Ideology and Corruption: Policies and People

Paula López-Villalba () and Christian Ruzzier
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Paula López-Villalba: University of Michigan

No 178, Working Papers from Universidad de San Andres, Departamento de Economia

Abstract: Corruption constitutes a major impediment to economic development. We contend that who sits at the controls matters for corruption, and explore the effects of electing a government of a certain ideology. We argue that electing such a government may change the policies pursued, as well as the people who implement them and the institutions that constrain them, and that the interaction of these changes helps explain the effect on corruption. Employing a regression-discontinuity design on a dataset of worldwide national general elections in the post-WWII period, we find a causal effect of electing a government with a left-wing ideology on overall corruption. On average, countries under left-wing governments experience more systemic corruption in the four years after the election—a 13.2% increase in the index compared to the mean of non-left governments. The effect materializes gradually over time and can be seen both in the bureaucracy (petty corruption) and in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the state (grand corruption). Our evidence suggests that the effect operates through both policies, and people and institutions: left-wing governments intervene more extensively in the economy, while also being associated with lower-quality bureaucracies and weaker constraints on government. These changes are concentrated in countries with weaker checks and balances and, given the complementarity between these dimensions, can amplify corruption.

Keywords: corruption; ideology; partisan effects; close elections; institutions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D73 D78 H11 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 75 pages
Date: 2026-02, Revised 2026-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac and nep-pol
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https://repec.udesa.edu.ar/pub/econ/doc178.pdf First version, February 2026 (application/pdf)

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