For Their Money and Votes: Farmers, Distributors, and Builders

Abstract

National power in a democratic system depends on a political party’s ability to gain more votes during elections than its opponents. Winning enough votes, however, depends on many important factors. Money is clearly essential in every system to varying degrees; the more money in a political party’s coffers, the more opportunity to use it to sell the party’s candidates to the voters by paying for the candidate’s travel expenses, building a small army of election campaign workers, buying expensive mass-media campaigns, and, in some systems, paying off the leaders of key voting blocks. Organizing and coordinating such efforts are almost as important as having the money to pay for them. And of course, money and organization will be useless unless a political party promises most voters what they want to hear. Once in office, performance becomes as important as money, organization, and promises to maintaining the party in power. A party in power does not have to fulfill all its promises; it simply has to convince most voters that it has done a better job in office under the circumstances than its opponents would have done. Voters do not have to actually be better off than they were before the previous election, they simply have to be made to believe that they are either better off, or less badly-off than if the opposition had lead the government.