Elin Bergman - Clientelism and CCT Support among the Rich
Research suggests that antipoverty policy such as conditional cash transfers reduce clientelism—the contingent exchange of political support for material benefits between poor voters and politicians. There is also evidence that nonpoor voters electorally punish clientelist politicians. Yet there is a gap in our understanding of the extent to which clientelism-averse voters back CCTs in order to undermine clientelism. I posit that rich voters, in particular, dislike the opacity of clientelist spending, which amounts to redistribution of unknown volume and associated tax burden. Evidence from an original survey experiment shows that rich voters who experienced more concern over clientelism expressed stronger CCT support. As expected, there is no treatment effect for middle class voters. The paper adds to our knowledge of when antipoverty policies enjoy support from nonbeneficiaries, and theorizes and tests the hitherto unexplored link between nonbeneficiary attitudes toward informal (clientelism) and formal pro-poor redistribution (CCTs).
Elin Bergman is Wallenberg Postdoctoral Scholar at the Department of Political Science at Stanford University. She researches redistributive politics, in particular efforts to capture the political support of the low-income (poor) electorate through programmatic or clientelist means. The geographical focus is Latin America.
Bergman is currently working on a book manuscript about the determinants of conditional cash transfer (CCT) program adoption. The theory is based on the ability of cheap CCTs to simultaneously attract the support of the poor (CCT beneficiaries) and the tax-shy, clientelism-averse upscale electorate. A cross-class coalition of poor and upscale voters in favor of CCTs can explain why CCTs first emerged in Brazil and Mexico that both have long traditions of using clientelism and vote buying to win the support of the poor electorate.
Bergman earned her PhD degree in political science at Göteborgs universitet, Sweden, in 2019. She has previously studied at the University of Chicago and Uppsala universitet.