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Corruption and satisfaction with democracy: the conditional role of electoral disproportionality and ballot control

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2018

Alessandro Pellegata  and
Vincenzo Memoli
Alessandro Pellegata*
Affiliation:
Department of Social and Political Sciences, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milano, Italy
Vincenzo Memoli
Affiliation:
Department of Political and Social Sciences, Università degli Studi di Catania, Catania, Italy
*
*E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Existing literature has analysed the relationship between electoral systems and either corruption or satisfaction with democracy (SWD) focussing on the traditional distinction between majoritarian and proportional systems. This paper, instead, investigates if and how specific aspects of electoral systems moderate the negative effects of corruption perceptions on SWD. We argue that two mechanisms act simultaneously but at different levels. The first mechanism is the relationship between voters and the national government, while the second links single representatives to their constituents. We advance conditional hypotheses that postulate an attenuating effect of disproportionality and a reinforcing impact of personal vote. Empirical results from 35 elections in 33 democracies, using both individual and aggregate-level data, confirm the research hypotheses. More disproportional electoral systems weaken the impact of citizens’ perceived corruption on their democratic satisfaction, while this is strengthened by systems in which the ballot control is mostly in the hand of the voters.

Keywords

corruptiondisproportionalityelectoral systemsballot controlsatisfaction with democracy
Type
Research Article
Information
European Political Science Review , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , August 2018 , pp. 393 - 416
Copyright
© European Consortium for Political Research 2018 

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