When rotten apples spoil the ballot: The conditional effect of corruption charges on parties’ vote shares

Abstract

The impact of corruption charges on the electoral performance of parties is conditioned by specific institutional factors. This article shows the extent to which the effects of political corruption depend on the control that party leaders exercise over the ballot. It is argued that voters might abstain or support other lists if they cannot select individual candidates to revitalize the reputation of the political party. Employing data on judicial investigations in Italy from 1983 to 2013, we provide evidence of the role of electoral rules and intra-party xcandidate selection in shaping the relationship between corruption and voters’ behaviour. Parties implicated in corruption or related crimes experience a loss of votes when they compete under a closed list formula or when the candidate selection process is strongly centralized.

Politicians and Scandals that Damage the Party Brand

“…Where sex scandals are often seen as an individual matter (sarmiento-Mirwaldt et al 2014), financial scandals tend to be seen as a reflection of the political class as a whole. research suggests, for instance, that financial scandals lower voters' trust in politics and politicians (Chong et al 2015) and lead to a decline in the party's vote share (Ceron and Mainenti 2018). empirical evidence from the united Kingdom in the mid-90s furthermore suggests that financial scandals might be more prone to electoral punishment compared to sex scandals (Farrell, Mcallister, and studlar 1997).…”

Does Changing Electoral Systems Affect (Corrupt) Particularistic Exchanges? Evidence from the Italian Case

“…Golden and Chang (2001) and Pellegata and Memoli (2018) show that in PR systems larger electoral districts make monitoring more difficult, enfeeble accountability and ultimately favor corruption. Ceron and Mainenti (2018) argue that voters are more inclined to forgive corruption charges if they can select the candidates. As this influence may be exerted either through preference voting in OLPR systems or in MM systems, they produce further evidence to support the common claim that OLPR systems are more prone to corruption than CLPR.…”

A Banana Republic? Trust in Electoral Institutions in Western Democracies - Evidence from a Presidential Election in Austria

“…The results do not show that (a) a charge of malfeasance discouraged individual candidates to run in the subsequent election and (b) a charge of malfeasance decreased the probability of getting re-elected, the exception being the period 1992-1994. Furthermore, voters only punished corrupt politicians when party leaders were solely responsible for selecting candidates in electoral districts (in contrast to when voters were able to participate in candidate selection): Ceron and Mainenti (2016) use panel data for seven general elections over the period 1983-2013 and disentangle the effects of corruption on vote shares by the candidates' selection process.…”

“…Regional differences in inconsistencies in the Austrian presidential election in 2016 are a natural experiment for investigating whether political scandals influence trust in electoral institutions in established Western democracies. Previous studies examine the extent to which voters punish parties and politicians involved in political scandals and the extent to which political scandals influence voter turnout (see, e.g., Ferraz and Finan 2008, Chang et al 2010, Costas-Pérez et al 2012, Hirano and Snyder 2012, Pattie and Johnston 2012, Vivyan et al 2012, Eggers 2014, Kauder and Potrafke 2015, Ceron and Mainenti 2016, Fernández-Vázquez et al 2016, Rudolph and Däubler 2016, Sulitzeanu-Kenan et al 2016, Larcinese and Sircar 2017).…”