In the late 1970s, Latin America started a long process of democratization as most countries in the region replaced different forms of authoritarian regimes with freely elected ones. Since then, much has been accomplished in terms of democratic governance, but long standing problems still persist. Among them is the phenomenon of vote buying which, according to several country studies, remains deeply entrenched across the region. Consistent with previous case study works, we hypothesize that vote buying in Latin America is a function of the degree of poverty. Thus, the larger the pool of poor voters, the more likely political machines will practice vote buying to maximize their electoral chances of success. The contribution of our analysis to the ongoing academic debate rests on its cross-national nature, something missing in the literature of vote buying in Latin America.
