Corruption, Electoral Rules and Party Fragmentation

Posted: 3 Sep 2020 Last revised: 4 Sep 2020

See all articles by Alejandro Saporiti

Alejandro Saporiti

University of Manchester

Yizhi Wang

Tianjin University-Ma Yinchu School of Economics

Date Written: August 27, 2020

Abstract

We study the effect of power sharing on corruption in a multi-party electoral competition setting. We focus in particular on two main features of the political system, namely, the effective number of political parties and the disproportionality of the electoral rule. We show that a more disproportional rule perform better in restricting the corrupt behavior of the elected candidates. In addition, we also show that increasing the number of parties has two opposite effects on political corruption, called respectively, the fierce competition effect, and the diffuse accountability effect. When the former dominates the latter, the level of corruption is smaller with a larger number of parties. We confront these predictions with data from over 90 countries. The empirical results provide support to our theoretical results, showing a statistically significant and robust association between corruption and, respectively, (a) the disproportionality of the electoral rule, and (b) the effective number of parties.

Keywords: Corruption; Power Sharing; Electoral Rules; Multi-party Electoral Competition; Probabilistic Voting

JEL Classification: C72; D72; D78

Suggested Citation

Saporiti, Alejandro and Wang, Yizhi, Corruption, Electoral Rules and Party Fragmentation (August 27, 2020). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3682214

Alejandro Saporiti

University of Manchester ( email )

Oxford Road
Manchester, N/A M13 9PL
United Kingdom

Yizhi Wang (Contact Author)

Tianjin University-Ma Yinchu School of Economics ( email )

92, Weijin Road
Nankai District
Tianjin, Tianjin 300072
China

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