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Confounding the Voter: Political Corruption in Late Democratizers

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Confounding the Voter: Political Corruption in Late Democratizers Südosteuropa 61 (2013), H. 1, S. 114-145 DANIELA IVANOVA Confounding the Voter: Political Corruption in Late Democratizers Abstract. If elections in the new EU member states are free and fair, why do voters simply not vote the corrupt parties out? This paper goes beyond regime legacies and looks at voting patterns on the issue of political corruption in order to explain why voters in democracies vote for corrupt parties and when they stop to do so. Italy, Bulgaria and Latvia have differ- ent historical legacies, but all of them have been suffering from high perceptions of political corruption. The three countries have been formally committed to fighting corruption for over a decade, but have repeatedly seen periods of popular discontent with political corruption expressed via street protests or protest voting. In a chronological overview of anti-corruption voting, I shall look at patterns of voting for anti-corruption opportunists and reformists and try to determine whether they are part of a learning curve for both the public and politicians. An important outcome is that elections are rarely decided on corruption issues alone and that preference formation among voters about the issue of ethical politics is a complex process. In terms of what can be learnt, research shows that the public’s right to dissolve parliament mid-term and popular independent institutions such as the presidency, an anti-corruption agency or external monitoring can help resolve accountability crises. Revelations of corrup- tion have the strongest effect when the economy is in decline. As anti-corruption reforms do not make a lasting impression in times of prosperity, an economic crisis is the best time to make a clean sweep. Daniela Ivanova holds a BA in Social Studies, Wesleyan University and a M.Phil. in European Politics, University of Oxford. “The very existence of widespread, persistent political corruption in a com- petitive electoral system constitutes a puzzle”, assert Miriam Golden and Eric Chang in a study on political corruption.1 The reason why such systemic graft is baffling is because even according to minimalist theories of democratic com- petition, politicians have an interest in being honest so that the voting public 1 Miriam A. Golden / Eric C. C. Chang, Competitive Corruption: Factional Conflict and Political Malfeasance in Post-War Italian Christian Democracy, World Politics 53 (2001), no. 4, 588-622, 588, available at <http://politics.as.nyu.edu/docs/IO/4756/golden2.pdf>. All cited internet sources were last accessed on 12 March 2013. Political Corruption in Late Democratizers 115 does not elect their opponents.2 While electoral uncertainty inspires discipline in political parties, the lack of elections inspires corruption. However, for a long time statistical analyses concluded that non-democratic regimes were often less corrupt than young democracies. In 2002 Montinola and Jackman used data from 1980-1983 and 1988-1992 to demonstrate a non-linear relationship between corruption and democratization – there was less corruption in some dictatorships than in states with intermediate levels of political competi- tion, i.e. unstable democracies.3 Using data from 1996-2003, Rock confirms this finding, but demonstrates that it takes a relatively short period of time before the practice of democracy begins to reduce corruption – somewhere between 4 and 15 years since the inception of the democratic regime.4 Rock’s analysis confirms that democratic competition has an anti-corruption effect, but it might take a while to have an impact. What is the explanation for this time-lag? In other words, why do voters vote for corrupt parties in young democracies and when do they stop to do so? This research question presumes that the incidence of corruption committed by elected politicians cannot be explained using traditional approaches. Political- economic explanations such as a large public sector or incomplete structural reforms run into methodological hurdles.5 Firstly, some of the least corrupt countries have large public sectors. Secondly, it is not clear whether incomplete reforms create conditions for corruption or corruption causes reforms to stall in the first place. Another set of explanations treatselected politicians as principals and state officials as their agents, hence corruption is caused by poorly designed monitoring systems for officials.6 In the same way, the inadequacy of checks and balances such as criminal legislation, judicial autonomy, a free press, civil society, and functioning law enforcement are said to prevent the public from monitoring politicians.7 Yet again, one runs into a causation issue: did corrupt politicians capture the checks and balances or did the latter simply malfunction? Finally, cultural explanations refer to legacies that make the existence of disin- 2 See Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. London 2003, 269-284. 3 Gabriella Montinola / Robert W. Jackman, Sources of Corruption: A Cross-Country Study, British Journal of Political Science 32 (2002), no. 1, 147-170. 4 Michael T. Rock, Corruption and Democracy. New York 2007 (DESA Working Paper No. 55, August 2007), available at <http://www.un.org/esa/desa/papers/2007/wp55_2007.pdf>. 5 Vito Tanzi, Corruption Around the World: Causes, Consequences, Scope, and Cures. Washington/DC 1998 (IMF Working Paper 98/63, May 1998), available at <http://www.imf. org/external/pubs/ft/wp/wp9863.pdf>; George T. Abed / Hamid R. Davoodi, Corruption, Structural Reforms, and Economic Performance in the Transition Economies. Washington/ DC 2000 (IMF Working Paper 00/132, July 2000), available at <http://www.imf.org/external/ pubs/ft/wp/2000/wp00132.pdf>. 6 Susan Rose-Ackerman, Corruption: A Study in Political Economy. New York 1978. 7 Eadem, Corruption and Government: Causes, Consequences, and Reform. Cambridge 1999. 116 Daniela Ivanova terested institutions impossible.8 However, Schleiter and Voznaya object that even in the context of widespread clientelism, e.g. in Latin America and Africa, respondents in popular surveys hold politicians accountable for malfeasance by public officials, i.e. the principle of democratic accountability holds even in less institutionalized contexts.9 Cultural explanations also have a causality problem. Various studies depict a causal chain that starts with political corruption and spreads to everyday norms, rather than vice versa. Corruption generates more corruption either by decreasing returns from honest behaviour or by presenting itself as ordinary citizens’ only means of protest against a predatory system.10 Even if people consider petty bribery to be part of survival and a cultural norm, it is hard to imagine that they endorse political corruption to the same extent. Hence this author will adopt a Principal-Agent definition of political cor- ruption: corruption is an agency problem that voters face when the politicians they elected deviate from the public’s interest in clean government. In line with Schleiter and Voznaya, I will avoid making a distinction between political and bureaucratic corruption because politicians are ultimately responsible for reigning in bureaucracies, designing disinterested institutions and propagating ethical behaviour.11 However, I shall explicitly adopt an electoral view of cor- ruption and will use the term “political corruption” to distinguish my approach. Literature Review There is scant literature on corruption as an electoral issue. Most studies on political corruption in democracies take an institutional perspective and do not question voter preferences.12 These works focus on institutional features such as 8 See for example Guillermo O’Donnell, Illusions About Consolidation, in: Larry Dia- mond et al. (eds.), Consolidating the Third Wave Democracies. Baltimore/MD 1997, 40-57, 46f.; Letitia Lawson, The Politics of Anti-Corruption Reform in Africa, Journal of Modern African Studies 47 (2009), no. 1, 73-100, 76. 9 Petra Schleiter / Alisa M. Voznaya, Party System Competitiveness and Corruption. Oxford 2011 (University of Oxford, DPIR Working Paper 11-01), 5, available at <http://users. ox.ac.uk/~schleite/paper1.pdf>. 10 See Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, Corruption: Diagnosis and Treatment, Journal of Democracy 17 (2006), no. 3, 86-99, 90; Luigi Manzetti / Charles Blake, Market Reforms and Corruption in Latin America. New Means for Old Ways, Review of International Political Economy 3 (1997), no. 4, 662-697, 669; Donatella Della Porta, Political Parties and Corruption. Ten Hypotheses on Five Vicious Circles, Crime, Law and Social Change 42 (2004), no. 1, 35-60, 56. 11 Schleiter / Voznaya, Party System Competitiveness and Corruption (above fn. 9), 5. 12 John Gerring / Strom Thacker, Political Institutions and Corruption: The Role of Unitar- ism and Parliamentarism, British Journal of Political Science 34 (2004), no. 2, 295-330, available at <http://sws.bu.edu/jgerring/documents/Corruption.pdf>; Daniel Treisman, Decentraliza- tion and the Quality of Government. Los Angeles/CA 2000 (UCLA, Department of Political Science, Preliminary Draft, 20.11.2000), available at <http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/ seminar/2000/fiscal/treisman.pdf>; Jana Kunicová / Susan Rose-Ackerman, Electoral Rules Political Corruption in Late Democratizers 117 presidentialism, federalism, electoral rules and electoral district magnitude, but yield inconclusive and often contradictory results.13 Another group of authors look at party systems and how they shape voter choices: poor information and the lack of credible
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