The local electoral impacts of conditional cash transfers: Evidence from a field experiment

Abstract

I assess the impacts of targeted government transfers on a local incumbent's electoral performance. I use the randomized roll-out of a CCT program in the Philippines. Although the program was usually implemented in all villages in a municipality, a subset of beneficiary municipalities were randomly selected to receive the program in a randomly selected subset of villages. A number of municipalities are tightly controlled by political dynasties and, thus, I can test whether the effects are dependent upon the political environment. In a competitive political environment, incumbent vote share is 26 percentage-points higher in municipalities where the program was implemented in all villages than in municipalities where the program was implemented in half of them. The program had no impact in municipalities with low levels of political competition. Further, there is evidence consistent with the argument that incumbents compensated households in control villages by redistributing their own budget there.