Vote buying persists despite democratic safeguards. This article explains why: brokers enforce deals through published results only when monitoring small voter groups is feasible.
Key Finding: Brokers target compliance in small voting blocs to sustain vote-buying networks.
Evidence from Colombia shows a clear negative correlation between polling station size and reported manipulation.
A robust relationship exists: Smaller stations facilitate broker enforcement via collective monitoring, as demonstrated through various identification techniques including regression discontinuity designs.
Why It Matters: This finding highlights how democratic institutions can be undermined by seemingly unrelated features of electoral systems.
