How clientelism works: Evidence from the Barinas special election
利用2022年委内瑞拉巴里纳斯州意外重选作为自然实验，发现选举导致选民收到食品包裹的概率增加，且温和反对派和第三方选民获益更大，支持了选举中政府偏向摇摆选民而非核心支持者的空间模型预测。
Do politicians target the benefits of social programs to party loyalists or to swing voters? Traditional tests of this question are clouded by an identification problem caused by the simultaneity of politician and voter choices to participate in the exchange of assistance for votes. I use the holding of an unanticipated repeat gubernatorial election in the Venezuelan state of Barinas in 2022 as a natural experiment to identify the effects of elections on the distribution of government assistance. I estimate that the holding of the election led to an increase in the probability of voters in Barinas receiving food packages in comparison with the control group of voters in the state of Apure. I also find that moderate opposition and third-party voters received larger increases in food benefits. These results are consistent with the predictions of the spatial model of distributive politics, according to which elections lead governments to direct more benefits to swing voters instead of core supporters. The findings illustrate why investigation of cross sectional correlations is insufficient to test the implications of theories of voting if it is not accompanied by a clear identification strategy to help isolate the source of the underlying shocks.