Location: McKinney Conference Room, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street
Ana L. De La O, Assistant Professor of Political Science, is also affiliated with the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. She earned her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in September 2007. Her research interests include causes and consequences of redistribution, politics of public goods provision, effects of anti-poverty programs on the political behavior of recipients in developing countries, particularly Latin America, and the use of field experimental research methods.
Event Summary
Research Studies Connections between Mexican Social Program and PoliticsDespite the non-clientalized and de-politicized nature of Mexico's social welfare program, Progresa, its presence in communities alters the voter turnout and increases the the incumbent party's share of the votes. Ana De La O, assistant professor of political science at Yale, discussed how she came to these conclusions as well as their larger implications for social welfare during a recent lecture at Watson.
Since its start in 1997, Progresa's budget has grown to US$2.5 billion. The money, which the state gives to women, pays families' forgone income if their children remain in school and provides monetary supplements for food. Unlike social programs characterized by traditional clientalism, in which aid is exchanged for votes, Progresa has made clear that "if families obey the rules of the program, they will stay in the program," De La O said. This has fundamentally altered local politics, as politicians can no longer use social policies to control voting behavior. Still, the incumbent government has employed subtle logos to tie Progresa to the federal government and, by extension, to the president, De La O said.
Using a randomized sample of villages enrolled in the program, De La O studied the extent to which Progresa's perceived association with the federal government affected elections. She compared villages that had been enrolled for 21 months before the July 2000 elections to villages that had only been enrolled for six months before the elections, as the latter group would have had less time to realize the effects of the program. Both groups of villages were comparable to each other in baseline political behavior. Voter behavior was statistically significant in regions where large percentages of the population were enrolled in Progresa. It was a decisive issue in the campaigns, with both parties intensifying their campaigns in Progresa areas.
When questioned about how Progresa differed from traditional clientalism, De La O responded that there was less support for the incumbent party in places where it was thought that the program was being politically manipulated.
In the future De La O hopes to focus her research on the opinions and information available about the program and how this changes when more information is presented. Additionally, she would like to undertake a comparison between Progresa and a similar type of social welfare program.
By Watson Institute Student Rapporteur Brenna Carmody '09