Mo­gens Kamp Justesen

This project addresses a fundamental puzzle of electoral politics and its consequences for firms and public goods: Why do ordinary voters, including the poor, sometimes vote extremely rich business tycoons into political office? And does the election of tycoons matter for the firms they own and the voters they are supposed to serve? These questions are addressed in two related work-packages. First, we examine sources of voter support for tycoons, focusing on perceptions of candidate competence, corruption, and the use of clientelism to mobilize voter support. We examine this using survey experiments in Ukraine and South Africa, where tycoons play a prominent role in politics. Second, we zoom in on the effects of tycoon incumbency for the firms they own and for public goods provision. To examine this, we exploit a series of regression-discontinuity designs using data from closely contested national elections across democracies and from local elections in Brazil and South Africa.