Arbeitspapier
Out of Communal Land: Clientelism through Delegation of Agricultural Tenancy Contracts
Do local institutions influence the nature of political clientelist exchange? We find a positive answer in the context of a village institution prevalent in Java since the Dutch colonial rule, where democratically elected village heads receive usufruct rights over a piece of communal village land (bengkok land) as a compensation for their service in lieu of salary. To formulate how limited-term private ownership of bengkok land promotes clientelism, we model a timely delegation of agricultural tenancy contracts to villagers-cum-voters as an incumbent re-election strategy. Based on a household survey fielded in 2018 across 130 villages in Java, Indonesia, we find that the chances of a bengkok plot being rented out increase by 6 percentage points as the time of the next election becomes closer by one year, and sharecropping is preferred to a fixed-rental contract as the election approaches. The empirical results are statistically significant and remain largely unchanged against a series of robustness checks. We also find suggestive evidence of short-term efficiency loss from clientelist politics over bengkok land.
- Language
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Englisch
- Bibliographic citation
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Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 14263
- Classification
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Wirtschaft
Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
Intergovernmental Relations; Federalism; Secession
Public Administration; Public Sector Accounting and Audits
Formal and Informal Sectors; Shadow Economy; Institutional Arrangements
Economic Development: Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis; Housing; Infrastructure
- Subject
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tanah bengkok
political budget cycle
clientelism
agricultural tenancy
electoral competition
Indonesia
- Event
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Geistige Schöpfung
- (who)
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Kurosaki, Takashi
Paul, Saumik
Witoelar, Firman
- Event
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Veröffentlichung
- (who)
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Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
- (where)
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Bonn
- (when)
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2021
- Handle
- Last update
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10.03.2025, 11:41 AM CET
Data provider
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. If you have any questions about the object, please contact the data provider.
Object type
- Arbeitspapier
Associated
- Kurosaki, Takashi
- Paul, Saumik
- Witoelar, Firman
- Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
Time of origin
- 2021