Abstract

BELTRAN, Ulises  and  CASTRO CORNEJO, Rodrigo. Clientelistic Activation of Mexican Voters: Between Vote Buying and Political Communication. Polít. gob [online]. 2019, vol.26, n.2, pp.171-204.  Epub June 26, 2020. ISSN 1665-2037.

This research analyses the clientelistic outreach in the context of modern campaigns in new democracies like Mexico. We argue that Mexican parties intensely engage in clientelistic practices due to two combined factors: 1) electoral reforms that created incentives for parties to invest heavily on direct contact campaign strategies and 2) adaptation of modern campaigning (GOTV get-out-the-vote campaign operations) that enable them to maximize the distribution of electoral gifts as part of their political communication strategy. This type of clientelism is not distributed by traditional machine politics targeting the poor. Instead, parties in Mexico have adapted modern political campaigning creating an effective network of clientelistic outreach. The empirical evidence for this article comes from an original survey conducted during the 2012 presidential election and the 2015 National Electoral Study (CIDE-CSES).

Keywords : Public Opinion; Vote-Buying; Campaigns; Elections; Mexico.