When: Wednesday, January 17, 2024, 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm

Speaker: Jean-Robert Tyran

Abstract:

India is the world’s largest democracy. One of the reasons why it is considered a “flawed” democracy is that elections are often “rigged” by the practice of political candidates paying “cash for votes” (CFV). CFV is potentially undermining democratic values and good governance. My talk provides a progress report on a project that uses large-scale surveys to identify determinants of why voters do (or do not) sell their votes in a rural border region of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. We use regression analysis to study correlates of voters’ willingness to fight CFV, and their instrumental and non-instrumental motives to accept CFV. We also explore the causal effects of two interventions to mitigate CFV which relate to strengthening civicness among voters and improving transparency about politician characteristics.