Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/236294 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 14263
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
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.
Subjects: 
tanah bengkok
political budget cycle
clientelism
agricultural tenancy
electoral competition
Indonesia
JEL: 
D72
H77
H83
O17
O18
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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