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Signaling Games of Election Fraud

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Abstract

This paper introduces a novel theoretic approach towards understanding election fraud under autocracies, by suggesting a signaling model of election fraud and testing its basic implications on unique datasets from Russian and cross-national settings. According to the theory, the heads of subnational units can send their signals about loyalty to the leader by means of fraudulently augmented turnout or incumbent's vote percentages. These signaling patterns are related to an excess of 0s and 5s in the last digit of turnout and percentage of incumbent's voter support. In return, the local agents are rewarded by the leader with the larger amounts of postelectoral fiscal transfers. Basic implications from the formal model are supported by empirical data analysis: as the proportion of 0s and 5s increases the amount of postelectoral transfers also increases, both in Russia and worldwide.

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... Similar to the previous Russian elections, in 2016 the regional governors were responsible for mobilizing their regional "political machines" to provide a favorable electoral result and to signal their loyalty status to Kremlin (Kalinin 2016a). Governors were interested in boosting the level of turnout to provide their respective regions with more mandates in the lower chamber and they were incentivized to boost the United Russia's support to meet the Kremlin's demand (Mebane and Kalinin 2010). ...
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