Unconditional cash transfer and polarized support

Can money buy support in established democracies? Existing research on the political effects of cash transfers yields mixed findings, in part because most district-level analyses of ‘conditional’ cash transfer fail to distinguish between recipients and nonrecipients. This article advances a polarization hypothesis based on rational choice and motivated reasoning theories: unconditional cash transfers increase political support for incumbents only among the co-partisan recipients while leaving opposition supporters unmoved. We test this hypothesis by examining a unique ‘unconditional’ COVID-19 relief voucher lottery in Taiwan in 2021, in which vouchers were randomly assigned based on the last two digits of citizens’ national identification numbers. Combining lottery outcomes with an original individual-level survey ( n = 776), we show that voucher receipts increased presidential approval only among respondents aligned with the ruling party. These findings suggest that even under conditions most favourable to programmatic redistribution, the political effects of cash transfers remain polarized.