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Political Investment: Remittances and Elections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2012

Abstract

Elections, the defining feature of representative democracy, are generally considered domestic matters. However, elections are increasingly influenced by and conducted on the international stage, and migrants have become increasingly important political actors in home country elections. This article analyses the relationship between migrants’ remittances and elections in their countries of origin, and argues that migrants’ decisions to remit reflect their home countries’ electoral calendars and political context. An analysis of remittance flows to eighty-one developing countries, 1990–2005, provides systematic evidence for the existence of political remittance cycles. Remittances increase in election years, an effect that is larger the more contested the election and the poorer the home country, suggesting an understudied link between developing countries’ domestic politics and their citizens living abroad.

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Articles
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012 

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Footnotes

*

RAND Corporation (email: Angela_O'Mahony@rand.org). The author wishes to thank Antje Ellermann, Susan Hyde, Christopher Kam, David Leblang, Benjamin Nyblade, Stephanie Rickard, Marc Rosenblum, J. David Singer and Stefanie Walter, as well as Jorge Amigo for his research assistance. The online version of this article has an appendix; supplementary material is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0007123412000737

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99 For ease of interpretation, the x-axis in Figure 1 is labelled with GDP per capita rather than GDP per capita, ln.

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