Politician Family Networks and Electoral Outcomes: Evidence from the Philippines

We demonstrate the importance of politician social networks for electoral outcomes. Using largescaledata on family networks from over 20 million individuals in 15,000 villages in the Philippines,we show that candidates for public office are disproportionately drawn from more central familiesand family network centrality contributes to higher vote shares during the elections. Consistentwith our theory of political intermediation, we present evidence that family network centralityfacilitates relationships of political exchange. Moreover, we show that family networks exercise aneffect independent of wealth, historical elite status, or previous electoral success