Abstract
The literature on forms of particularism explores the impact of institutional variables on what is denoted, alternatively, as constituency service, pork-barrel politics, or corruption. Attention has mostly been given to electoral systems, but other institutional provisions and political factors, such as party strength, are also relevant. The present contribution investigates the likely effects of electoral reforms on corruption control and seeks confirmation of the hypothesis that single member plurality (even within mixed member) systems are conducive to a type of particularism that might help fight corruption, taking Italy as a case. We test the impact of two electoral reforms and three electoral systems enacted in Italy between 1996 and 2016, whose primary aim was bolstering enfeebled party leaderships and facilitating the formation of durable governments, and we compare the effort at corruption control of the Italian governments born under these different electoral systems with those of other European democracies.
Highlights
Is often singled out as a country characterized by widespread clientelism, bribery, nepotism, and the many other terms that are conventionally used to denote exchanges involving inappropriate public-private transactions and entailing negative consequences for democratic life, economic performance and civil coexistence— corrupt exchanges in the broadest sense
The ranking based on a simple measurement of particularism (SMP > open-list proportional representation (OLPR) > closedlist proportional representation (CLPR)) gets reversed when we focus on the kind of exchanges that get incentivized by these systems: In our case, properly corrupt exchanges (OLPR > CLPR > single member plurality (SMP))
We have tried to highlight how different electoral systems incentivize different types of particularism and argued that some can be used as intermediate steps on a path towards corruption control
Summary
Is often singled out as a country characterized by widespread clientelism, bribery, nepotism, and the many other terms that are conventionally used to denote exchanges involving inappropriate public-private transactions and entailing negative consequences for democratic life, economic performance and civil coexistence— corrupt exchanges in the broadest sense Not all such exchanges are dangerous for a country’s economy and democracy, yet all have some spillover effects that may lead to graver forms of corruption. The literature is far from having reached a consensus, we start from the assumption that single member plurality (SMP) systems are more conducive to constituency service and pork-barrel politics than closedlist proportional representation (CLPR) and that open-list proportional representation (OLPR) is more conducive to rent-seeking and corruption These are very different types of particularism that may lead to suboptimal allocation of resources, but that differ in terms of their impact on the legitimacy of the system and the citizens’ assessment of democracy.
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