How Much Is Your Vote? Opportunistic Business Cycles of Grant Expenditures in Indonesia’s Local Election

The opportunistic political cycle’s theories argued that the incumbent raises the visible expenses in the election time. The paper presents an alternative case that the public planning cycle impedes the incumbent to hike these expenditures. As a short-cut, the incumbent prefers to increase the grants to the voters, which can be comprehended as the vote-buying action. The paper tests the argument by using Indonesia local election and grants spending data from 2008 to 2013. Through treating the endogeneity of incumbency, the analysis results suggest that when the incumbent is participating in the election, the increase in these expenses are observed. Moreover, the hike of grant expenditures is mediated if the incumbent is in a loose electoral contest, where the political concentration is high. In the opposite, the grant expenditures increase to a greater extent if the incumbent participates in a tight election.