 5 presents the results. Public policy treatment effect is positive

and significant in the South and for the opposition candidate but negative
and significant in the North and for regional candidates. The interaction
effect Sex and public policy is negative in the North and for opposition.
The joint significance (Wald) test indicates that CLk together with
SEX*CLk is significant for all types of candidates except for regional and
northern candidates. Further, PBk together with SEX*PBk is significant for
all except candidates national and opposition. Finally, the AGE variable is
insignificant in all regressions except for regional candidates and national
candidates and PAST is positive and significant for all types of candidates.
Overall, the following results are significant in both the difference-
in-means and the probit analysis: (1) negative public policy treatment
effect in the North and district controlled by regional candidates, (2)
positive public policy treatment effect in the South, (3) positive public
policy treatment effect on women in the North and in opposition-
controlled districts (which are mostly in the South), (4) positive clien-
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418 WORLD POLITICS

telist treatment effect for all types of candidates, though not significant
in the probit analysis for the regional candidates and northern candi-
dates (which is rather anomalous).23
Why are public policy messages less effective in the North and in
districts controlled by regional candidates? Why would such messages
be more effective in the South and in districts controlled by the oppo-
sition? Why would women be more receptive than men to public pol-
icy messages and to opposition candidates?
One natural explanation for the negative public policy treatment in
the North could be that the region is poorer than the South. However,
such an explanation is not consistent with existing evidence on regional
disparities. Indeed, official government data compiled by the Institute
of Statistics and Economic Analysis (INSAE) suggest that in 2000, life
expectancy in Borgou (the northern province where the experiment
took place) was eleven years higher than in Zou, the corresponding
southern province. The data also suggest that from 1997 to 2000 Bor-
gou did at least as well as Zou in terms of telephone connections, edu-
cational outcomes, and public health.24
In my view, the most plausible explanation is that Borgou is domi-
nated by regional parties (UDS and FARD) while Zou is dominated by a
national opposition party, the RB, and national opposition parties are
more credible than regional parties on broad-based public policy. In
other words, the regional gap between Zou and Borgou could simply
be a reflection of the credibility gap between the UDS and the RB on na-
tional issues.
As for the gender gap result, there are two potential explanations.
The first is that because women are excluded from the most common
forms of redistribution, they are more responsive to platforms stressing
public health or education reforms. The second explanation is occupa-
tional choice. Fachchamps and Gabre-Madhin indicate that while men
dominate agricultural production, 80 percent of interregional traders in
Benin are women.25 Thus, a significant proportion of rural women
travel weekly to other regions of the country and speak several lan-
guages. Those women are likely to be better informed about social and
23
The district-level breakdown indicates that clientelism was very effective in Perere, a district con-
trolled by Lafia, a regional candidate.
24
See Institut National de la Statistique et de l’Analyse Economique, Tableau de Bord Social (Coto-
nou, Benin : Publication gouvernementale, 2000). Another possible explanation could be that the
North is more ethnically homogeneous than the South. However, the evidence suggests that the two
provinces have a nearly identical degree of ethnic homogeneity (92 percent).
25
Marcel Fafchamps and Elini Gabre-Madhin, “Agricultural Markets in Benin and Malawi,” Work-
ing Paper 2734 (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, Development Research Group, 2001).
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CLIENTELISM AND VOTING BEHAVIOR 419

economic conditions in the country than male voters and will tend to
value broad-based public policy.
The fact that past electoral behavior is a good predictor of current
voting behavior is not surprising, given the strength of ethnic affiliation
and voting. In almost all districts the candidate who dominated in pre-
vious elections retained much of his core electorate. The only major ex-
ception was in Perere, where the Kerekou electorate (mostly from the
Bariba ethnic group) melted away when a Bariba candidate, Lafia, en-
tered the race. The postelection survey data suggest that Lafia’s sup-
porters were not strategic: nearly all Lafia’s voters thought everybody
else was voting for Kerekou!
The positive effect of clientelist messages delivered by regional can-
didates also indicates that ethnic identity does not entirely determine
voting behavior. Types of platforms and method of voter mobilization
also matter. For instance, political support for Lafia in his native dis-
trict of Perere dropped significantly when he switched from clientelism
to public policy.26
RELATION TO THE LITERATURE
The theoretical foundation of the present article follows analyses of
distributive politics by Lindbeck and Weibull27 and Dixit and Londe-
gran.28 The articles allow for public good, in the form of the ideology of
the party elected. The literature is vague, however, about the nature of
the public good and how it is produced.29 In addition, the models do
not differentiate between incumbent and challenger, between national
and regional candidates. They also do not discuss the potential com-
parative advantage that candidates might have over redistribution or
public policy promises. The empirical results presented here suggest
that more realistic models should explicitly include incumbency and the
scope of the competing candidates.
26
In a recent study of electoral clientelism in Benin, Richard Banegas finds that politicians consis-
tently engage in vote buying and that voters come to expect these largesses and actually use them to as-
sess their likely postelection generosity; Banegas, La Démocratie à pas de caméléon (Paris: Editions
Karthala, 2002). One might thus conclude that the negative impact of the nationally oriented message
was a reflection of voters considering such a message as suspicious and unusual. However, there is ev-
idence suggesting that political campaigns of all the major candidates have always involved many na-
tional themes such as corruption eradication, women’s rights, and educational reform. Thus an
experimental platform stressing those themes should not have been perceived as unusual, and we find
no evidence from the field suggesting otherwise.
27
Lindbeck and Weibull (fn. 13).
28
Dixit and Londregan (fn. 14).
29
Avinash Dixit and John Londregan, “Ideology, Tactics, and Efficiency in Redistributive Politics,”
Quarterly Journal of Economics 113 (May 1998).
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420 WORLD POLITICS

Women’s inclination toward public policy echoes a recent study by

Chattopadyay and Duflo.30 The authors examine the policy implica-
tions of an affirmative action type of reform in India in which seats are
set aside for women in a number of randomly chosen local govern-
ments. Chattopadyay and Duflo compared the types of policies imple-
mented in reserved and unreserved village councils and found a
significant gender gap in types of policies implemented.31 They found,
in particular, that while women tend to invest in infrastructure directly
relevant to the needs of rural women such as water, fuel, and road com-
position, men tend to invest more in education. The context of the pre-
sent study is not a local government but a national government, and the
strategies of the politicians involved in the experiment are not types of
public goods but instead are clientelist goods versus public goods.
Moreover, in the present study women are not in the position of deci-
sion makers. They are instead voters.
Lemarchand argues that ethnicity should be studied independently
from clientelism, because “whereas clientelism describes a personalized
relationship, ethnicity is a group phenomenon, therefore there is no
compelling reason to expect concomitant variations between ethnic sol-
idarities and client-patron solidarities.”32 Ethnic solidarities, therefore,
can either conflict with or reinforce patron-client solidarities. The dis-
tinction between the two types of relationships is illustrated by the sig-
nificant intraethnic variance in preferences for clientelist goods. In
addition, the positive response to clientelist appeals by regional or eth-
nic candidates may indicate that ethnic solidarities can help enforce
clientelist bargains.
The methodology of this study is part of an emerging literature on
experimental field research in the social sciences. An experiment is a
purposeful intervention to alter a social environment in a specific way,
to compare the outcomes in the experimental group(s) and the control
groups, and to derive the impact of a variable of interest. Fisher presents
a general treatise on experiments with random assignments.33 It is ar-
gued that when subjects are drawn randomly and formed into treatment
groups, and when the subjects are assigned to receive the same treat-
ment, then the distribution of outcomes should be the same as in an ex-
periment in which the whole population received the treatment.
30
Raghabendra Chattopadyay and Esther Duflo, “Women’s Leadership and Policy Decisions: Evi-
dence from a National Randomized Experiment in India,” Working Paper (Cambridge: MIT, 2001).
31
Ibid.
32
René Lemarchand, “Political Clientelism and Ethnicity in Tropical Africa: Competing Solidari-
ties in Nation-Building,” American Political Science Review 66 (March 1972).
33
Ronald Fisher, The Design of Experiments (London: Oliver and Boyd, 1935).
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CLIENTELISM AND VOTING BEHAVIOR 421

Randomized field experiments in political science have focused on

studying how various techniques of voter mobilization (mail, canvass,
telephone) affect voter turnout.34 Gerber and Green argued that these
studies were severely limited by small sample sizes and by flawed
econometric techniques that did not account for the fact that some sub-
jects assigned to treatments were not contacted.35 Their study of voter
mobilization in New Haven overcame these limitations by increasing
the number of subjects involved in the experiment from about 3,969 in
the Gosnell experiment to 30,000 and by using the method of instru-
mental variables to correct for potential bias in the estimation of the
treatment effect that might result from the fact that subjects who were
easier to contact might have a higher propensity to vote.
The present study differs from previous experimental studies in a
number of ways. First, the dependent variable is voting behavior not
voter turnout, and the treatment is political platforms not mobilization
techniques. Second, the data generated by the experiment (political at-
tributes of the parties, personal attributes of voters) help identify treat-
ment effects associated with various types of candidates (incumbent
and opposition, regional and national). The data also help identify
treatment effects in a variety of settings, for example, the northern dis-
tricts or southern districts, or across demographic groups, for example,
male versus female.

V. CONCLUSION
This article reports on a randomized field experiment designed and im-
plemented in the context of the first round of the 2001 presidential
elections in Benin in order to provide a nuanced and parsimonious in-
vestigation of the impact of clientelism on voting behavior. The empir-
ical results show that clientelism works for all types of candidates but
particularly well for regional and incumbent candidates. The results in-
dicate that women voters have stronger preference for public goods
than do men and that younger and older voters have similar policy pref-
erences. I argue that credibility of clientelist appeals and accessibility of
clientelist goods greatly influence voting behavior.
34
Harold Grosnell, Getting Out the Vote: An Experiment in the Stimulation of Voting (Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1927); Samuel J. Elderveld, “Experimental Propaganda Techniques and Vot-
ing Behavior,” American Political Science Review 50 (March 1956); William C. Adams and Dennis
Smith, “Effects of Telephone Canvassing on Turnout and Preferences: A Field Experiment,” Public
Opinion Quarterly 44 (Autumn 1980); Roy E. Miller, David Bositis, and Denise Baer, “Stimulating
Voter Turnout in a Primary with a Precinct Committeeman,” International Political Science Review 2,
no. 4 (1981); and more recently Gerber and Green (fn. 17).
35
Gerber and Green (fn. 17).
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422 WORLD POLITICS

For instance, incumbent candidates have the means to make clien-

telist appeals more credible by delivering a part of the promised goods
before the election. Opposition candidates can take advantage of the
revealed incompetence of the incumbent in providing the public goods
during the previous electoral cycle to make its public goods–type
promises more appealing and more credible. Finally, because most
clientelist-type policies disproportionately benefit men over women or
because rural women might value child welfare policies more highly
than men do, women are more likely than men to have preference for
public goods.
The gender gap results in the opposition-controlled districts of
Abomey-Bohicon and Ouidah-Ahozon could have been more signifi-
cant if we had selected weaker opposition strongholds, that is, districts
with a larger number of marginal opposition supporters. However, this
would have increased the risk of the experiment affecting the election
outcomes and therefore have made the collaboration of the parties less
likely. Thus, further experiments are needed to check the robustness of
the results. In addition, since the current project took place mostly in
rural districts and in the context of presidential elections, it would be use-
ful to extend the experiment to include more urban districts, other types
of elections (legislative and municipal), and perhaps other countries.
Despite the limitations of the experiment, the results discussed here
indicate quite clearly and rigorously that voting behavior is far from
being entirely determined by ethnic affiliation and, more importantly,
that clientelist appeals—even if they are strong in many cases—are not
universally accepted even among poor voters and at low levels of eco-
nomic development.