Disciplinary Reactions: Alienation and the Reform of Vote Buying in the Philippines Frederic Charles Schaffer Associate Professor Department of Political Science E53-435 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, MA 02139 617-253-3138
[email protected] 8-22-02 draft Prepared for delivery at: “Trading Political Rights: The Comparative Politics of Vote Buying,” International Conference, Center for International Studies, MIT, Cambridge, August 26-27, 2002. The 2002 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston, August 29 - Sept 1, 2002. Clean election reform in any country is in part a disciplinary project.1 To reform an electoral system - to reduce or eliminate vote buying, voter intimidation, fraudulent voting, ballot box stuffing, and the like - is to prohibit or make unacceptable certain kinds of acts. This reality suggests a need to study carefully whether reformers have an adequate understanding of the people and practices they seek to reform. History shows us that this is often not the case, especially when the object of reform is the “other” (Scott 1998). It also suggests a related need to understand how people who are the target of reform experience and react to these disciplinary efforts. Whether voters (who are the subject of this paper, but other actors as well) protest, acquiesce, resist, subvert, or embrace specific measures will have significant implications for their implementation and ultimate effect. Rarely are these aspects of clean election reform studied. One intriguing exception is the archival research of Déloye and Ihl (1991) into voided ballots cast during the 1881 French legislative elections. To reduce social pressure on voters, French lawmakers had introduced paper ballots, and imposed strict rules to disqualify ballots with extraneous writing or markings on them.