Non-policy politics: richer voters, poorer voters, and the diversification of electoral strategies

Table of Contents Prologue 1. Non-policy politics 2. A demand-side model of non-policy politics 3. Tracing political preferences and party organization in Argentina and Chile 4. Mapping voter preference in Argentina and Chile: 5. Party organization: how activists reach voters 6. Voters' preferences and Pparties' electoral offers 7. Party activists and their conditional effect on the vote 8. Targeting patronage in Argentina and Chile 9. Back to policy offers 10. Non-policy politics and electoral responsiveness 11. Appendices.

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.