The usefulness of corruptible elections in China

In China, frequent elections are hold at village level. They are believed to be rigged, and at least heavily influenced by the government. Two economics professors Loren Brandt and Matthew Turner at the University of Toronto however find that these elections, although corruptible, are still very effective in reducing rent-seeking activities.

In the fall of 2000, they conducted surveys in 60 villages in 30 counties in 6 provinces in China. Based on the detailed data they collect from villagers, they conclude that  even in most corruptible environment with the most rigged elections,  there is strong negative relationship between rent-seeking activities an re-election success, which suggests that villagers are able to punish those who don’t act in the interests of their constituents.

Most importantly, they find that restrictions on proxy voting improve the ability of rural Chinese electorates to oversee their leaders. This is consistent with reports that proxy voting is widely abused to rig elections. They also find that public nominating procedure also leads to better corporate governance, but mainly through the channel of recruiting the most capable leaders instead of providing incentive for incumbents to work harder in order to stave off more competent challengers.

Surprisingly, they find it does not help much to provide a public forum for candidates to debate and make speeches, or to fix the locations of ballot boxes. The explanations (I beleive) could be that (1) within a village everyone knows each other and public election campaign becomes less relevant; (2) it is easier and safer  to rig the elections through proxy voting procedure than to physically manipulate the ballot boxes.

The Usefulness of Corruptible Elections
ABSTRACT: Using a sample of rural Chinese villages which have recently been the subject of democratic reforms we look for relationships between marginal changes in the democratic process and marginal changes in economic outcomes. We find that even very poorly conducted elections can have large incentive effects. That is, even corruptible elections provide leaders with strong incentives to act in the interests of their constituents. Our findings also allow us to rank the importance of four possible election reforms which have attracted the attention of international observers and academic researchers.