Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T06:47:55.885Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

When Do Voters Sanction Corrupt Politicians?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 June 2020

Marko Klašnja ,
Noam Lupu Open the ORCID record for Noam Lupu [Opens in a new window]  and
Joshua A. Tucker
Marko Klašnja
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington, DC20057, USA
Noam Lupu*
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN37235, USA
Joshua A. Tucker
Affiliation:
New York University, New York, NY10012, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A growing body of research explores the factors that affect when corrupt politicians are held accountable by voters. Most studies, however, focus on one or few factors in isolation, leaving incomplete our understanding of whether they condition each other. To address this, we embedded rich conjoint candidate choice experiments into surveys in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. We test the importance of two contextual factors thought to mitigate voters’ punishment of corrupt politicians: how widespread corruption is and whether it brings side benefits. Like other scholars, we find that corruption decreases candidate support substantially. But, we also find that information that corruption is widespread does not lessen the sanction applied against corruption, whereas information about the side benefits from corruption does, and does so to a similar degree as the mitigating role of permissible attitudes toward bribery. Moreover, those who stand to gain from these side benefits are less likely to sanction corruption.

Keywords

corruptionvotingsurvey experimentconjointArgentinaChileUruguay
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Experimental Political Science , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , Summer 2021 , pp. 161 - 171
Copyright
© The Experimental Research Section of the American Political Science Association 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

We are grateful to Fernanda Boidi and the LAPOP Lab for feedback on our survey experiments. We also thank Catherine De Vries and Miriam Golden for their helpful comments. We presented an earlier version of the paper at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the European Political Science Association. The data, code, and any additional materials required to replicate all analyses in this article are available at the Journal of Experimental Political Science Dataverse within the Harvard Dataverse Network, at: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/N0ZRDZ. The authors have no conflicts of interest. NL and MK conducted the statistical analyses. MK wrote the first draft of the paper. All the authors contributed to the research design of the experiments and the paper, as well as revising and editing the manuscript.

References

Anduiza, Eva, Gallego, Aina and Muñoz, Jordi. 2013. Turning a Blind Eye: Experimental Evidence of Partisan Bias in Attitudes Towards Corruption. Comparative Political Studies 46(12): 1664–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arias, Eric, Balan, Pablo, Larreguy, Horacio, Marshall, John and Querubin, Pablo. 2019. Information Provision, Voter Coordination, and Electoral Accountability: Evidence from Mexican Social Networks. American Political Science Review 113(2): 475–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Avis, Eric, Ferraz, Claudio and Finan, Frederico. 2016. Do Government Audits Reduce Corruption? Estimating the Impacts of Exposing Corrupt Politicians. NBER Working Paper No. 22443.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barberá, Pablo, Fernandez-Vazquez, Pablo and Rivero, Gonzalo. 2016. Rooting Out Corruption or Rooting For Corruption? The Electoral Consequences of Corruption Scandals in Spain, 2003-2011. Political Science Research and Methods 4(2): 379–97.Google Scholar
Barr, Abigail and Serra, Danila. 2010. Corruption and Culture: An Experimental Analysis. Journal of Public Economics 94(11): 862–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Besley, Timothy. 2007. Principled Agents? The Political Economy of Good Government. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boas, Taylor C., Hidalgo, F. Daniel and Melo, Marcus A.. 2019. Norms versus Action: Voting Against Malfeasance in Brazil. American Journal of Political Science 63(2): 385–400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Breitenstein, Sofia. 2019. Choosing the Crook: A Conjoint Experiment on Voting for Corrupt Politicians. Research & Politics 6(1).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chang, Eric C.C., Golden, Miriam A. and Hill, Seth J.. 2010. Legislative Malfeasance and Political Accountability. World Politics 62(2): 177–220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dafoe, Allan, Zhang, Baobao and Caughey, Devin. 2018. Information Equivalence in Survey Experiments. Political Analysis 26(4): 399–416.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferraz, Claudio and Finan, Frederico S.. 2008. Exposing Corrupt Politicians: The Effects of Brazil’s Publicly Released Audits on Electoral Outcomes. Quarterly Journal of Economics 123(2): 703–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hainmueller, Jens, Hopkins, Daniel and Yamamoto, Teppei. 2014. Causal Inference in Conjoint Analysis: Understanding Multi-Dimensional Choices via Stated Preference Experiments. Political Analysis 22(1): 1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hainmueller, Jens, Hangartner, Dominik and Yamamoto, Teppei. 2015. Validating Vignette and Conjoint Survey Experiments Against Real-World Behavior. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112(8): 2395–400.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Iyengar, Shanto. 1990. The Accessibility Bias in Politics: Television News and Public Opinion. International Journal of Public Opinion Research 2(1): 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klašnja, Marko. 2015. Corruption and the Incumbency Disadvantage: Theory and Evidence. The Journal of Politics 77(4): 928–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klašnja, Marko, Little, Andrew T. and Tucker, Joshua A.. 2018. Political Corruption Traps. Political Science Research and Methods 6(3): 413–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klašnja, Marko and Tucker, Joshua A.. 2013. The Economy, Corruption, and the Vote: Evidence from Experiments in Sweden and Moldova. Electoral Studies 32(3): 536–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klašnja, Marko, Tucker, Joshua A. and Deegan-Krause, Kevin. 2016. Pocketbook vs. Sociotropic Corruption Voting. British Journal of Political Science 46(1): 67–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klašnja, Marko, Lupu, Noam and Tucker, Joshua A.. 2020. Replication Data for: When Do Voters Sanction Corrupt Politicians? Harvard Dataverse, V3. doi: 10.7910/DVN/N0ZRDZ.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Konstantinidis, Iannis and Xezonakis, Georgios. 2013. Sources of Tolerance towards Corrupted Politicians in Greece: The Role of Trade-Offs and Individual Benefits. Crime, Law and Social Change 60(5): 549–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lupu, Noam. 2015. Partisanship in Latin America. In The Latin American Voter: Pursuing Representation and Accountability in Challenging Contexts, ed. Carlin, RE, Singer, MM and Zechmeister, EJ. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Mares, Isabela and Visconti, Giancarlo. Forthcoming. Voting for the Lesser Evil: Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment in Romania. Political Science Research and Methods.Google Scholar
Martin, Lucy E. S. Forthcoming. All Sins are not Created Equal: The Factors that Drive Perceptions of Corruption Severity. Journal of Experimental Political Science.Google Scholar
Meirowitz, Adam and Tucker, Joshua A.. 2013. People Power or a One-Shot Deal? A Dynamic Model of Protest. American Journal of Political Science 57(2): 478–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pavão, Nara. 2018. Corruption as the Only Option: The Limits to Electoral Accountability. Journal of Politics 80(3): 996–1010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rose, Richard and Peiffer, Caryn. 2015. Paying Bribes for Public Services: A Global Guide to Grass-Roots Corruption. London: Palgrave.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Solaz, Hector, De Vries, Catherine E. and De Geus, Roosmarijn. 2019. In-Group Favouritism and the Electoral Punishment of Corruption. Comparative Political Studies 52(6): 896–926.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Truex, Rory. 2011. Corruption, Attitudes, and Education: Survey Evidence from Nepal. World Development 39(7): 1133–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weitz-Shapiro, Rebecca and Winters, Matthew S.. 2013. Lacking Information or Condoning Corruption? Voter Attitudes Toward Corruption in Brazil. Comparative Politics 45(4): 418–36.Google Scholar
Zechmeister, Elizabeth J. and Zizumbo-Colunga, Daniel. 2013. The Varying Political Toll of Concerns about Corruption in Good Versus Bad Economic Times. Comparative Political Studies 46(10): 1190–218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Klašnja et al. Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/N0ZRDZ
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Klašnja et al. supplementary material

Online Appendix

Download Klašnja et al. supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 1.8 MB