Expressway to Votes: Infrastructure Projects and Voter Persuasion

Abstract

This paper provides causal evidence on how political parties can sway voters at scale in nascent electoral democracies. We collect novel data on expressway construction by the Justice and Development Party in Turkey and use province-by-year variation in construction to show that votes for the Justice and Development Party increased in response to the expressways. The estimates imply that the expressways increased the Justice and Development Party's vote share by 4.8 percentage points-a third of the increase from 2002 to 2011. We provide evidence that the visibility and competence signalled by the expressway expansion, and not increased local economic growth, drove increased vote shares.