Tag Archives: Elections

Mexico’s Corrupt Mayors: Who Gets Punished at the Ballot Box, and Why

Posted on by
9

In a democracy, when and why are some politicians electorally punished for corrupt acts, while others get off scot-free? Some answers are commonsense: major scandals generally draw more ire than minor malfeasance; media coverage (and hence voter knowledge) matters; and citizens consider a variety of performance indicators—not just corruption or lack thereof—in selecting politicians. But the details are hazy. Some studies suggest politicians who get caught are more likely face electoral loss, but others find little to no such correlation. Likewise, we know anticorruption candidates often flounder for political reasons, but sometimes they succeed against the odds. So what drives, or contributes to, voter backlash against corrupt politicians?

A recent paper by Harvard scholars Horacio Larreguy, John Marshall, and James Snyder addresses this question in the context of mayoral elections in Mexico. Its conclusions should give pause to anticorruption activists looking for broad-brush solutions. In brief, the paper finds that the devil is in the details: local media coverage can reduce a corrupt incumbent’s vote share, but regional or national media doesn’t seem to matter much; voters do punish corrupt politicians on average, but certain political parties are punished much more than others for the same misconduct; and guaranteeing an audit of public programs reduces malfeasance, but merely threatening a possible audit has little if any effect.

These nuanced findings provide insight into voters’ habits, but they also reinforce the notion that corruption is deeply political—and therefore anticorruption interventions must be context-specific. To unpack this all a bit more, consider the study’s main findings: Continue reading →

An Uncommon Victory for India’s Common Man

Posted on by
8

Indian voters signaled their distaste for corruption last year with the historic defeat of the Congress Party, but never have Indian voters spoken so overwhelmingly against corruption as in last week’s landslide victory for India’s first anticorruption party, the Aam Aadmi (Common Man) Party in the Delhi elections. The AAP won 67 of the 70 seats, leaving just three for the BJP (Prime Minister Modi’s party), and shutting out the Congress Party altogether. Dubbed a “political earthquake,” this win for the AAP, led by Arvind Kejriwal, is monumental for several reasons. Continue reading →

The Hidden Dangers of Anticorruption Education Initiatives

Posted on by
11

A little while ago, in a post reflecting on the role of academics in the anticorruption movement, I noted the distinction between anticorruption classes that focus on “teaching of skills” (helping students become effective lawyers, policy analysts, critical thinkers, etc.) and “teaching of values” (using education to inculcate anticorruption norms and reduce cultural tolerance for corrupt activities). In this post I want to pick up on that latter theme, which has become increasingly important to anticorruption activists and policymakers. Fighting the “culture of corruption,” many have persuasively argued, requires not just changing incentives and formal institutions, but also changing norms and values. And one way to change values may be through education–not only formal classroom education at all levels, but other forms of educational campaigns. For example, many attribute the success of Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption not only to its law enforcement efforts, but to its broad-based educational campaigns to change the attitude of the Hong Kong population. Many countries have tried to emulate some version of this broad-based “anticorruption advertisement” campaign, and there are at least anecdotal examples of such programs making a difference (though not, to my knowledge, and rigorous assessment through something like a randomized controlled trial).

But these sorts of education efforts, if not carefully designed, can prove not only ineffective, but counterproductive. I recently came across a very nice analysis by the political scientist Frederic Charles Schaffer making this point, drawing on a detailed case study of anti-vote-buying campaigns in the Philippines, and to a lesser extent in Thailand. (I haven’t yet had a chance to read Professor Schaffer’s 2008 book, The Hidden Costs of Clean Election Reform, but I gather it goes into much more depth and discusses a range of other issues and countries as well.)  The paper is from 2005, so it’s possible some of the specific examples and criticisms might no longer be apt, but my sense is that the larger points are still highly relevant, and quite important to anticorruption reformers who want to use mass education/advertisement campaigns to change citizen attitudes and behaviors toward corrupt practices. I won’t try to summarize all of Professor Schaffer’s nuanced account, but here’s what I take to be the essential argument: Continue reading →

India Votes against Corruption, But Not for Its Anti-Corruption Party

Posted on by
4

For perhaps the first time, Indians set aside community and religious divisions to vote against an incumbent government perceived to be corrupt. Nevertheless, the country’s new anti-corruption party performed poorly in this month’s national elections, picking up only four of the five hundred and forty-five seats in the lower house of parliament.

I have written about the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), a political outfit borne out of anticorruption protests, here. I recently expressed hope that the urban, middle-class party would be able to encourage rural, low-income Indians to vote against corruption, rather than along community or religious lines.

I was partly right–but only partly. India’s vast electorate handed a resounding defeat to the corruption-plagued Congress party. Congress—the party that led India’s independence movement and has ruled the country for most of the past sixty years—won only forty-four seats, its worst showing ever. This would not have been possible if India’s voters had ignored issues like corruption and good governance.

However, AAP was unable to take advantage of this anticorruption sentiment. There are two major reasons for this. Continue reading →

Will Corruption Matter to India’s Low-Income Voters?

Posted on by
5

As India’s new anti-corruption Aam Aadmi (Common Man) Party (AAP) jostles for votes in India’s ongoing (six-week long!) national elections, it must figure out a way to challenge entrenched voting habits and engage with low-income voters on the issue of corruption. The AAP has been described (and sometimes dismissed) as a middle-class phenomenon–a political upstart that will have difficulty connecting with the country’s many low-income voters, who have long been expected to vote along community lines. But this dismissive attitude–and the idea that anticorruption is predominantly a middle-class concern–may not be justified. In fact, the evidence seems to suggest that an anticorruption message is particularly likely to resonate with poorer voters.

Continue reading →

Corruption and Shame in South Africa: Lessons from Current Events

Posted on by
7

In his recent post, Jordan noted that the OECD Working Group on Bribery recently approved a “scathing” report on South Africa’s noncompliance with the Anti-Bribery Convention. He described group members’ frustration at hitting “a brick wall” as their criticisms fail to effect any change in South Africa. Noting that the Convention’s primary mechanism of enforcing compliance is shame created by critical reports, Jordan asked the very important and provocative question: “What if shame isn’t enough?” A future post will explore an option that might exist for changing, expanding, or enforcing the Convention, but there’s a prior, empirical question: How is the shame mechanism working so far? Continue reading →

Do Americans Care About Corruption?

Posted on by
6

We usually imagine that democratic accountability serves an important anticorruption function: since voters presumably do not approve of corruption, a benefit of democracy is the ability to give untrustworthy pols the boot. Yet in a recent op-ed in the Washington Post, Hilary Krieger provocatively claims that American voters don’t really care if a politician engages in corrupt acts, so long as “a political leader has otherwise furthered the public good.” In addition to this descriptive claim, she also makes the normative argument that Americans voters are right not to reflexively vote out politicians tainted by corruption.

Although both her descriptive and normative claims have some truth to them–elections are multi-faceted, and corruption is not the end-all-be-all issue–both the descriptive and normative arguments have serious flaws.

Continue reading →

Lessons from Europe for India’s Anticorruption Party

Posted on by
10

Last December, a year-old political party formed by anticorruption activists came to power in India’s capital, after a startling debut performance in Delhi’s local assembly elections. Within days, the new government, led by a former tax man named Arvind Kejriwal, announced a series of anti-graft investigations. Only 49 days into its term, however, Kejriwal and his colleagues resigned, ostensibly because their minority government could not push through an anticorruption bill. The party now has its eyes set on India’s parliamentary elections, set to occur this May.

Much has been written about India’s mercurial Aam Aadmi (“Common Man”) Party (AAP): its origins, its dedicated volunteers, its transparent campaign finance procedures, its vague policies regarding anything but corruption, and its missteps (some of which Russel Stamets discusses in a useful recent post on the FCPA Blog). Despite this, there has been little discussion regarding AAP’s place as a single-issue party in India’s deeply fractured political landscape, and little attempt to draw lessons from the successes and failures of anticorruption parties in other parts of the world.  Yet the experience of anticorruption parties in Central and Eastern Europe–as documented and analyzed by Andreas Bågenholm –offers both hope and important lessons to AAP and its supporters. Continue reading →