the electoral consequences of corruption scandals in spain

20
The electoral consequences of corruption scandals in Spain Pedro Riera & Pablo Barberá & Raúl Gómez & Juan Antonio Mayoral & José Ramón Montero Published online: 19 September 2013 # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013 Abstract Previous studies of the electoral consequences of corruption in Spanish local elections (Jiménez Revista de Investigaciones Políticas y Sociológicas, 6(2):4376, 2007; Fernández-Vázquez and Rivero 2011, Consecuencias electorales de la corrupción, 20032007. Estudios de Progreso, Fundación Alternativas; Costas et al. European Journal of Political Economy: 28(4):469-484, 2012) have found that voters do not necessarily punish corrupt mayors. As has been pointed out in the comparative literature, the average loss of electoral support by corrupt incumbents is small and does not prevent their reelection most of the times (Jiménez and Caínzos 2006, How far and why do corruption scandals cost votes? In Garrard, J. and Newell, J. (eds.) Scandals in past and contemporary politics. Manchester: Manchester University Press). What remains unsolved, however, is the remarkable variability in this pattern. This article explores some of the micro-level variables that may mediate the effect of corruption scandal on the votes. We focus on three factors: ideological closeness to the incumbent party, political sophistication, and employment status. Our results provide only partial support for our hypotheses, suggesting that the effects of corruption are much more complex than what may seem at first sight. Crime Law Soc Change (2013) 60:515534 DOI 10.1007/s10611-013-9479-1 P. Riera : J. A. Mayoral European University Institute, Fiesole, Italy P. Riera e-mail: [email protected] J. A. Mayoral e-mail: [email protected] P. Barberá New York University, New York, NY 10012, USA e-mail: [email protected] R. Gómez (*) University of Derby, Derby, UK e-mail: [email protected] J. R. Montero Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain e-mail: [email protected]

Upload: jose-ramon

Post on 23-Dec-2016

216 views

Category:

Documents


0 download

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: The electoral consequences of corruption scandals in Spain

The electoral consequences of corruption scandalsin Spain

Pedro Riera & Pablo Barberá & Raúl Gómez &

Juan Antonio Mayoral & José Ramón Montero

Published online: 19 September 2013# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013

Abstract Previous studies of the electoral consequences of corruption in Spanishlocal elections (Jiménez Revista de Investigaciones Políticas y Sociológicas, 6(2):43–76, 2007; Fernández-Vázquez and Rivero 2011, Consecuencias electorales de lacorrupción, 2003–2007. Estudios de Progreso, Fundación Alternativas; Costas et al.European Journal of Political Economy: 28(4):469-484, 2012) have found that votersdo not necessarily punish corrupt mayors. As has been pointed out in the comparativeliterature, the average loss of electoral support by corrupt incumbents is small anddoes not prevent their reelection most of the times (Jiménez and Caínzos 2006, Howfar and why do corruption scandals cost votes? In Garrard, J. and Newell, J. (eds.)Scandals in past and contemporary politics. Manchester: Manchester UniversityPress). What remains unsolved, however, is the remarkable variability in this pattern.This article explores some of the micro-level variables that may mediate the effect ofcorruption scandal on the votes. We focus on three factors: ideological closeness tothe incumbent party, political sophistication, and employment status. Our resultsprovide only partial support for our hypotheses, suggesting that the effects ofcorruption are much more complex than what may seem at first sight.

Crime Law Soc Change (2013) 60:515–534DOI 10.1007/s10611-013-9479-1

P. Riera : J. A. MayoralEuropean University Institute, Fiesole, Italy

P. Rierae-mail: [email protected]

J. A. Mayorale-mail: [email protected]

P. BarberáNew York University, New York, NY 10012, USAe-mail: [email protected]

R. Gómez (*)University of Derby, Derby, UKe-mail: [email protected]

J. R. MonteroUniversidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spaine-mail: [email protected]

Page 2: The electoral consequences of corruption scandals in Spain

Introduction

One of the leading theories of voting behavior argues that people hold incumbentsaccountable for their performance in office during the previous term, an idea whichdates back to Key [25]. Thus, politicians in government that misbehave should be,ceteris paribus, less likely to stay in power after the next election. The question thatevidently follows from this claim is: what accounts for the already well-establishedlack of electoral punishment of corruption scandals?

In trying to specify the factors that break the link between political corruption andincumbents’ survival in office, political scientists have frequently referred to the “paradoxof unpopular corruption and popular corrupt politicians” [28]. While individuals seem tolearn about episodes of corruption and dislike them, electoral effects are rather small.However, although corruption scandals had been employed before in studies of votingbehavior, it has not been until very recently that the mechanisms accounting for their lackof effect have started to be investigated. The reason why most corruption scandals are notpunished, we will argue, lies in the fact that individual characteristics of citizens canpotentially have an important modifying impact on their voting behavior. When anepisode of corruption takes place, a certain combination of constraints, incentives, andinformation must exist in order to lead people to change their political preferences.

The aim of this study is to address this question more carefully by looking at theSpanish local elections of 2007 and 2011. We focus on these because, although theabsence of electoral punishment of corruption has often been detected, it is still unclearwhether the logic of heterogeneous electoral effects of corruption could apply toelections typically determined by local factors. In municipalities where the local incum-bent has been charged with corruption, their reelection could entail several negativeoutcomes such as distortion of economic performance, erosion of the legitimacy of thegovernment, and decrease of interpersonal trust. The interesting question, then, iswhether corrupt mayors are less likely to be reelected as a result of misbehavior and why.

After providing the theoretical framework within which this question will beexamined, we argue in detail how corruption scandals are expected to have a non-linear impact on the electoral performance of the incumbents. We then provide testsfor three hypotheses. First, we analyze whether voters are less likely to punish corruptmayors that are ideologically closer. Second, we focus on the role of politicalsophistication, comparing whether punishment differs across voters with differentlevels of education. Finally, we examine whether the potentially negative impact ofcorruption on voting behavior is significantly stronger for those that are currentlyunemployed. All in all, these models seldom reveal strong interactive effects ofcorruption on subsequent electoral preferences.

The electoral consequences of corruption scandals

Political corruption and electoral accountability

Political corruption is known to have negative economic, political, and social conse-quences. When political representatives “misuse public office for their private gain”[44], they undermine basic principles of a representative democracy, such as

516 P. Riera et al.

Page 3: The electoral consequences of corruption scandals in Spain

accountability, equality, and inclusiveness [50]. Empirical studies have shown thatpervasive political corruption hinders economic growth and generates income in-equality [34, 36, 42]. Endemic corruption also affects international investment andthe quality of service that the public administration provides [30]. At the politicallevel, citizens are less trustful of corrupt incumbents [1, 31]. Finally, when corruptpractices are the norm within a country, social trust is lower, thus hampering socialexchanges [11].

Given its widespread negative effects, one would expect citizens to harshly punishpolitical corruption. More specifically, if we assume that elections have the doublepurpose of selecting competent representatives and creating incentives for them toremain in good standing [13], we should observe that citizens not only punish politiciansinvolved in corruption scandal, but also do not select parties whose members areaccused of corruption. As a result, from this normative perspective, we should findthe electoral punishment of corrupt incumbents to be large enough to prevent theirreelection.

However, previous research has offered a completely different perspective. In thecase of U.S. congressional elections, the studies of Peters andWelch [39] andWelch andHibbing [51] show that, between 1968 and 1990, 75 % of running corrupt incumbentswere reelected. In 1992, after the House Bank scandal was uncovered, even though 60%of congressmen were guilty of at least one overdraft, only 7.5 % of those that ran forreelection were defeated in the general election [4, 20]. Furthermore, Fackler and Lin[12] show that information about corruption has a significant negative impact on theelectoral performance of incumbent presidents, although corruption is not a goodpredictor of their probability to be reelected. Studies of the Watergate and Lewinskyscandals demonstrate that corruption had significant but small effects on incumbents’electoral performance [19, 48].

Comparative studies of this issue offer a similar insight. In Spain, Jiménez [21],Fernández-Vázquez and Rivero [15], and Costas et al. [10] highlight that around70 % of the mayors involved in corruption scandals before the 2007 local electionswere reelected, and that this type of scandal had a very minor impact on the electionresults. In a similar study of the 2011 elections, Barberá and Fernández-Vázquez [5]also found that corruption scandals had a limited electoral effect. The study of Lafayand Servais [28] yields a somewhat lower but still puzzling figure: 57.5 % of mayorsin scandal situations were reelected in the 1995 French local election. Moreover, athorough study of Italian legislative elections from 1948 to 1994 [8] points to asimilar percentage: 51 % of charged deputies were reelected, compared to 58 % of theputatively honest representatives.

In conclusion, despite our normative expectations, previous studies clearly showthat, although corruption scandals usually do have significant effects on electoralbehavior, their actual influence is usually quite modest ([22]:194); and often themagnitude of the electoral punishment is not sufficient to prevent the reelection ofcorrupt incumbents. As Welch and Hibbing [51] explain when summarizing theresults of Peters and Welch [39], “Most incumbents during the time period theystudied had a safety zone of sufficient size to survive the loss of 6 to 11 percentagepoints in electoral margins that charges of corruption bring about.” In other words,these results seem to be driven by what Kurer [28] calls the “paradox of unpopularcorruption and popular corrupt politicians.”

The electoral consequences of corruption scandals in Spain 517

Page 4: The electoral consequences of corruption scandals in Spain

A dimension of this puzzle that is usually neglected is that corruption has veryheterogeneous electoral consequences. A more thorough look at the electoral pros-pects of corrupt representatives in the previous examples shows a large variation inthe outcome of corruption scandals. While some corrupt mayors, members ofCongress, or MPs lost more than half of their previous vote share, many others wereable to maintain or even improve their previous electoral support. What can accountfor these differences? Previous literature has focused primarily on the specificcharacteristics of the corruption scandal and the politician involved in it [8,15], or the institutional setting [16, 32, 45], but little attention has been givento the individual variables that mediate the impact of political corruption on vote choice[3, 26].

The heterogeneous electoral effects of corruption scandals

The core of our argument is the idea that the electoral punishment of incumbentscharged with corruption, measured as the loss in support in the election following theformulation of the charges, is neither homogeneous at the aggregate level nor at theindividual level, and that it is inadequate to presume that every corruption scandalwill have the same electoral impact. Corruption should not be taken as a simplephenomenon—that is, with direct consequences and a uniform effect on theelectorate—but rather as a complex process, with an uncertain impact, mediated bymany factors operating at different levels. More specifically, we hypothesize thatthere are three types of causal mechanisms that affect the extent to which voters holdtheir representatives accountable: constraints, incentives, and information. In otherwords, a citizen may knowingly vote for a corrupt politician when they areconstrained to do so, when they lack incentives to withdraw their electoral support,or when they do not have enough information.

The existing literature focuses on how macro-level factors affect these threeelements. The institutional setting in which the scandal takes place, the characteristicsof the corruption charges, and who is accused with them, as well as the politicalcontext that surrounds it, have been found to mediate the electoral consequences ofcorruption, due to either of the three causal mechanisms. In the first place, institu-tional configurations that ease the identification of responsibility [45] have beenfound to increase political accountability because they allow voters to evaluate andpunish their representatives more effectively. Persson et al. [38], Kunicova and Rose-Ackerman [27], and Chang et al. [8] discuss how different aspects of the electoralsystem constrain voters’ ability to punish representatives individually. Manzetti andWilson [32] show that the strength of democratic institutions is a significant mediat-ing factor in the relationship between corruption and government support. How acorrupt representative (and their party) reacts to the scandal also constrains voters’ability to exercise political accountability [6]. In some occasions, the corrupt incum-bent decides to “retire strategically” [24] in order to limit the negative electoralconsequences for her own party.

Secondly, the political, social, and economic context at the moment of the electionalso plays an important role. Some citizens may be willing to establish an “implicittrading” [43] with a corrupt incumbent if their performance in office is positive. Forexample, Barberá and Fernández-Vázquez [5] find that corrupt practices that revert in

518 P. Riera et al.

Page 5: The electoral consequences of corruption scandals in Spain

a short-term economic benefit are rewarded electorally. Lastly, information and theinformational environment also seem crucial elements in explaining to what extentcitizens punish political corruption [9, 16, 17].

Although most existing studies employ macro-level data, the causal mechanismsthat justify their findings have a micro-level rationale. Furthermore, little attention hasbeen paid to how individual-level factors, such as partisanship, political interest, andcognitive skills, mediate voters’ reaction to corruption scandals. To our knowledge,only two studies have examined these relationships systematically. Klasnja et al. [26]find that increased personal exposure to corruption and increased perception of theprevalence of corruption in politics drive voters away from the incumbent. Anduizaet al. [3] show that voters’ perception of corruption charges depends on whether theirpartisan affiliation aligns with that of the politician involved, but this partisan biasdisappears for individuals who are more politically sophisticated.

Following up on these studies, we argue that two sets of individual factors explainthe extent to which citizens knowingly vote for a corrupt politician. On the one hand,ideological/partisan affiliation and voters’ evaluations of the political performance ofthe corrupt incumbent affect individual incentives to reward or punish him. AsAnduiza et al. [3] argue, even when voters are informed about corruption charges,they may still decide to show their support because they either do not give credibilityto the accusation [6], or they do not consider it important enough compared to otheraspects of the incumbent’s performance in office.

In this specific case, we test the impact of party and ideological attachment to theparty in office or incumbent. Rundquist et al. [43] have already suggested how individ-uals who strongly felt attached to the corrupt party are less likely to change their vote.Thus, voters may be more likely to support a particular corrupt candidate when theyshare a similar ideological position, (1) because ideological voters give less credibility tocases of corruption affecting their preferred parties, especially when suited by oppositionparties; (2) because they give preeminence to other aspects of the incumbents’ perfor-mance; or (3) because they cannot find an alternative good candidate from the ideolog-ical point of view [38]. Therefore, we hypothesize the following:

Hypothesis 1 Individuals are less likely to electorally punish a corrupt incumbentwhen they share the same ideological position.

A second set of factors is related to voters’ level of information about the corruptioncharges. Not all citizens are equally exposed to political information, and these differ-ences are particularly acute when it comes to their local representatives, whose actionsdo not receive broad coverage in the media. Furthermore, even if they receive the samelevel of information, understanding the nature of corruption charges and who is involvedin the scandal is a complex process that requires a certain level of political sophistication,which increases the heterogeneity in voters’ awareness of the political scandal.Accordingly, we focus on education as a factor that may impact the understanding ofcorruption and the allocation of responsibilities among corrupt politicians. This mech-anism has already been pointed out by McCann and Domínguez [35], who found forMexico that better educated respondents are more likely to accurately perceive theincidence of corruption in their cities. As a result, and using education as a proxy, wehypothesize that:

The electoral consequences of corruption scandals in Spain 519

Page 6: The electoral consequences of corruption scandals in Spain

Hypothesis 2 Individuals are less likely to electorally punish a corrupt incumbentwhen they are less politically sophisticated.

The third factor considered in this article evaluates the assessment of corruption byunemployed individuals. Previous studies have not accounted for employment as afactor that may mediate the relationship between voting and corruption. A firstattempt was carried out by Popova [40] for the case of Russia, finding that corruptionhas an indirect and homogeneous effect on individuals regardless of their employ-ment status. However, there is a broad literature on economic voting that points tothe important effect of employment on incumbent voting [32]. We assume thatunemployed citizens are particularly sensitive to public policies and public mis-conduct, as their income depends greatly on social or unemployment benefits andtheir likelihood of finding a job may also depend on the quality of the policiesimplemented by the government. Given that corruption has a negative impact oneconomic growth, investment, and social redistribution [42, 46, 47], we thus hypothe-size the following:

Hypothesis 3 Individuals are even less likely to vote for a corrupt incumbentwhen they are unemployed.

Research design

Corruption scandals in Spanish municipalities, 2003–2011

Spain is a particularly interesting case for study given the multiplicity of corruptionscandals that have emerged at the local level there over the past decade. The largeheterogeneity in the demographic and political composition of Spanish municipalitiesensures that we have enough variation to test our hypotheses. Spain also has one of thehighest levels of political corruption in Western Europe according to TransparencyInternational, which makes our findings substantively relevant. Furthermore, differentcorruption scandals were particularly salient during the electoral campaigns of 2007 and2011, when most journalistic accounts of the results highlighted the apparent lack ofelectoral punishment with headlines such as “Corrupt incumbents are forgiven byvoters” and “Voters are immune to corruption” (see El País, May 29, 2011, or ElMundo, May 23, 2011 for some examples).

The apparent lack of electoral accountability in Spanish local elections has beenexamined by Jiménez [21], Rivero and Fernández-Vázquez [15], Costas et al. [10],and Barberá and Fernández-Vázquez [5]. Using only aggregate-level data, theseauthors find that corruption scandals had a significant electoral impact; on average,corrupt incumbents lost around 5 % of their previous vote share. However, in mostcases, this change was not large enough to prevent the reelection of the incumbentmayor.

In this article, we revisit the analysis of these studies to understand the magnitudeof the electoral punishment after a corruption scandal. However, our contribution liesin the use of individual-level data from the post-election surveys conducted by the

520 P. Riera et al.

Page 7: The electoral consequences of corruption scandals in Spain

“Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas” (Center for Sociological Research, CIS) in2007 and 2011 (surveys 2,707–2,719 and 2,870–2,872).1 By combining these surveyswith existing datasets of corruption scandals between 2003 and 2011 [5, 21], we wereable to distinguish which individuals were exposed to a corruption scandal in ourperiod of analysis.

Our dependent variable measures whether the respondent voted for the incumbentparty at the local level (1) or not (0), and whether they turned out at the local elections(1) or not (0).2 Our main independent variables are: (1) Ideology, measured on a 10-point Likert scale where 1 is extreme left and 10 is extreme right, (2) Education,which ranges from lower to higher levels of education (values normalized from 0 to1), and (3) Unemployment, a dummy variable coded with value 1 for unemployedpeople and 0 for the rest (this includes employed citizens, retired people, students,housewives, etc.). Additionally, several other political and socio-demographic vari-ables are used as controls, namely incumbents’ party, year of election, age, sex, andthe percentage of unemployed population in the municipality.

The effect of corruption and voters’ characteristics

Until recently, research on electoral behavior has been dominated by a persistentdichotomy between explanations at the individual level and others that highlight theimpact of aggregate factors on election results. Many studies have analyzed theindividual-specific characteristics that are related to vote choice. In this regard, ithas clearly been established that political attitudes and socio-demographic factorshave an important effect on citizens’ voting behavior [7, 18, 49]. However, there isalso much research pointing to the important effect of contextual characteristics suchas the state of the economy (e.g., [41, 53]), government’s performance in differentareas (e.g., [13, 14, 52]), or political scandals [22] on the electoral prospects ofparties. More recently, though, scholars have aimed to overcome this traditionaldichotomy, pointing out that, rather than separate logics, both levels of aggregationshould be considered as complementary, as they affect political behavior in interac-tion one with another [2].

This piece of research is aimed at analyzing particular mechanisms linking indi-vidual decisions and contextual characteristics. We have claimed earlier that individ-uals’ responses to corruption are not homogeneous. Rather, they depend on certainindividual characteristics that should be accounted for in order to successfully dealwith the effects of aggregate factors on voters’ behavior. This particular way ofmodeling behavior is increasingly more frequent in the literature and has, in ourview, yielded very fruitful results. Understanding that citizens are part of a contextthat conditions their behavioral motives and rationale is thus a very important step inorder to provide overarching explanations in the field of voting behavior [23, 37].

The logic behind this article is that factors that explain electoral behavior yield adifferent impact depending on both individual and contextual characteristics. It

1 We are grateful to the CIS for providing access to a partially non-anonymous version of these surveys thatallowed us to identify the municipality in which each respondent is registered to vote.2 Those who did not vote due to technical reasons or to force majeure are also coded as non-voters. As arobustness check, we have replicated all our models coding these technical non-voters as missing values.Results do not show any systematic difference and are available upon request.

The electoral consequences of corruption scandals in Spain 521

Page 8: The electoral consequences of corruption scandals in Spain

cannot just be assumed that there is a direct and automatic link between governments’action (such as public investment, or political corruption) or their outcomes (such asunemployment levels) and citizens’ support for the party/ies in office. Similarly,assuming that corruption scandals have a direct impact on every citizen’s chancesto vote for the party/ies in office seems naïve in the light of the negative findings inthe literature. Awareness of corruption varies across groups of voters, as also does thedegree to which they may be willing to take that information into account whencasting their vote. Individual-specific characteristics moderate or exacerbate the effectof corruption scandals.

All these arguments justify the inclusion of variables at different levels of aggre-gation. Usually, multi-level models and cross-level interactions are the best way toproceed in this regard. However, multi-level models are somewhat more demandingin terms of statistical power, which is of special concern to studies of corruption,where effects found are often small (which does not always mean nonexistent) andconditioned by different variables. For this reason, we will mainly present resultscoming from ordinary regression models with clustered standard errors by munici-pality, although we will also report whether results change substantially when multi-level models are employed instead.

Results

We performed different logistic regression analyses in order to test our hypotheses.Even if most of our expectations relate to interaction effects between corruption andseveral individual-specific characteristics, we started out by checking whether there isa negative effect of corruption on vote for the incumbents in Spanish local elections.Following this, we performed several interaction models in order to allow for thepossibility that corruption scandals do not have a homogeneous effect but ratherdepend on the party and the election that we look at. The results are presentedin Table 1.

As can be observed in Model 1, corruption scandals do not seem to have asignificant effect on support for the incumbent at first sight. In fact, the effect ofthe coefficient goes in the opposite direction than expected (i.e., it is positive). This is,however, not surprising, given the panoply of negative results that, as mentioned,have been found by other scholars in this regard. It is, nevertheless, possible thatcorruption only affects certain parties and at certain elections. For example, we didnot expect a strong effect of corruption in the 2011 local elections. These electionswere seen by many analysts and commentators as a perfect opportunity for voters topunish the bad economic performance and the dramatic austerity policies of the partyin national office (i.e., the Socialist Party, PSOE). Even when fixed effects by partyare introduced (Model 2), the effect of corruption continues to be insignificant. Thus,it is possible that voters did not have in mind local corruption scandals when they casttheir vote.

Model 3 introduces interaction effects by election year and party. In order to facilitatethe interpretation of all the interactions in the model, we provide the marginal effects ofcorruption expressed in terms of probability to vote for the incumbent in Table 2. We doso by distinguishing by local election (2007 and 2011) and party (socialist party, PSOE,

522 P. Riera et al.

Page 9: The electoral consequences of corruption scandals in Spain

Table 1 Effects of corruption on the propensity to vote for the incumbent (dependent variable) in Spanishlocal elections

Variables Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

Baseline Fixed effectsby party

By party andelection

Corruption 0.225 0.24 1.100***

(0.144) (0.17) (0.319)

Conservative incumbent (PP) 1.16*** 0.882***

(0.16) (0.200)

Socialist incumbent (PSOE) 0.94*** 1.038***

(0.14) (0.189)

Other incumbents Ref. Ref.

2011 election −0.185* −0.14 −0.743**(0.0987) (0.10) (0.332)

Corruption × 2011 election 0.0241

(0.677)

2011 election × PP 0.945***

(0.340)

2011 election × PSOE 0.243

(0.333)

Corruption × PP −1.284***(0.351)

Corruption × PSOE −1.973**(0.910)

2011 election × corruption× PP

0.727

(0.737)

2011 election × corruption× PSOE

0.665

(1.108)

Unemployed −0.0497 −0.05 −0.0680(0.0604) (0.06) (0.0621)

Percent of unemployed −0.00260 −0.009 −0.00601(0.0121) (0.012) (0.0117)

Age 0.00644*** 0.006*** 0.00612***

(0.00148) (0.001) (0.00149)

Education −0.531*** −0.61*** −0.621***(0.120) (0.11) (0.119)

Male −0.0668* −0.06* −0.0675*(0.0384) (0.03) (0.0388)

Constant −0.254 −1.04*** −1.006***(0.174) (0.22) (0.240)

Region dummies YES YES YES

Observations 11,992 11,992 11,992

Robust standard errors in parentheses;

***p<0.01, **p<0.05, *p<0.1

The electoral consequences of corruption scandals in Spain 523

Page 10: The electoral consequences of corruption scandals in Spain

conservative party, PP, and “others”). Let us first focus on the 2007 election. As can beseen, at that election, corruption did have a negative effect on the probability to vote forincumbents of both PP and PSOE, the main nationwide parties in Spain. This isindeed clear proof that voters are not totally immune to corruption scandals.However, when the rest of the parties are looked at, it turns out that the effect inthis case is positive and significant, which is certainly striking. Most of the cases ofcorruption among small parties (classified as “others”) were concentrated in oneregional party of the Canary Islands (the Canary Coalition party), which seems tohave taken advantage of, rather than been damaged by, corruption scandals. It isdifficult to know why this is the case, but we suggest that the spread of certainclientelistic networks by some small local parties, especially in small towns andvillages, may be part of the explanation.3

When we look at 2011, however, results do not follow the same pattern in anyregard. Much as expected, the effect of corruption was not statistically significant forany party in that particular election year. This finding supports our claim that theeffect of corruption may also depend on certain contextual factors related to thecharacteristics of electoral competition.

The results also provide some evidence that corruption may have an effect on theelectoral prospects of parties on some occasions. However, we hypothesized that thiseffect must vary depending on certain voters’ characteristics. Thus, according to H1, thechances that an individual decides to support a corrupt incumbent will be higher whenboth voter and incumbent share the same political orientations. In order to test for this, aninteraction between corruption and the respondents’ declared ideological position wasintroduced. As we have already pointed out, the latter is measured by a 10-point Likertscale where 1 is extreme left and 10 is extreme right. As the relationship betweenideological self-location and vote is expected to be negative for left-wing parties andpositive for right-wing parties, we split the sample into incumbents of PP, on the onehand and incumbents of PSOE on the other. We also controlled for the percentage ofvotes obtained by the incumbent party in each municipality in the previous election.Further, we ran different models for 2007 and 2011, since effects of corruption in thelatter year do not seem likely on the basis of our previous findings.

The interaction between corruption and ideology does not provide strong support forH1 (seeModels 4–7 in Table 3). None of the interaction coefficients come up significant

3 It must be mentioned that effects did not change when random effects by municipality were introduced. Infact, the negative effect of corruption on support for PSOE incumbents became even more stronglysignificant in the hierarchical model (p<0.001).

Table 2 Marginal effects (probabilities) of corruption on the propensity to vote for the incumbent

2007 Elections 2011 Elections

PP −0.241*** PP 0.007

PSOE −0.348** PSOE −0.112OTHERS 0.254*** OTHERS 0.198

***p<0.01, **p<0.05, *p<0.1; they are obtained from Model 2 in Table 1; control variables are set at theirmeans (continuous) or their modes (dummies)

524 P. Riera et al.

Page 11: The electoral consequences of corruption scandals in Spain

at first sight. However, since the statistical significance of the interactions is impossibleto assess by only looking at the coefficients and the standard errors, we also computedthe discrete effect of corruption on electoral support of the incumbent for the wholerange of ideology. Only in one of the cases did we find a statistically significant impact:in 2007, the effect of corruption seems to decrease further the chances to vote for aPSOE incumbent for those who declare themselves center to center-right voters.4 Thiseffect is shown in Fig. 1 and is indeed significant. It seems that moderate voters,especially those located in positions 5 to 7, were much more reluctant to vote for aPSOE incumbent when corruption charges were in place. This negative effect issomewhat reduced (even though it is still significant) for those located between positions7 and 10, probably because the chances for those voters to support a candidate of PSOEare already quite low.5 Moreover, all the effects remained significant after the introduc-tion of random-effects by municipality.

On the basis of our next hypothesis (H2), less sophisticated individuals are expectedto be less affected by corruption when casting their vote. To test this hypothesis, we used

4 Results of non-significant interaction effects are not shown here, but they are available upon request.5 A similar effect is found for PSOE in 2007, but in this case it is not statistically significant.

Table 3 Interaction effects of corruption and ideology on the propensity to vote for the incumbent

Variables Model 4 Model 5 Model 6 Model 7

2007-PSOE 2007-PP 2011-PSOE 2011-PP

Age 0.00378 0.0107*** 0.00763** 0.000817

(0.00374) (0.00398) (0.00384) (0.00346)

Education −1.154*** 0.482 −1.506*** −0.286(0.222) (0.297) (0.293) (0.245)

Male −0.135 −0.0994 −0.122 −0.0701(0.0832) (0.104) (0.113) (0.102)

Corruption −1.143 0.992 1.581 −0.961(2.075) (2.182) (1.364) (1.632)

Ideology −0.598*** 1.474*** −0.710*** 1.219***

(0.0409) (0.122) (0.0425) (0.124)

Corruption × ideology 0.0668 −0.200 −0.398 0.267

(0.307) (0.436) (0.282) (0.342)

Unemployed 0.0104 0.0207 −0.237 0.0520

(0.167) (0.242) (0.149) (0.143)

Percent of unemployed 2.234*** 2.129 4.184*** 1.970**

(0.587) (1.326) (0.688) (0.971)

Constant 2.286*** −9.971*** 1.520*** −6.290***(0.390) (1.129) (0.512) (1.416)

Region dummies YES YES YES YES

Observations 2,281 2,557 2,338 2,834

Robust standard errors in parentheses

***p<0.01, **p<0.05, *p<0.1

The electoral consequences of corruption scandals in Spain 525

Page 12: The electoral consequences of corruption scandals in Spain

education as a proxy for political sophistication. Thus, a standardized measure where 0corresponds to individuals with no formal education and 1 to the maximum level ofeducation was interacted with corruption in Table 4 (Models 8–11). On the basis of ourcalculations, the marginal effect of the interaction was only significant in 2007 (see theplots in Fig. 2), and suggested that more educated voters were less likely to vote forPSOE incumbents when these were corrupt that year. It must be said, however, that thestatistical significance was not reached when a hierarchical model was used, but we tendto think that this is due to the lack of statistical power in these models. Interaction effectswere not found for PP incumbents in any case.

Our last hypothesis referred to voters’ employment status. It is possible, weargued, that voters who are unemployed have a more negative opinion of politicalcorruption because of the implications that the latter may have in terms of lack ofinvestment in job-generating activities or in social policies (H3). In order to test thishypothesis, we proceeded as before introducing an interaction, this time betweencorruption and personal jobless situation. Results are shown in Table 5 (Models 12–15). Again, the interaction effect is not evident at first sight, but the marginal effectsof corruption on the variable of interest are shown in Table 6. As can be observed,corruption does not seem to increase punishment of the incumbent among unem-ployed voters in general. There is, however, an exception: unemployed voters wereless likely to vote for PSOE incumbents when these were corrupt,6 although the effectdisappears again when a hierarchical model is employed.

Finally, Table 7 replicates previous models using turnout as dependent variable.Thus, the first model is the same as Model 1 except that it explains participationinstead of vote for the incumbent. Interestingly, we find that citizens in municipalitieswith corrupt mayors are less likely to participate in Spanish local elections, whichsuggests that corruption may also have an indirect effect on results by leading morevoters to stay home on Election Day. We are now able to test our ideas about theinteractions between corruption and voters’ ideology, education and unemployment

6 Another exception is the PP in 2011. In this case, it is employed voters that seem more likely to supportcorrupt PP incumbents. However, the effect is hardly significant levels.

-.2

-.1

0.1

.2.3

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

ideology

average marginal effect

disc

rete

cha

nge

in p

roba

bilit

y

Fig. 1 Discrete change in the effect of ideology produced by corruption on the propensity to vote for aPSOE incumbent in 2011

526 P. Riera et al.

Page 13: The electoral consequences of corruption scandals in Spain

status. Models 17 and 18 suggest that corruption particularly decreases the likelihoodfor left-wing voters’ to participate in Spanish local elections. This pattern is equallyobservable in the two years under consideration here (i.e., 2007 and 2011). Althoughit might be possible that conservative voters in Spain are less impacted by corruptionscandals in general, findings may be driven by the fact that the main centre-right partywas in opposition at the national level and their supporters’ urge to punish PSOE at

Table 4 Interaction effects of corruption and education on the propensity to vote for the incumbent

Variables Model 8 Model 9 Model 10 Model 11

2007-PSOE 2007-PP 2011-PSOE 2007-PP

Age 0.000372 0.0164*** 0.00476* 0.00805***

(0.00297) (0.00282) (0.00246) (0.00273)

Male −0.0441 −0.120 −0.0663 −0.0897(0.0776) (0.0911) (0.0835) (0.0767)

Corruption 0.497 0.225 −0.478 0.341

(1.659) (0.451) (0.547) (0.555)

Education −0.965*** 0.135 −1.021*** −0.398*(0.190) (0.250) (0.254) (0.211)

Corruption × education −2.660 −0.633 0.207 0.297

(3.332) (0.752) (1.352) (0.881)

Percent of unemployed 2.063*** 1.461* 3.893*** 2.017***

(0.506) (0.766) (0.562) (0.620)

Constant −0.361 −1.500*** −1.920*** −0.214(0.293) (0.578) (0.344) (0.762)

Region dummies YES YES YES YES

N 2,543 2,850 2,664 3,147

Robust standard errors in parentheses

***p<0.01, **p<0.05, *p<0.1

-.5

0.5

1

0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1education (0=min, 1=max)

average marginal effect

disc

rete

cha

nge

in p

roba

bilit

y

Fig. 2 Discrete change in the effect of education produced by corruption on the propensity to vote for aPSOE incumbent in 2007

The electoral consequences of corruption scandals in Spain 527

Page 14: The electoral consequences of corruption scandals in Spain

local elections may have obscured the effects of corruption scandals. In Models 19 and20, we introduce an interaction between corruption and voters’ education, but the resultsare not significant in most of the cases. To be more specific, corruption only hindersparticipation of low-educated citizens in 2011. Finally, the most interesting resultsemerge regarding the interaction of corruption and voters’ unemployment status. First,the effect of corruption is always negative for people who are employed. Evidence onthe differential effect of corruption on unemployed citizens’ turnout is, however, mixed

Table 5 Interaction effects of corruption and employment status on the propensity to vote for theincumbent

Variables Model 12 Model 13 Model 14 Model 15

PSOE-2007 PP-2007 PSOE-2011 PP-2011

Age 0.000279 0.0163*** 0.00309 0.00767***

(0.00307) (0.00288) (0.00260) (0.00285)

Education −1.008*** 0.104 −1.063*** −0.394*(0.193) (0.255) (0.255) (0.215)

Male −0.0536 −0.119 −0.0734 −0.0851(0.0783) (0.0906) (0.0837) (0.0761)

Corruption −0.646 −0.0983 −0.353 0.476

(0.679) (0.205) (0.288) (0.297)

Unemployed −0.0410 −0.117 −0.241** −0.0244(0.145) (0.132) (0.113) (0.112)

Corruption × unemployed 0.166 0.433 −0.235 0.163

(0.707) (1.038) (0.624) (0.597)

Percent of unemployed 2.126*** 1.456* 3.895*** 2.040***

(0.506) (0.76) (0.56) (0.62)

Constant −0.349 −1.469** −1.792*** −0.204(0.301) (0.582) (0.343) (0.765)

Region dummies YES YES YES YES

Observations 2,528 2,838 2,653 3,139

Robust standard errors in parentheses

***p<0.01, **p<0.05, *p<0.1

Table 6 Marginal effects (probabilities) of corruption on the propensity to vote for the incumbentdepending on employment status

2007 elections 2011 elections

PSOE PP PSOE PP

Employed −0.158 −0.024 −0.080 0.116*

Unemployed −0.118*** 0.085 −0.117 0.154

***p<0.01, **p<0.05, *p<0.1; they are obtained from Models 11–14 in Table 5; control variables are set attheir means (continuous) or their modes (dummies)

528 P. Riera et al.

Page 15: The electoral consequences of corruption scandals in Spain

Tab

le7

Effectsof

corruptio

non

thepropensity

toparticipatein

Spanish

localelectio

ns,mainandinteractioneffectswith

ideology,educationandunem

ploy

mentstatus

Variables

Model

16Mod

el17

Model

18Model

19Mod

el20

Model

21Model

22

Baseline

2007-Interactio

nideology

2011-Interactio

nideology

2007-Interactio

neducation

2011-Interactio

neducation

2007-Interactio

nun

employ

ment

2011-Interactio

nun

employment

Age

0.02**

*0.03

***

0.02

***

0.03**

*0.02**

*0.03**

*0.02**

*

(0.001

)(0.002

)(0.002

)(0.002

)(0.002

)(0.002

)(0.002

)

Educatio

n0.99**

*1.12

***

0.81

***

1.12**

*0.76**

*1.11**

*0.81**

*

(0.13)

(0.17)

(0.19)

(0.18)

(0.19)

(0.17)

(0.19)

Male

−0.01

0.05

−0.07

0.05

−0.07

0.05

−0.07

(0.05)

(0.07)

(0.07)

(0.07)

(0.07)

(0.07)

(0.07)

Corruption

−0.38***

−1.11*

**−0

.74**

−0.52

−0.86*

−0.49**

−0.38**

(0.13)

(0.25)

(0.304

)(0.43)

(0.47)

(0.21)

(0.16)

Ideology

0.00

60.09

***

0.01

0.09**

*0.01

0.09**

*

(0.02)

(0.01)

(0.01)

(0.01)

(0.01)

(0.01)

Corruption×ideology

0.11**

0.10

9*

(0.04)

(0.06)

Corruption×education

−0.07

(0.58)

Unemployed

−0.22***

−0.204

*−0

.23***

−0.205*

−0.23*

**−0

.14

−0.27***

(0.06)

(0.107

)(0.08)

(0.107

)(0.08)

(0.11)

(0.09)

Corruption×un

employed

1.23

−0.69*

0.907*

*

(0.809

)(0.401

)(0.407

)

Percent

ofun

employ

ed0.01

−0.39

0.48

−0.38

0.48

−0.37

0.504

(0.01)

(0.37)

(0.39)

(0.37)

(0.39)

(0.37)

(0.398

)

2011

electio

n0.05

(0.09)

The electoral consequences of corruption scandals in Spain 529

Page 16: The electoral consequences of corruption scandals in Spain

Tab

le7

(con

tinued)

Variables

Model

16Mod

el17

Model

18Model

19Mod

el20

Model

21Model

22

Baseline

2007-Interactio

nideology

2011-Interactio

nideology

2007-Interactio

neducation

2011-Interactio

neducation

2007-Interactio

nun

employ

ment

2011-Interactio

nun

employment

Constant

−0.56***

−0.39

−0.32

−0.43*

−0.32

−0.44*

−0.35

(0.17)

(0.24)

(0.32)

(0.24)

(0.32)

(0.24)

(0.32)

Regiondu

mmies

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

Observatio

ns14

,299

7,53

77,53

77,413

7,413

7,413

7,413

Robuststandard

errors

inparentheses

***p<0.01,**p<

0.05

,*p<0.1

530 P. Riera et al.

Page 17: The electoral consequences of corruption scandals in Spain

as it changes over the years. In 2007, unemployed people were significantly less likelythan employed people to turn out when the mayor was involved in a corruption scandal.However, the effect is completely reversed in 2011.

To sum up, hypotheses 1, 2 and 3 find only partial support in our data. Interestinglyenough, corruption mediates the effect of other factors only in the case of PSOE. Thissuggests that, even if both parties were negatively impacted by corruption (at least in2007), some voters were particularly prone to punish corrupt PSOE incumbents,whereas in the case of PP this effect was more homogeneously distributed. All in all,evidence supports our argument that the effects of corruption are much more complexthan may seem at first sight.

Discussion

Our central argument in this article is that electoral punishment of incumbents withcorruption charges is not homogenous. This is so because different individuals give adifferent weight to corruption scandals in their vote decisions, but also because theextent to which corruption has an impact on the vote depends pretty much on the typeand characteristics of the elections that we look at. We thus argued that it is wrong topresume that every corruption scandal will have the same electoral impact, or that itwill affect all political parties or all voters to the same extent.

Evidence from Spanish local elections supports our arguments in several regards.First, we have shown that corruption had a negative impact on support for the twomain statewide political parties in the 2007 local elections. A positive effect was,however, found for other parties, but this was very much driven by a small local partywho seems to have actually gained support in those places where their incumbentswere accused of corruption. This indeed deserves further research and is an interest-ing finding that demonstrates that effects of corruption may also vary not only acrossindividuals or elections, but also across political parties and, possibly also, acrosstypes of corruption.

In contrast with the 2007 elections, no significant impact of corruption was foundin 2011. We had argued earlier that this was much expected, since great attention waspaid in those elections to aspects of national politics related to the economic crisis andthe austerity measures put forward by the socialist government. The saliency ofnational-specific issues may have led voters to relegate the issue of local corruptionto a lower level of importance. This, we think, is a key aspect that shows that theeffect of corruption cannot be taken for granted.

We also claimed that corruption has a different effect depending on the characteristicsof voters. Thus, three hypotheses were developed regarding ideological position, politicalsophistication, and personal economic situation. The first expectation was for voters thatare closer to the political position of a given party to be less affected by corruption than therest. In other words, voters will be less likely to punish a corrupt incumbent that is close totheir own ideological position.We thus compared the effect for PP and PSOE incumbents,respectively, and found some support for this first hypothesis in our data. In 2011, anelection year for which significant effects of corruption had not been found, the chancesfor center, center-right, and right-wing voters to support PSOE incumbents greatlydiminished when corruption charges were present. However, we did not find any other

The electoral consequences of corruption scandals in Spain 531

Page 18: The electoral consequences of corruption scandals in Spain

significant effect of the interaction between ideology and corruption in any other case. Butwe did find right-wing voters’ turnout to have been affected by corruption to a lesserextent, perhaps because the main conservative party was in opposition at the central level,and, given the high degree of polarization, many conservative supporters were determinedto keep PP in local governments no matter what.

With regard to the second hypothesis, politically sophisticated voters wereexpected to punish corrupt incumbents with more intensity. Partial support for thishypothesis was found, but only in 2007, when more educated voters tended to punishmore PSOE incumbents when charges of corruption had been leveled against them.Evidence for our third hypothesis was also found only in this single case. We hadargued that unemployed voters should be more reluctant than employed voters tosupport a corrupt incumbent, and it was only for PSOE incumbents in 2007 that wefound a significant effect in this regard. Also, we found mixed evidence in this regardwhen it came to turnout. Effects for these last two hypotheses were not strong enoughto remain significant when a multilevel model was introduced. This, however, shouldbe taken with some caution. It is possible that a weak effect does still exist and thatthe lack of significance is merely caused by a more demanding analysis for whichmore statistical power would perhaps be needed.

Be that as it may, this article provides evidence that some corruption effects doindeed exist, but that these are neither homogeneous nor constant across elections.Indeed, much more research has to be done in order to identify the conditions underwhich corruption has an impact on voters’ behavior. But the fact that some effectsappear to be present is good news for democratic accountability, as it shows thatvoters or at least some groups thereof are not totally immune to corruption after all.

References

1. Anderson, C., & Tverdova, Y. (2003). Corruption, political allegiances, and attitudes toward govern-ment in contemporary democracies. American Journal of Political Science, 47(1), 91–109.

2. Anduiza, E. (1999). ¿Individuos o sistemas? Las razones de la abstención en Europa Occidental.Madrid: Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas.

3. Anduiza, E., A. Gallego, and J. Muñoz (2014). Turning a blind eye: experimental evidence of partisanbias in attitudes towards corruption. Comparative Political Studies (Forthcoming).

4. Banducci, S., & Karp, J. (1994). Electoral consequences of scandal and reapportionment in the 1992house elections. American Politics Research, 22(1), 3.

5. Barberá, P. and P. Fernández-Vázquez (2012). Los electores ante la corrupción. En FundaciónAlternativas (ed.) Informe sobre la democracia en España, 2012.

6. Barreiro, B., & Sánchez-Cuenca, I. (2000). Las consecuencias electorales de la corrupción. Historia ypolítica: Ideas, procesos y movimientos sociales, 4, 69–92.

7. Campbell, A., Converse, P. E., Miller, W. E., & Stokes, D. E. (1960). The American Voter. NewYork:Wiley.8. Chang, E., Golden, M., & Hill, S. (2010). Legislative malfeasance and political accountability. World

Politics, 62(02), 177–220.9. Chong, A., A. De La O, D. Karlan, and L. Wantchekon (2012). Looking beyond the incumbent: The

effects of exposing corruption on electoral outcomes. CEPR Discussion Paper, 8790.10. Costas-Pérez, E., Solé-Ollé, A., & Sorribas-Navarro, P. (2012). Corruption scandals, voter information,

and accountability. European Journal of Political Economy, 28(4), 469–484.11. Della Porta, D. (1997). Social capital, beliefs in government, and political corruption. In Pharr, S. and

Putnam, D., editors, Disaffected democracies: What’s troubling the trilateral countries? Pinter.

532 P. Riera et al.

Page 19: The electoral consequences of corruption scandals in Spain

12. Fackler, T., & Lin, T. (1995). Political corruption and presidential elections, 1929–1992. The Journal ofPolitics, 57(4), 971–993.

13. Fearon, J. (1999). Electoral accountability and the control of politicians: selecting good types versussanctioning poor performance. In Przeworski, A., Stokes, S. and Manin, B. (eds.) Democracy,Accountability and Representation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

14. Ferejohn, J. (1986). Incumbent performance and electoral control. Public Choice, 50, 5–25.15. Fernández-Vázquez, P. and G. Rivero (2011). Consecuencias electorales de la corrupción, 2003–2007.

Estudios de Progreso, Fundación Alternativas.16. Ferraz, C., & Finan, F. (2008). Exposing corrupt politicians: The effects of Brazil’s publicly released

audits on electoral outcomes. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 123(2), 703–745.17. Golden, M. A. (2003). Electoral connections: The effects of the personal vote on political patronage,

bureaucracy and legislation in postwar Italy. British Journal of Political Science, 33, 189–212.18. Harrop, M. and W. L. Miller (1987). Elections and Voters: A Comparative Introduction. London:

Macmillan.19. Jacobson, G. (1999). Impeachment politics in the 1998 congressional elections. Political Science

Quarterly, 114(1), 31–51.20. Jacobson, G., & Dimock, M. (1994). Checking out: The effects of bank overdrafts on the 1992 house

elections. American Journal of Political Science, 38(3), 601–624.21. Jiménez, F. (2007). Luces y sombras en el control de la corrupción: las elecciones municipales del 27

de mayo de 2007. Revista de Investigaciones Políticas y Sociológicas, 6(2), 43–76.22. Jiménez, F. and Caínzos, M. (2006). How far and why do corruption scandals cost votes? In Garrard, J. and

Newell, J. (eds.) Scandals in past and contemporary politics. Manchester: Manchester University Press.23. Johnston, R., Jones, K., Propper, C., Sarker, R., Burgess, S., & Bolster, A. (2005). A missing level in

the analyses of British voting behaviour: the household as context as shown by analyses of a 1992–1997 longitudinal survey. Electoral Studies, 24(2), 201–225.

24. Kanthak, K. (2011). The hidden effects of rules not broken: Career paths, institutional rules andanticipatory exit in legislatures. British Journal of Political Science, 41(4), 841–857.

25. Key, V. O., Jr. (1966).The responsibleelectorate: rationality in presidential voting, 1936-19600. NewYork: Vintage

26. Klasnja, M., J. Tucker, and K. Deegan-Krause (2012). Pocketbook vs. sociotropic corruption voting.Unpublised manuscript, New York University.

27. Kunicova, J., & Rose-Ackerman, S. (2005). Electoral rules and constitutional structures as constraintson corruption. British Journal of Political Science, 35(4), 573–606.

28. Kurer, O. (2001). Why do voters support corrupt politicians? In Jain, A. K., editor, The PoliticalEconomy of Corruption. London: Routledge.

29. Lafay, J.-D. and Servais, M. (1999). The influence of political scandals on popularity and votes. InLewis-Beck, M., editor, How France Votes. New York: Seven Bridges.

30. Lambsdorff, J.G. (1999). Causes and consequences of corruption: what do we know from a cross-section of countries? In Rose-Ackerman, S. (ed.) International Handbook on the Economics ofCorruption. London: Edward Elger.

31. Magalhaes, P. (2006). Confidence in parliaments: performance, representation, and accountability. InTorcal, M. and Montero, J., editors, Political Disaffection in Contemporary Democracies. London:Routledge.

32. Manzetti, L., & Wilson, C. (2007). Why do corrupt governments maintain public support?Comparative Political Studies, 40(8), 949–970.

33. Maravall, J. M., & Fraile, M. (2001). The politics of unemployment. The Spanish experience incomparative perspective. In N. Bermeo (Ed.), Context and consequences. The effects of unemploymentin the new Europe (pp. 291–328). New York: Cambridge University Press.

34. Mauro, P. (1995). Corruption and growth. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 110(3), 681.35. McCann, J. A., & Domínguez, J. I. (1998). Mexicans react to electoral fraud and political corruption:

An assessment of public opinion and voting behavior. Electoral Studies, 17, 483–503.36. Nye, J. (1967). Corruption and political development: A cost-benefit analysis. The American Political

Science Review, 61(2), 417–427.37. Pardos-Prado, S., & Dinas, E. (2010). Systemic polarisation and spatial voting. European Journal of

Political Research, 49(6), 759–786.38. Persson, T., Tabellini, G., & Trebbi, F. (2003). Electoral rules and corruption. Journal of the European

Economic Association, 1, 958–989.39. Peters, J., & Welch, S. (1980). The effects of charges of corruption on voting behavior in congressional

elections. The American Political Science Review, 74(3), 697–708.

The electoral consequences of corruption scandals in Spain 533

Page 20: The electoral consequences of corruption scandals in Spain

40. Popova, O. (2010). “Corruption, Voting and Employment Status: Evidence from Russian ParliamentaryElections.” CERGE-EI Working Papers

41. Powell, G. B., & Whitten, G. D. (1993). A cross-national analysis of economic voting: Taking accountof the political context. American Journal of Political Science, 37, 391–414.

42. Rose-Ackerman, S. (1999). Corruption and Government: Causes, Consequences, and Reform.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

43. Rundquist, B., Strom, G., & Peters, J. (1977). Corrupt politicians and their electoral support: Someexperimental observations. The American Political Science Review, 71(3), 954–963.

44. Sandholtz, W., & Koetzle, W. (2000). Accounting for corruption: Economic structure, democracy, andtrade. International Studies Quarterly, 44(1), 31–50.

45. Tavits, M. (2007). Clarity of responsibility and corruption. American Journal of Political Science,51(1), 218–229.

46. Theobald, R. (1990). Corruption Development and Underdevelopment. London: Macmillan.47. Treisman, D. (2000). The causes of corruption: A cross-national study. Journal of Public Economics,

76(3), 399–457.48. Uslaner, E., & Conway, M. (1985). The responsible congressional electorate: Water- gate, the economy,

and vote choice in 1974. The American Political Science Review, 79(3), 788–803.49. Van der Eijk, C., & Franklin, M. (2009). Elections and Voters. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.50. Warren, E. (2004). What does corruption mean in a democracy? American Journal of Political Science,

48(2), 328–343.51. Welch, S., & Hibbing, J. (1997). The effects of charges of corruption on voting behavior in congres-

sional elections, 1982–1990. The Journal of Politics, 59(01), 226–239.52. Weatherford, M. (1987). How does government performance influence political support? Political

Behavior, 9(1), 5–28.53. Whitten, G., & Palmer, H. (1999). Cross-national analyses of economic voting. Electoral Studies,

18(1), 49–67.

534 P. Riera et al.