Vote Buying and Social Desirability Bias: Experimental Evidence from Nicaragua Ezequiel Gonzalez-Ocantos University of Notre Dame Chad Kiewiet de Jonge University of Notre Dame Carlos Mel ´ endez University of Notre Dame Javier Osorio University of Notre Dame David W. Nickerson University of Notre Dame Qualitative studies of vote buying find the practice to be common in many Latin American countries, but quantitative studies using surveys find little evidence of vote buying. Social desirability bias can account for this discrepancy. We employ a survey-based list experiment to minimize the problem. After the 2008 Nicaraguan municipal elections, we asked about vote-buying behavior by campaigns using a list experiment and the questions traditionally used by studies of vote buying on a nationally representative survey. Our list experiment estimated that 24% of registered voters in Nicaragua were offered a gift or service in exchange for votes, whereas only 2% reported the behavior when asked directly. This detected social desirability bias is nonrandom and analysis based on traditional obtrusive measures of vote buying is unreliable. We also provide systematic evidence that shows the importance of monitoring strategies by parties in determining who is targeted for vote buying. C lientelistic electoral linkages are characterized by a transaction of political favors in which politi- cians offer immediate material incentives to cit- izens or groups in exchange for electoral support. 1 Vote buying, which is a more particularized form of clien- telism involving the exchange of goods for votes at the individual level (Stokes 2007), has generated numerous ethnographies and surveys to measure its incidence and test-related hypotheses. While qualitative research rou- tinely finds vote buying to be pervasive in the developing world (e.g., Auyero 2001), individual-level surveys often uncover low levels of such exchanges (e.g., Transparency Ezequiel Gonzalez-Ocantos is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science, 217 O’Shaughnessy Hall, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556 (egonzal4@nd.edu). Chad Kiewiet de Jonge is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science, 217 O’Shaughnessy Hall, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556 (ckiewiet@nd.edu). Carlos Mel´ endez is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science, 217 O’Shaughnessy Hall, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556 (cmelend1@nd.edu). Javier Osorio is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science, 217 O’Shaughnessy Hall, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556 (fosorioz@nd.edu). David W. Nickerson is Associate Professor of Political Science, 217 O’Shaughnessy Hall, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556 (dnickers@nd.edu). The authors would like to thank Darren Davis, Fran Hagopian, Victoria Murillo, Anabella Expa˜ na-N´ ajera, Simeon Nichter, Ana de la O, Maya Parson, Shannon Walsh, and Rebecca Weitz-Shapiro for generous feedback; Paul Avey, Robert Braithwaite, and Christopher Sullivan for their collaboration in designing the survey; and Borge y Asociados for fielding the survey. Nickerson would like to thank the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University for the time to write the article and the Dean of the College of Arts and Letters at the University of Notre Dame for providing funds for the survey. Appendices and material for replicating the statistical analysis can be found at www.nd.edu/∼dnickers. 1 Programmatic linkages, by contrast, are based on the promise of indirect benefits resulting from investment in public goods or on direct benefits distributed by public bureaucracies according to standardized rules (Kitschelt 2000). International 2004). If respondents are reluctant to ad- mit to receiving gifts in exchange for votes, then surveys could systematically understate the amount of vote buy- ing. Moreover, if this measurement error is nonrandom, then empirical results about the dynamics of vote buying derived from surveys are on a shaky foundation. This ar- ticle uses a survey experiment to lessen social desirability bias, describe whom campaigns targeted with vote buy- ing in an election, and demonstrate that this measurement error is nonrandom. The academic consensus is that the exchange of gifts and favors for votes has deleterious consequences for American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 56, No. 1, January 2012, Pp. 202–217 C  2011, Midwest Political Science Association DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-5907.2011.00540.x 202