8 How Does Vote Buying Shape the Economy?

Abstract

In this chapter we have developed some general ideas about how vote buying which suggest, along with the evidence from Chile, that electoral corruption has pervasive, first-order effects both on the way the economy is organized and the efficiency of public policy. In our view, there is little to sustain the type of optimism expressed by Buchanan and Tullock about the prospect that votes can be bought and sold. From this point of view the introduction of political institutions which stop corruption and vote buying, such as the Australian ballot, appear to be as significant a step in the process of political development as the construction of electoral democracy itself. Indeed, as our Chilean evidence suggested, the Australian ballot has dramatic political ramifications.