Compare methods

	Vote Buying Analysis	Clientelism Analysis	Distributive Politics Analysis	Economic Voting Analysis
Field	Political Economy	Political Economy	Political Economy	Political Economy
Family	Regression model	Process / pipeline	Regression model	MCDM
Year of origin	2008	2005	1986	1971
Originator	Simeon Nichter; Ezequiel Gonzalez-Ocantos et al.	Susan C. Stokes; Herbert Kitschelt & Steven Wilkinson	Gary Cox & Mathew McCubbins (core); Avinash Dixit & John Londregan (swing)	Gerald Kramer; Michael Lewis-Beck & Mary Stegmaier
Type	Measurement-and-targeting regression model	Network-and-exchange pipeline for clientelist accountability	Regression analysis of electorally motivated spending allocation	Formal reward-punishment model of voting
Seminal source	Nichter, S. (2008). Vote Buying or Turnout Buying? Machine Politics and the Secret Ballot. American Political Science Review, 102(1), 19-31.	Stokes, S. C. (2005). Perverse Accountability: A Formal Model of Machine Politics with Evidence from Argentina. American Political Science Review, 99(3), 315-325.	Cox, G. W., & McCubbins, M. D. (1986). Electoral Politics as a Redistributive Game. The Journal of Politics, 48(2), 370-389.	Kramer, G. H. (1971). Short-Term Fluctuations in U.S. Voting Behavior, 1896-1964. American Political Science Review, 65(1), 131-143.
Aliases	Electoral Clientelism Measurement, Turnout Buying Analysis, Vote-Buying Targeting Model, List-Experiment Vote Buying	Machine Politics Analysis, Contingent Exchange Analysis, Broker-Mediated Clientelism, Party Machine Network Analysis	Electoral Targeting Analysis, Swing versus Core Voter Analysis, Pork Barrel Politics Analysis, Tactical Redistribution Analysis	Reward-Punishment Model, Retrospective Voting Model, Economic Vote Function, Responsibility Hypothesis
Related	3	3	3	4
Summary	Vote buying analysis is the measurement-and-modeling toolkit for studying the distribution of private goods or cash in exchange for electoral support. Two problems define the field. First, who is being paid: Simeon Nichter's 2008 article showed that machines frequently engage in turnout buying — paying their own already-loyal supporters to show up — rather than the classic vote buying of swing voters, a distinction with sharp implications for who gets targeted. Second, how to measure something respondents are reluctant to admit: Gonzalez-Ocantos and colleagues' 2012 study demonstrated that direct survey questions sharply understate vote buying because of social-desirability bias and that list experiments recover far higher, more credible prevalence. Vote buying analysis combines such debiased measurement with regression models of targeting.	Clientelism analysis studies the contingent, direct exchange of material benefits for political support and the broker-mediated networks that make such exchange enforceable. Susan Stokes's 2005 formal model of machine politics, built on evidence from Argentina, showed that clientelism inverts normal democratic accountability: instead of voters holding politicians to account, the party machine holds voters to account, rewarding compliance and punishing defection through brokers who can monitor behavior. Kitschelt and Wilkinson's 2007 comparative volume situated this contingent linkage alongside programmatic competition and mapped its variation across democracies. The analysis combines a network view of the party-broker-client machine with a model of how monitoring through dense social ties sustains the bargain.	Distributive politics analysis studies how governments allocate divisible public spending — grants, transfers, projects, and pork — across districts and groups to maximize electoral support. Two competing theories anchor the field. The swing-voter logic, formalized by Avinash Dixit and John Londregan in 1996 (building on Lindbeck and Weibull), holds that parties target marginal districts where votes are most responsive to spending. The core-voter logic, associated with Gary Cox and Mathew McCubbins's 1986 redistributive-game model, holds that parties instead reward loyal supporters whose preferences and reliability they know best. The empirical method is a regression of observed transfers on electoral characteristics — district marginality and partisan alignment — to test which targeting strategy the data reveal.	Economic voting analysis is the formal study of how voters reward or punish incumbents according to economic performance. In the reward-punishment (retrospective) model pioneered by Gerald Kramer in 1971, support for the governing party is a function of recent economic outcomes — growth, unemployment, and inflation — so that good times re-elect incumbents and bad times turn them out. Michael Lewis-Beck and Mary Stegmaier's 2000 review consolidated the field, establishing that economic voting is predominantly sociotropic (based on the national economy rather than personal finances) and that its strength depends on the clarity of responsibility: how easily voters can attribute outcomes to the incumbent.