Choosing the crook

The coexistence of harsh disapproval of corruption and the limited electoral consequences of malfeasant behavior remains a conundrum in social sciences. While elections should be used to hold politicians accountable, evidence shows that voters only mildly punish corrupt politicians. This paper asses...

ver descrição completa

Detalhes bibliográficos
Autor: Breitenstein, Sofia|||0000-0002-5591-3320
Formato: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2019
País:España
Recursos:Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:ddd.uab.cat:221014
Acesso em linha:https://ddd.uab.cat/record/221014
https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.1177/2053168019832230
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palavra-chave:Corruption
Voting
Experiment
Partisanship
Economic performance
Descrição
Resumo:The coexistence of harsh disapproval of corruption and the limited electoral consequences of malfeasant behavior remains a conundrum in social sciences. While elections should be used to hold politicians accountable, evidence shows that voters only mildly punish corrupt politicians. This paper assesses the trade-off hypothesis, which suggests that voters forgive corrupt candidates when these candidates provide other valued outcomes. It distinguishes two possible factors against which integrity can be traded-partisanship and economic performance-and tests them in a multidimensional experiment. With the results of an original conjoint analysis, this paper provides compelling evidence for the relative importance of corruption when casting a vote and the mitigating effects of other valued candidate characteristics. Even when obtaining highly credible information, partisanship determines the vote to the same extent as corruption. Additionally, co-partisanship and a strong economic performance moderate the negative effect corruption has on the vote.