HSS: Family Networks, Clientelism, and Voter Behavior: Evidence from the Philippines

What role do social networks play on the decision voters make of who to support at the polls? There is significant agreement that individuals in a social network tend to share political preferences, but why? Are shared political preferences within social networks only the product of selection, or do they carry influence as well? In this article, we exploit local naming conventions to asses blood and marriage links between voters and local political candidates spanning one whole city in the Philippines. We then collect survey data on pre-election candidate leanings as well as actual voting behavior (after the election) of 900 voters randomly drawn from these family networks. We show that family ties are predictive of voter preferences prior to the election and that they facilitate persuasion. We present evidence that this is because clientelistic targeting is channeled through family networks, and that it is most effective in influencing the behavior of voters who are more proximate to a candidate.