Professor Simon Chauchard Quoted on Vote Buying in BCC

An article published in BBC News quoted Professor Simon Chauchard's research on vote buying in India.

"New research by Simon Chauchard, Assistant Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, US, argues that bribing voters may not necessarily fetch votes.

Competitive elections prompt candidates to distribute handouts - primarily cash and gifts in kind, like liquor - for strategic reasons. While knowing that handouts are largely inefficient, argues Dr Chauchard, candidates end up facing a "prisoner's dilemma", when each prisoner's fate relies on the other's actions.

"Fearing that their opponents will distribute handouts, they distribute them themselves to counter, or neutralise, their opponents' strategies," he says. It looks like a zero-sum game.

Dr Chauchard and a team of researchers gathered information and data during two elections - one for the legislative assembly in 2014, and the other for a municipal seat in 2017 - in Mumbai talking to political workers of the major parties."

Read more here.