Vote Buying and Election Promises: Should Democrats Care About the Difference?

Journal of Political Philosophy

Volumn 19, Issue 2, 2011, Pages 125-144

  Lippert Rasmussen, Kasper ^a  

^a AARHUS UNIVERSITY   (Denmark)

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EID: 79954596947     PISSN: 09638016     EISSN: 14679760     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9760.2010.00367.x     Document Type: Article

References (83)

1. Susan C. Stokes, "Is vote buying undemocratic?"Elections for Sale: The Causes and Consequences of Vote Buying, ed. Frederic C. Schaffer (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner) at pp. 81, 96, 2007, pp. 81-100.
2. A reviewer of this journal entertained the idea that the real democratic problem lies in the selling of votes, not in the buying of them. Admittedly, one can sell one's vote only if there is someone who buys it (and vice versa) and, accordingly, if one is democratically problematic so is the other, derivatively at least. Yet, in the case of prostitution, despite the analogous inseparability of selling and buying, some believe that it is one, but not the other, aspect of the relevant economic transaction that is problematic. For instance, some think that by buying sexual services one demeans the seller and that it is morally wrong to demean others, but not to demean oneself, and, accordingly, that the buying, but not the selling, of sexual services is morally wrong. As it happens, from a democratic point of view the most plausible objections that one may have to vote buying-for instance, that it distorts democratic deliberation and undermines political equality-apply symmetrically to vote selling and vote buying. It is not as if the (possibility of) selling one's vote distorts democratic deliberations whereas (the possibility of) the buying of one's vote by others does not distort them.
3. Pamela S. Karlan, "Not by money but by virtue won? Vote trafficking and the voting rights system", Virginia Law Review, 80 (1994), 1455-75 at p. 1462.
4. Since it is true of each voter that the probability that her vote will make a difference to the political outcome is virtually zero, arguably, voters have no good, self-interested reason to vote for a candidate who promises to implement policies that, if implemented, would benefit them. However, what is relevant here is whether voters actually are motivated-in a way that may be irrational-to deliberate on the basis of perceived self-interest and to vote for a candidate who promises to implement policies that benefit them. I return to this in Section 4.5.
5. Robert A. Dahl, A Preface to Democratic Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 1959, p. 69.
6. By "the paradigm case of vote buying" I mean the case that, conceptually speaking, most clearly qualifies as a case of vote buying and may for that reason serve as a standard in relation to which more controversial cases might be classified as cases of vote buying provided a sufficient degree of similarity obtains.
7. "Vote buying involves the individual, immediate, and private exchange of goods, services, or cash for electoral support, usually in violation of legal norms"
8. Allen D. Hicken, "How do rules and institutions encourage vote buying?"Elections for Sale, ed. Schaffer at p. 51, pp. 47-60.
9. Scott W. Desposato, "How does vote buying shape the legislative arena?"Elections for Sale, ed. Schaffer at pp. 102-3, pp. 101-22.
10. I set aside as non-paradigmatic cases of vote buying: (1) negative vote buying, i.e. cases where the voter is paid not to vote for certain candidates; (2) indirect vote buying, i.e. cases where a broker is paid to make others vote in a certain way (see Karlan, "Not by money", pp. 1456, 1462-3; Jean-Marie Baland and James A. Robinson, "How does vote buying shape the economy?"Elections for Sale, ed. Schaffer, pp. 123-41); (3) cases where "payment" consists in abstaining from executing a threat (see Susan C. Stokes, "Political clientelism", Oxford Handbook of Comparative Politics, ed. Charles Boix and Susan Stokes [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007], pp. 604-27 at p. 605); (4) vote buying in contexts other than elections for political representative bodies, say, vote buying in stock companies. Cases that I set aside as cases other than vote-buying (albeit they are sometimes labelled as such) include: (1) turn-out buying, i.e. cases where people are paid to vote (or, in the negative case, to abstain from voting), not to (not) vote for a certain candidate (see Simeon Nichter, "Vote buying or turnout buying? Machine politics and the secret ballot", American Political Science Review, 102 [2008], 19-31); (2) cases that do not involve any mutually binding agreement between vote buyer and vote seller, for instance cases where a candidate hands out gifts to voters and those who accept the gifts judge from their size how powerful the candidate is and, wanting to be on the winning side, vote for the candidate who offers the largest gifts (see Frederic C. Schaffer and Andreas Schedler, "What is vote buying?"Elections for Sale, ed. Schaffer, at p. 27).
11. Chin-Shou Wang and Charles Kurzman, "The logistics: how to buy votes", Elections for Sale, Even with secret voting, there are ways of monitoring how sellers vote, see ed. Schaffer, pp. 61-78
12. Valeria Brusco, Marcelo Nazareno, and Susan C. Stokes, "Vote buying in Argentina", Latin American Research Review, 39 (2004), 66-88, esp. pp. 76-7.
13. Richard L. Hasen, "Vote buying", California Law Review, 88 (2000), 1323-71 at p. 1364.
14. Frederic C. Schaffer, "Why study vote buying?"Elections for Sale, ed. Schaffer at p. 5, pp. 1-16
15. Stokes, "Undemocratic?" p. 95.
16. Hasen, "Buying", p. 1363.
17. Karlan, "Not by money", p. 1462.
18. Stokes, "Undemocratic?" p. 96.
19. This example also shows that it is not necessarily true that whereas politicians issue election promises intending to serve public interest merely foreseeing that doing so will win them votes, vote buyers purchase votes with the intention to win votes. In some cases, politicians who issued a certain election promise and delivered would have preferred not to issue the promise and not to (bind themselves to) implement the promised policy, had they been certain of being elected. Moreover, even if differential intentions did reflect a necessary difference between vote buying and election promises, it would be a further question whether intentions behind political acts matter in themselves democratically speaking.
20. Schaffer and Schedler, "What is vote buying?" p. 23.
21. Desposato, "How does vote buying?" p. 106
22. Brusco et al., "Vote buying", pp. 79-80.
23. The availability of techniques whereby vote buyers can monitor the voting behaviour of vote sellers and withhold payment in response to non-compliance on part of the vote sellers renders vote buying more democratically problematic.
24. Ian Budge and Richard I. Hofferbert, "Mandates and policy outputs: US party platforms and federal expenditures", American Political Science Review, 84 (1990), 111-31 For evidence that election pledges of winning coalitions are reflected in spending priorities, see
25. Ian Budge, Richard I. Hofferbert, and Hans-Dieter Klingemann, Parties, Policies, & Democracy (Boulder, CO: Westview), 1994.
26. Schaffer, "Why study vote buying?" pp. 4-5.
27. Jinshan Li and Jørgen Elklit, "The Singapore general election 1997: campaigning strategy, results, and analysis", Electoral Studies, 18 (1999), 199-216 For a real-life example of election promises so conditioned, see at p. 209.
28. A further complication, which I shall mention but not pursue, here is that there are vote-rewarding election promises-the candidate promises to reward those who have voted for her, if she is elected-and vote-neutral vote buying-the vote buyer makes a deal with a group of voters that if enough of them vote for her she will reward all of them. Arguably, the first is more problematic, democratically speaking, than the latter-indeed, it is as problematic as standard cases of vote buying. To see this, suppose that it is certain that the candidate intends to keep her promise (part of the deal) and will in fact succeed in doing so. So in the case of vote-rewarding election promises the candidate will reward those who voted for her and those only, whereas in the case of vote-neutral vote buying the candidate will reward all voters within the relevant group irrespective of whether they voted for her. On these assumptions, in the former scenario the probability for each voter of receiving the relevant reward provided the candidate is elected depends crucially on whether she has voted for the candidate. In the latter scenario, however, this probability is unaffected by how a voter voted. Vote-rewarding election promises and vote-neutral vote purchases are intermediate cases.
29. In this article I evaluate vote buying from the point of view of democracy. Accordingly I set aside objections to vote buying based on other values. So, for instance, vote buying has been criticized on the ground that it reduces aggregate social welfare because the most likely motive for buying votes is to recover the costs of buying these votes by exploiting control over public treasury. Hence, there is a danger that "[v]ote buyers would finance their purchases out of the pockets of third parties" in a way that will lower social welfare (see Richard Epstein, "Why restrain alienation?"Columbia Law Review, 85 (1985), 970-90 at pp. 987-8). Whatever the merits of this objection, it is not an objection that invokes the value of democracy, which, after all, is different from the concern for maximizing aggregate welfare.
30. See Brown v. Hartlage, 456 US (1982) at 53-54.
31. Susan Rose-Ackerman, "Inalienability and the theory of property rights", Columbia Law Review, 85 (1985), 931-69 at pp. 931, 963
32. Richard L. Hasen, "Buying", p. 1361.
33. These theorists subscribe to an even stronger asymmetrical evaluation of vote buying and election promises: whereas the former are inherently undemocratic, the latter are necessary for democracy.
34. Offering an opportunity for policy predictions in this way is different from promising to implement a certain policy. The former does not involve politicians binding themselves to policies predictably implemented, if they get elected, and, accordingly, if they do not implement them they cannot be charged with failing to deliver on their promises (although they might be charged with their commitment to the relevant values being hypocritical and so on). Admittedly, politicians offering voters a reasonable basis for predicting which policies they will implement if elected may in itself distort democratic deliberation-votes will be cast solely on the basis of whether the predicted policies promote voters' self-interest. This is quite compatible with the limited point that I make in this subsection, i.e. that election promises are not "essential to the functioning of a representative democracy" and, thus, cannot be thought different from vote buying simply on this ground.
35. Stokes, "Undemocratic?" p. 81.
36. A voter has reason "to consider the full range of a party's policies" only when there is political competition on all the relevant policy issues. But, presumably, Stokes' real concern applies even in cases where there is only limited political competition on policy issues. In such cases, vote buying would eliminate the voter's reason to consider the full range of a party's policies even on matters where political competition exists and, thus, further reduce voters' autonomy (which is already reduced by limitations in political competition).
37. Stokes, "Undemocratic?" p. 96.
38. Karlan, "Not by money", p. 1465.
39. Richard Titmuss, The Gift Relationship (New York: Pantheon Books), 1971, p. 242.
40. A weaker Titmuss-style objection says that the possibility of selling one's vote makes voting from non-economic motives less widespread.
41. Peter Singer, "Altruism and commerce: a defense of Titmuss against Arrow", Philosophy & Public Affairs, 2 (1973), 312-20 at p. 314
42. Debra Satz, "The moral limits of markets: the case of human kidneys", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 108 (2008), 269-88 at pp. 272-3.
43. However, this objection does not establish that vote buying is inherently problematic. Moreover, my reply to the stronger Titmuss-point applies, mutatis mutandis, to the weaker one as well.
44. Cass Sunstein, "Incommensurability and valuation in law", Michigan Law Review, 92 (1994), 779-861 at p. 849.
45. Sunstein's argument raises the general issue of what determines the social meaning of an institution or a social practice, say, the attitudes and understandings of present participants or the intentions of the original founders of the institution or social practices (if there are any such founders) or something else. For present purposes I can set this issue aside, for my argument in this subsection grants Sunstein his claim about the social meaning of voting.
46. Karlan, "Not by money", pp. 1457, 1467, 1470.
47. Stokes, "Undemocratic?" p. 90.
48. Robert A. Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics The quote is from (New Haven, CN: Yale University Press), 1987, p. 86.
49. Karlan, "Not by money", p. 1468.
50. Karlan, pp. 1469-70 adds that vote buying "transforms what should be a relational agreement and ongoing conversation between elected official and citizens into a discrete contract between candidate and voter".
51. Stokes, "Undemocratic?" p. 92.
52. Robert E. Goodin, Reflective Democracy See, for instance, (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 2003, pp. 169-193
53. on the need for reflective preferences as inputs to the political process and John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government (London: Everyman's Library, [1861] 1987), p. 324, on the duties of voters. Theorists who deny that democratic forms of deliberation should, or, in some cases, even can, proceed from impartial grounds include John S. Dryzek, Deliberative Democracy and Beyond (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), esp. pp. 57-80
54. Iris Marion Young, Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 2000, esp. pp. 81-120.
55. Sunstein, "Incommensurability", p. 788 For example
56. David Copp, "Capitalism versus democracy", Ethics and Capitalism, ed. John D. Bishop (Toronto: Toronto University Press) at pp. 87, 90, 2000, pp. 81-101
57. Margo Trappenburg, "In defence of pure pluralism: two readings of Walzer's Spheres of Justice", Journal of Political Philosophy, 8 (2000), 343-62 at p. 355
58. Goodin, Reflective Democracy, p. 167
59. James Tobin, "On limiting the domain of inequality", Journal of Law and Economics, 13 (1970), 263-78 at p. 269.
60. For a discussion of political equality not tied specifically to vote buying, see Charles R. Beitz, Political Equality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989). Copp's argument against vote buying rests on the premise that all members of a society have an "equal stake in society" ("Capitalism", pp. 89-91). But it is not clear in what sense this is the case. For instance, clearly not everyone's interests are equally affected by political decisions. The interests of young people (some of whom do not have the right to vote) and of future people (all of whom do not have the right to vote) generally are affected to a much greater extent by the outcome of a present election than are the interests of old people.
61. Jonathan Fox, "The difficulty of transition from clientelism to citizenship: lessons from Mexico", World Politics, 46 (1994), 151-84 at pp. 152-3.
62. I thank the editor for this formulation.
63. Desposato, "How does vote buying?"
64. Hasen, "Vote buying", p. 1329.
65. James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press), 1962, p. 271.
66. Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 2000, p. 191.
67. For a reason to reject the ideal of equality of political impact itself, see Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue, pp. 195-6.
68. Thomas Christiano comes close to a version of this view of political equality in his "An argument for democratic equality", Philosophy & Democracy, ed. Thomas Christiano (Oxford: Oxford University Press) at p. 55, 2003, pp. 39-68.
69. Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue, p. 186.
70. Mark E. Warren, "What does corruption mean in a democracy?"American Journal of Political Science, 48 (2004), 328-43 For a formulation of this notion of the democratic norm of equality, see at p. 333.
71. Compare Peter Vallentyne, "Brute luck, option luck, and equality of initial outcomes", Ethics, 112 (2002), 529-57.
72. I ignore qualifications to the stated ideal necessary to accommodate the, democratically speaking, unobjectionable better opportunities for exercising political influence of elected representatives and citizens who have greater abilities to put forward reasoned arguments in favour of policies
73. Copp, "Capitalism", p. 86.
74. Charles Lindblom, "The market as prison", Philosophy & Democracy, ed. Christiano, pp. 275-84.
75. The problem of political equality is no less for the fact that Poor People's Party rightly anticipates that there are certain election promises it cannot issue credibly and for that reason abstains from issuing despite the absence of warnings or threats of resistance by others
76. Steven Lukes, Power: A Radical View, 2nd edn (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan), 2005, pp. 45-7.
77. Suppose poor voters are more inclined than others to "focus on initial tangible benefits and to discount or ignore non-salient costs" thereby leaving candidates free to "pursue other policies that in the aggregate would do more harm to the poor than benefit them" (Hasen, "Buying", p. 1362). Then presumably not only the possibility of vote buying but also the possibility of issuing election promises to transfer initial tangible benefits on poor voters will lead to inequality in goodness of opportunities for political influence.
78. Copp, "Capitalism versus democracy", pp. 92-5. Promises to move investment or capital in response to welcome policy initiatives may similarly distort democracy.
79. Goodin, Reflective Democracy, p. 167.
80. Fabrice Lehoucq, "When does a market for votes emerge?"Elections for Sale, See, for instance, ed Schaffer at p. 34, pp. 33-45.
81. Dryzek, Deliberative Democracy, pp. 21, 84.
82. Similarly, if the existence of permanent minorities is a problem from the point of view of political equality, it is hard to see why political equality clashes with members of permanent political majorities selling their votes to members of political minorities. This point applies in particular to referenda about issues of special concern to permanent minorities.
83. Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics, p. 115.