V. N. (NOVEMBER, ), – DOI 10.7764/LAJE.49.2.237 VOTE BUYING, POLITICAL PATRONAGE AND SELECTIVE PLUNDER*

This article introduces a political economy model for studying the relationship between the vote-buying strategy of a party that has won the mayoralty of a municipality in the last election and its preferences as the governing party on the municipal political space, given its desire to maintain its position. The main result is that the governing party prefers to promote, given its clientelistic structure, the political agendas with which it selectively impoverishes worse-of f (WO) individuals; this will allow that equilibrium prices in vote markets will be reduced in a next election, and therefore, it will help enable the governing party to achieve its objective of maintaining governmental power through its vote-buying strategy in the exchange network