Corruption and Elections: An Empirical Study for a Cross-Section of Countries
22 Pages Posted: 8 Jun 2009
Abstract
In this paper, we study whether voters are more likely to "vote out" a corrupt incumbent than to re-elect him. Specifically, we examine whether they retract their support from political candidates who they think are corrupt by looking at changes in an index of corruption perceptions between the current and the last elections. Our results suggest that corruption in public office is effectively punished by voters. Furthermore, our findings support the idea that both the political system and the democratic experience are important determinants of the voters' reaction and control of corruption; while voters in countries with parliamentary systems or with relatively low levels of democracy react negatively to an increase in corruption, no perceptible effect of this kind was found in countries with mature democracies, and the evidence is inconclusive in the case of countries with presidential systems.
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
Paper statistics
Recommended Papers
-
Accountability and Corruption: Political Institutions Matter
By Daniel Lederman, Norman Loayza, ...
-
Accountability and Corruption: Political Institutions Matter
By Daniel Lederman, Norman Loayza, ...
-
Quality of Bureaucracy and Open-Economy Macro Policies
By Chong-en Bai and Shang-jin Wei
-
Ownership, Competition, and Corruption: Bribe Takers Versus Bribe Payers
-
Ethnic Divisions, Trust, and the Size of the Informal Sector
-
Corruption and Regulatory Structures
By Anthony Ogus
-
By Carlos Pereira, Marcus Andre Melo, ...
-
Learning to Fear the Inspector-General: Measuring Spillovers from Anti-Corrupt Policies
By Pedro Silva