Voting corrupt politicians out of office? Evidence from a survey experiment in Paraguay

Rumilda Cañete-Straub, Josepa Miquel-Florensa, Stephane Straub and Karine Van der Straeten

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2020, vol. 179, issue C, 223-239

Abstract: This paper challenges the conventional wisdom that giving voters more power – both formally through the use of more “open” electoral systems and informally through easier access to information on politicians’ wrongdoings – will necessarily result in them voting corrupt politicians out of office. Focusing on a comparison between closed-list and open-list proportional representation systems, we theoretically show that opening the lists is likely to generate a large shift of vote shares in favor of the incumbent parties, which in many countries happen to be the most corrupt. We design a survey experiment to test these predictions in Paraguay and find strong supporting evidence. We do not find in our context that the lack of information is a major obstacle preventing voters from voting out corrupt politicians; if anything, under the more open system, supporters of the incumbent party tend to cast more votes for politicians with a recent history of corruption.

Keywords: Corruption; Electoral systems; Information (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Working Paper: Voting Corrupt Politicians Out of Office? Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Paraguay (2022)
Working Paper: Voting Corrupt Politicians Out of Office? Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Paraguay (2020)
Working Paper: Voting Corrupt Politicians Out of Office? Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Paraguay (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:179:y:2020:i:c:p:223-239

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2020.08.046

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