Clientelism and polarized voting: empirical evidence

Klarita Grxhani 0 1 Arthur Schram 0 1 0 A. Schram ( ) Center for Research in Experimental Economics and Political Decision Making (CREED), University of Amsterdam , Roetersstraat 11, 1018 WB Amsterdam, The Netherlands 1 K. Grxhani Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies, Faculty of Economics and Econometrics, and Tinbergen Institute, University of Amsterdam , Oudezijds Achterburgwal 185, 1012 DK Amsterdam, The Netherlands One must take country-specific institutional features into account when analyzing former communist countries' transformation process to new political institutions. We do so for post-communist Albania, where the regional and cultural polarization that has existed for centuries has evolved to clientelism in the new democracy. We show how clientelistic parties give rise to very particular voting patterns. These reveal major differences across regions not only in party choice but also in voters' responses to government policies. These responses depend on the party in government and on the region concerned. This is in sharp contrast with results obtained when applying the same model to a large number of more advanced democracies with similar electoral institutions. A proper evaluation of democratization in Albania thus requires looking beyond the formal institutions governing elections and taking clientelism and its effect on voter behavior into account. Over the past two decades, the political and economic development of former-communist countries has been sensational. For scholars interested in democratic processes, it is a challenge to try to understand the nuances of what is happening. Both political scientists and scholars in the discipline of public choice have contributed substantially to our understanding of the transformation process from communism. From a political science perspective, - it is important to realize that the road to democracy implies not only free and legitimate elections but also deeper political participation and government accountability. One conclusion often put forward is that many transitional countries are currently functioning in a gray zone between authoritarianism and democracy.1 Public choice scholars tend to focus on specific aspects in the political economic development of these countries (such as changes in the popular vote, certain government policies, or trends in the size of government). This literature provides several applications of standard research methods to a cross section of these countries for general insights or to specific countries as case studies.2 The conclusions in this literature are quite diverse, however, and it is not yet possible to distill general implications from it. In this paper, we use techniques inspired by the public choice tradition to study a question that is central in the political science literature in this area. We focus on the development of one country in particular, to wit, Albania. More specifically, we will study how specific features of Albanias political institutions interact with voter behavior. Our focus on one country is motivated by the belief that it is important for the understanding of many phenomena in post-communist countries that country-specific institutional features are taken into account (North 1990; Carothers 2002; McFaul 2002). In Albania, one of the features that may be important is an alleged clientelism between parties and voters (Klosi 1997) that runs parallel to a strong polarization in the Albanian society. Here we focus on the consequences of this clientelism and provide an empirical analysis showing that it affects voting behavior in a way that is very unlike the patterns observed in very many developed democracies. For our empirical analysis, we estimate so-called vote functions3 and are able to show that (i) clientelism plays an important role in determining how Albanians vote; (ii) neglecting the existence of the polarization caused by clientelism can bias not only the conclusions drawn from the application of standard techniques, but also the policy implications based on ideal institutional frameworks. 2 Clientelism in Albanian politics Albania has hardly ever had a democratic political system. In about four decades of communist dictatorship it was completely isolated. The political regime was dictatorial and the economic system was completely socialized. In the early 1990s, Albania was the last of the Central and Eastern European countries to allow political pluralism and introduce democratic institutions and market mechanisms. Since the break up of communism, there have been two major parties in Albania: the Democratic Party of Albania (DPA, in office 19921997 and since 2005) and the Socialist Party of Albania (SPA, in office 19972005). In the three elections considered here, the two parties received 7080% of the votes cast. The remaining votes were spread over more than 25 parties, with no party receiving a share of more than 5%. The fall of the communist regime in 1992 brought the DPA to power. Until 1997, the political regime was characterized by competitive authoritarianism (Levitsky and Way 2002), while the economy appeared to be growing reasonably well. However, the economic numbers may be biased and moreover the privatization process was used to increase DPAs popularity through clientelism (Shala 1997; MPEP 1997; UNDP 2000; Grxhani 2006). In any case, all that was achieved was demolished in 1997, when a collapse of the Pyramid schemes led to complete political and economic chaos (Sadiraj 1999; Bezemer 2001). The SPA won the 1997 elections and remained in government until the DPA regained power in 2005. After a slow start, some democratic progress was achieved reflected in a shift from a competitive authoritarian regime to an electoral democracy.4 At the same time, the economy has been growing at a constant rate but unemployment remains at high levels. In this paper, we focus on the DPA-run years 19921997 and the SPA-run years 19972001. The post-communist political system in Albania is a parliamentary representation, with a mixed first-past-the-post and proportional voting system.5 The parliament elects the president. The president appoints and discharges the prime minister and the cabinet. Because the parties are structured very hierarchically (Sali Berisha of the DPA has been leading the party since the start of transition and Fatos Nano led the SPA until 2005 and still remains very influential today), political power is heavily concentrated in the hands of a few top politicians of the winning party. When a party wins an election, the leader either becomes president or prime minister himself or appoints someone faithful to him. Moreover, important public officials are replaced by the winners protgs. In short, since the start of the transformation process the winner of Albanian elections (either the SPA or the DPA) has virtually obtained unchallenged control over public policy (...truncated)