Non-Policy Politics

Calvo and Murillo consider the non-policy benefits that voters consider when deciding their vote. While parties advertise policies, they also deliver non-policy benefits in the form of competent economic management, constituency service, and patronage jobs. Different from much of the existing research, which focuses on the implementation of policy or on the delivery of clientelistic benefits, this book provides a unified view of how politicians deliver broad portfolios of policy and non-policy benefits to their constituency. The authors' theory shows how these non-policy resources also shape parties' ideological positions and which type of electoral offers they target to poorer or richer voters. With exhaustive empirical work, both qualitative and quantitative, the research documents how linkages between parties and voters shape the delivery of non-policy benefits in Argentina and Chile.
Delivers an empirically rich account of voters' preferences and parties' responses in two new unequal democracies to test our framework
Systematizes how to assess preferences of voters across different demographic groups and the bias they may generate in parties' responsiveness
Provides the first systematic empirical analysis of partisan networks, emphasizing how activists' features, recruitment, and connection to voters shapes their impact on both clientelism and ideological persuasion
Allows readers to distinguish how activists' electoral tasks vary across contexts and how their impact can be measured