Can Informed Public Deliberation Overcome Clientelism? Experimental Evidence from Benin
通过贝宁总统选举中的实地实验，研究了基于纲领性议题的市政厅会议能否替代传统的庇护主义竞选策略，发现这种讨论降低了庇护主义盛行度，不影响投票率，并改变了候选人得票分布。
This paper studies the electoral effects of town hall meetings based on programmatic, nonclientelist platforms. The experiment involves the cooperation of leading candidates in a presidential election in Benin. A campaign strategy based solely on these meetings was assigned to randomly selected villages and compared to the standard strategy of clientelist rallies. We find that treatment reduces the prevalence of clientelism and does not affect turnout. Treatment also lowers the vote shares for the candidate with a political stronghold in the village and is more effective in garnering votes in regions where a candidate does not have a political stronghold.