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Clientelism as Persuasion-Buying

In distributing clientelistic payoffs to citizens, the best strategy a party machine can pursue, we argue, is to target citizens who are opinion-leading epicenters in informal conversation networks. This persuasion-buying strategy carries the highest potential yield for the party because the payoff can create a social multiplier: The effect of the clientelistic gift can be magnified via the conversion of multiple voters within a payoff recipient’s personal networks. Using cross-sectional survey data from 22 Latin American countries and a panel survey from Mexico, we confirm that individuals who engage in frequent political persuasion and who are located in large political discussion networks are the most likely recipients of clientelistic payoffs. We also show that a finding that is key to previous theories, namely, that loyal partisans are the most likely targets of clientelism, is driven by omitted-variable and endogeneity bias.