Political corruption, economic performance, and electoral outcomes: a cross-national analysis

Abstract

The current study examines how the incumbent government's economic performance plays a role in mediating the impact of political corruption on electoral outcomes in 115 developing countries with relatively higher levels of corruption than Western consolidated democracies. Borrowing theoretical insights from the information-processing theory of voting, this study finds that political corruption becomes a formative electoral factor when the regime fails to sustain a sufficient level of economic growth. Otherwise, political corruption is not a significant factor that shapes electoral outcomes, irrespective of the level of perceived corruption, because the economy occupies voters' minds as the most important issue, making it a more accessible issue than political corruption.

It's not only the economy, stupid! Good governance matters in elections

“…In this case, it is the level of economic and institutional development that is expected to condition individuals' perceptions of governance or economic crises and their effects on election results. Choi and Woo (2010), and Zechmeister and ZizumboColunga (2013) show that in developing countries incumbents are punished for corruption only when the economy worsens too. The experiments done by Kla snja and Tucker (2013) have similar results in a high corruption country (Moldova), which also has a low level of economic development, but not in a low corruption country (Sweden), which is also a highly developed economy.…”

“…information about, allegations or individual evaluations of corruption) show that its effect on vote decision and electoral outcome is small (Fackler and Lin, 1995;Hibbing and Welch, 1997;Peters and Welch, 1980) and that it is tolerated by voters as long as the economy is doing well (Zechmeister and Zizumbo-Colunga, 2013;Kla snja and Tucker, 2013;Choi and Woo, 2010). It is however debatable whether voters close their eyes to bad governance in times of economic growth.…”

Corruption performance voting and the electoral context

“…Yet, analyses based on a single national context do not allow us to study cross-national differences even though such differences are likely to exist (van der Brug et al, 2007;Duch and Stevenson, 2008). Comparative analyses are rare and largely limited to a macro-level perspective (Krause and Mendez, 2009;Choi and Woo, 2010). These analyses run the risk of committing ecological fallacies and are not well-suited to testing the causal mechanism linking citizens' perceptions of corruption and reward-punishment behaviour.…”

“…The CPI is a composite index and combines surveys and assessments of corruption by several institutions and organizations into a single measure. It is generally considered the most valid and reliable cross-national estimate of corruption and is thus widely used in comparative studies (see, e.g., Treisman, 2000;Persson et al, 2003;Krause and Mendez, 2009;Choi and Woo, 2010). 7 For each election we capture the severity of corruption via the country's average CPI score over the entire parliamentary term.…”

“…Past research on the effects of corruption on incumbents' electoral performance is often based on macro-level data and addresses variation in corruption across countries (Ferraz and Finan, 2008;Krause and Mendez, 2009;Choi and Woo, 2010). Microlevel analyses, in turn, are often linked to specific scandals and certain national contexts (Peters and Welch, 1980;Welch and Hibbing, 1997;Vivyan et al, 2012;Basinger, 2013;Praino et al, 2013;Winters and Weitz-Shapiro, 2013;Wagner et al, 2014).…”