Abstract
Citizens’ political engagement is often theorized to enrich representation, accountability, and generally strengthen democracy. Yet extensive evidence from developing countries documents that citizens do not only demand rights and better government services, but also targeted goods, sometimes in exchange for political support. Aside from poverty, little is known about what conditions induce citizens to make different types of demands. Even less is known about civil society organizations’ demand-making and the strategies of their leaders. We argue that partiality and favoritism in the exercise of government power inform civil society leaders’ demand-making strategies. Where government operations follow a logic of favoritism, leveraging connections may seem the more rational method to advance claims, and particularistic and even clientelistic demand-making strategies are likely to be more prevalent. We will test our argument experimentally by conducting two original surveys on 2400 associational leaders in Peru. A first baseline survey contains an embedded vignette experiment that manipulates institutional characteristics: 1) local corruption levels and 2) the degree of politicization of local administrative bodies. A follow-up survey will detect longer term effects and behavioral change