Election vote buying

Quick info
Data type	Numeric
Scale	Metric
Value labels	Not applicable
Technical name	polnat_election_vote_buying_vdem
Category	Political factors
Label	Evidence of vote and/or turnout buying (V-Dem)
Related indicators	Political corruption index Executive corruption index Public sector corruption index Regime corruption index Corrupt activities of members of legislature Corrupt activities in judicial decisions

Aggregated V-Dem country expert ratings whether there was evidence of vote and/or turnout buying at the focal election whereby "[v]ote and turnout buying refers to the distribution of money or gifts to individuals, families, or small groups in order to influence their decision to vote/not vote or whom to vote for. It does not include legislation targeted at specific constituencies, i.e., 'porkbarrel' legislation" (Coppedge et al. 2021, 65). Lower values indicate extensive vote and/or turnout buying, higher values suggest less corruption.

Coding rules

Ordinal ratings were aggregated to intervall scale applying V-Dem's measurement model (Pemstein et al. 2021). Experts were asked "In this national election, was there evidence of vote and/or turnout buying?" and the ordinal wordings of the question were (Coppedge et al. 2021, 65):

• 0: Yes. There was systematic, widespread, and almost nationwide vote/turnout buying by almost all parties and candidates.
• 1: Yes, some. There were non-systematic but rather common vote-buying efforts, even if only in some parts of the country or by one or a few parties.
• 2: Restricted. Money and/or personal gifts were distributed by parties or candidates but these offerings were more about meeting an ‘entry-ticket’ expectation and less about actual vote choice or turnout, even if a smaller number of individuals may also be persuaded.
• 3: Almost none. There was limited use of money and personal gifts, or these attempts were limited to a few small areas of the country. In all, they probably affected less than a few percent of voters.
• 4: None. There was no evidence of vote/turnout buying.

Data is available for election years only.

Bibliographic info

Citation: Coppedge, Michael, John Gerring, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Staffan I. Lindberg, Jan Teorell, David Altman, Michael Bernhard, Agnes Cornell, M. Steven Fish, Lisa Gastaldi, Haakon Gjerløw, Adam Glynn, Allen Hicken, Anna Lührmann, Seraphine F. Maerz, Kyle L. Marquardt, Kelly McMann, Valeriya Mechkova, Pamela Paxton, Daniel Pemstein, Johannes von Römer, Brigitte Seim, Rachel Sigman, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Jeffrey Staton, Aksel Sundtröm, Eitan Tzelgov, Luca Uberti, Yi-ting Wang, Tore Wig, and Daniel Ziblatt. 2021. "V-Dem Codebook v11.1" Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project.

Related publications:

• Pemstein, Daniel, Kyle L. Marquardt, Eitan Tzelgov, Yi-ting Wang, Juraj Medzihorsky, Joshua Krusell, Farhad Miri, and Johannes von Römer. 2021. "The V-Dem Measurement Model: Latent Variable Analysis for Cross-National and Cross-Temporal Expert-Coded Data". V-Dem Working Paper No. 21. 6th edition. University of Gothenburg: Varieties of Democracy Institute.

Misc

Project manager(s): Nils Düpont (A01)

Data release:

• Version 0.001: Initial release

Revisions: No revisions yet

Sources

• Coppedge, Michael, John Gerring, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Staffan I. Lindberg, Jan Teorell, Nazifa Alizada, David Altman, Michael Bernhard, Agnes Cornell, M. Steven Fish, Lisa Gastaldi, Haakon Gjerløw, Adam Glynn, Allen Hicken, Garry Hindle, Nina Ilchenko, Joshua Krusell, Anna Lührmann, Seraphine F. Maerz, Kyle L. Marquardt, Kelly McMann, Valeriya Mechkova, Juraj Medzihorsky, Pamela Paxton, Daniel Pemstein, Josefine Pernes, Johannes von Römer, Brigitte Seim, Rachel Sigman, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Jeffrey Staton, Aksel Sundström, Eitan Tzelgov, Yi-ting Wang, Tore Wig, Steven Wilson and Daniel Ziblatt. 2021. "V-Dem [Country–Year/Country–Date] Dataset v11.1" Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project. https://doi.org/10.23696/vdemds21