Corruption Voting Research Articles

Authoritarian Legacies and Partisan Bias in Corruption Voting

AbstractWhat explains the lack of electoral consequences for corrupt politicians? Building on studies of motivated reasoning and asymmetric partisan bias, this article highlights the importance of partisan differences in how voters interpret corruption convictions and make voting decisions. I contend that in post-authoritarian democracies, supporters of authoritarian legacy parties (ALPs) are less likely to punish corrupt copartisan incumbents compared to supporters of other parties faced with equally corrupt copartisan incumbents. While voters of all kinds appear likely to ignore corruption among copartisan incumbents, supporters of authoritarian legacy parties are particularly likely to do so. Using original datasets from South Korea, this study shows empirical evidence of the lack of corruption voting for ALP partisans across three legislative elections. This article further finds partisan discrepancies and a striking lack of corruption voting among authoritarian legacy partisans.

How does clarity of alternatives affect the electoral fortune of corrupt politicians?

This article lays out a theoretical framework for understanding the effects of the clarity of alternatives on corruption voting. Traditional approximations to the question of why corrupt politicians win elections focus on the limited availability of information and voter biases toward in-group candidates. I argue that while citizens are ready to punish corruption, the electoral toll for a corrupt candidate is reduced in settings of unclear electoral choices. I find support for this theoretical framework by examining the accountability enhancing consequences of the clarity of alternatives in Latin America. The results indicate that politicians running for office in settings of weak clarity of alternatives sustain less electoral damage than those running in settings of strong clarity of alternatives. The implication is that party decisions that increase voter uncertainty about the menu of choices contribute to the electoral fortune of corrupt politicians.

Perceptions of Political Corruption and Voting Behavior in South Korea

political corruption by holding elected officials accountable for their actions, citizens often fail to vote corrupt officials out of office in elections. This article explores how citizens’ perceptions of political corruption influence their voting behavior by testing three competing theories: nonvoting, opposition voting, and corruption voting. This study also investigates the types of voters involved in each form of voting by considering three mediating factors: economic evaluation, partisanship, and education. Empirical findings from the South Korean case suggest that, in general, the high level of perceived corruption decreases voter turnout, confirming the nonvoting theory. Second, corruption voting occurs mostly among those who positively evaluate the economy and have the same partisan affiliation as the incumbent candidate. Finally, a high level of education leads to opposition voting. In sum, the empirical evidence confirms that incumbent candidates’ and party’s political corruption does not always lead to the electoral victory of opposition parties and their candidates because the mediating factors play a role in strengthening or weakening the patterns of nonvoting, opposition voting, and corruption voting.

Corruption predictability and corruption voting in Asian democracies

I examine how the structure of corrupt exchanges between voters and politicians—an important-yet-underexplored form of informal institutions—shapes voters’ electoral behavior toward corruption. I argue that when voters have a clear idea of whom to bribe to secure desired services and how much they need to offer, they are less likely to engage in corruption voting and hold corrupt incumbents electorally accountable for their malfeasance. Utilizing the World Business Environment Survey on corruption predictability and the Asian Barometer survey on voters’ electoral behaviors, I report empirical evidence that institutionalized corruption promotes greater electoral tolerance of corrupt politicians in Asian democracies. The results hold against a number of robustness checks. The paper thus furthers our understanding of the effect of informal political institutions on corruption voting as well as Asia’s corruption exceptionalism.

Perceptions of Political Corruption and Voting Behavior in South Korea

While regular and competitive elections are expected to lower political corruption by holding elected officials accountable for their actions, citizens often fail to vote corrupt officials out of office in elections. This article explores how citizens’ perceptions of political corruption influence their voting behavior by testing three competing theories: nonvoting, opposition voting, and corruption voting. This study also investigates the types of voters involved in each form of voting by considering three mediating factors: economic evaluation, partisanship, and education. Empirical findings from the South Korean case suggest that, in general, the high level of perceived corruption decreases voter turnout, confirming the nonvoting theory. Second, corruption voting occurs mostly among those who positively evaluate the economy and have the same partisan affiliation as the incumbent candidate. Finally, a high level of education leads to opposition voting. In sum, the empirical evidence confirms that incumbent candidates’ and party’s political corruption does not always lead to the electoral victory of opposition parties and their candidates because the mediating factors play a role in strengthening or weakening the patterns of nonvoting, opposition voting, and corruption voting.

The Lesser Evil? Corruption Voting and the Importance of Clean Alternatives

Surveys show that citizens in all parts of the world have a strong distaste for corruption. At the same time, and contrary to the predictions of democratic theory, politicians involved in the most glaring abuse of public office often continue to receive electoral support. Using an original survey experiment conducted in Spain, this article explores a previously understudied aspect of this apparent paradox: the importance of viable and clean political alternatives. The results suggest that voters do punish political corruption when a clean alternative exists, even when the corrupt candidate is very appealing in other respects. However, when only given corrupt alternatives, respondents become much more likely to tolerate a candidate accused of corruption—even when given a convenient “no-choice” option. I discuss how these results can help us understand corruption voting and why some societies seem to be stuck in a high-corruption equilibrium.

Responsibility attribution for corruption scandals

ABSTRACTThis paper studies the effect of the type of government on responsibility attribution for corruption scandals. Most studies on corruption voting have assumed that voters punish all kinds of governments. This article challenges this assumption by distinguishing between two types of governments: single-party majority governments and minority/coalition governments. This hypothesis is tested using data from the 2011 Spanish local elections. Our findings reveal that the effect of coalition governments on corruption voting is not statistically different than majority ones. However, when we differentiate between welfare-enhancing and welfare decreasing corruption, we find that welfare-decreasing corruption has a clear negative effect on the electoral performance of the mayor’s party when it impacts single-party majority governments, but not when the mayor needs the support of other parties (minority or coalition governments).

Never Forget the First Time: Youth Exposure to Corruption, Institutional Trust and Populist Voting

The paper studies the long term impact of corruption on trust towards institutions. Previous studies have demonstrated that exposure to corruption may lower institutional trust in the short run. Whether those short term effects translate into a persistent effect is not known. We study the onset of a corruption shock that took place in Italy between 1992 and 1994. Using recent data from the Trustlab project, coordinated by the OECD, we find that young first time voters exposed to the corruption scandal still today, 25 years later, exert significantly lower institutional trust. A follow up survey reveals that their exposure to corruption also affected their current voting preferences. In particular, those young first time voters exposed to the corruption were more likely to prefer populist parties at the 2018 national elections.

Economic and corruption voting in a predominant party system: The case of Turkey

Voting behavior studies have paid scarce attention to the predominant party system (PPS), in which one party has won three consecutive legislative majorities, despite the fact that nearly half of the world democracies have had a PPS. It is often unclear why a large portion of voters prefer the same party over a long period of time. We propose two hypotheses to address the question. First, since PPSs often thrive when economic performance is strong, the long-term economic success of the incumbent party produces a “halo effect” that renders voters insensitive to short-term economic changes. Second, voters blame the incumbent party for the corruption of politicians only, and not for bureaucratic corruption. The current Turkish government initially established its wide electoral support on the basis of its economic performance, which gave rise to a PPS in 2011. However, the Turkish government has been tarnished in recent years by corruption allegations, especially since 2013. This paper applies a three-choice multinomial logit model to 2014 survey data to examine voter preference between the incumbent party, opposition parties, and neither in Turkey under its PPS. The results supported both hypotheses.

Ideology, party systems and corruption voting in European democracies

What is the impact of corruption on citizens' voting behavior? There is a growing literature on an increasingly ubiquitous puzzle in many democratic countries: that corrupt officials continue to be re-elected by voters. In this study we address this issue with a novel theory and newly collected original survey data for 24 European countries. The crux of the argument is that voters' ideology is a salient factor in explaining why citizens would continue voting for their preferred party despite the fact that it has been involved in a corruption scandal. Developing a theory of supply (number of effective parties) and demand (voters must have acceptable ideological alternatives to their preferred party), we posit that there is a U-shaped relationship between the likelihood of corruption voting and where voters place themselves on the left/right spectrum. The further to the fringes, the more likely the voters are to neglect corruption charges and continue to support their party. However, as the number of viable party alternatives increases, the effect of ideology is expected to play a smaller role. In systems with a large number of effective parties, the curve is expected to be flat, as the likelihood that the fringe voters also have a clean and reasonably ideologically close alternative to switch to. The hypothesis implies a cross level interaction for which we find strong and robust empirical evidence using hierarchical modeling. In addition, we provide empirical insights about how individual level ideology and country level party systems – among other factors – impact a voter's decision to switch parties or stay home in the face of their party being involved in a corruption scandal.

Pocketbook vs. Sociotropic Corruption Voting

The article examines the relationship between corruption and voting behavior by defining two distinct channels:pocketbook corruption voting, i.e. how personal experiences with corruption affect voting behavior; andsociotropic corruption voting, i.e. how perceptions of corruption in society do so. Individual and aggregate data from Slovakia fail to support hypotheses that corruption is an undifferentiated valence issue, that it depends on the presence of a viable anti-corruption party, or that voters tolerate (or even prefer) corruption, and support the hypothesis that the importance of each channel depends on thesalienceof each source of corruption and that pocketbook corruption voting prevails unless a credible anti-corruption party shifts media coverage of corruption and activates sociotropic corruption voting. Previous studies may have underestimated the prevalence of corruption voting by not accounting for both channels.

The economy, corruption, and the vote: Evidence from experiments in Sweden and Moldova

How does corruption affect voting behavior when economic conditions are poor? Using a novel experimental design and two original survey experiments, we offer four important conclusions. First, in a low corruption country (Sweden), voters react negatively to corruption regardless of the state of the economy. Second, in a high corruption country (Moldova), voters react negatively to corruption only when the state of the economy is also poor; when economic conditions are good, corruption is less important. Third, respondents in Sweden react more strongly to corruption stimuli than respondents in Moldova. Finally, in the low corruption country, sociotropic corruption voting (or voting based on corruption among political leaders) is relatively more important, whereas in our high corruption country, pocketbook corruption voting (or voting based on one's own personal experience with corruption, i.e., being asked to pay bribes) is equally prevalent. Our findings are consistent with multiple stable corruption equilibria, as well as with a world where voters are more responsive to corruption signals more common in their environment.