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Voting Corrupt Politicians Out of Office? Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Paraguay

Author

Listed:
  • Rumilda Cañete

    (Independent Researcher)

  • Josepa Miquel-Florensa

    (TSE-R - Toulouse School of Economics - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - UT - Université de Toulouse - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement)

  • Stéphane Straub

    (TSE-R - Toulouse School of Economics - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - UT - Université de Toulouse - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement)

  • Karine van Der Straeten

    (TSE-R - Toulouse School of Economics - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - UT - Université de Toulouse - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

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 traditional, most corrupt parties. We design a survey experiment to test these predictions in Paraguay and nd strong supporting evidence. We do not nd 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.

Suggested Citation

  • Rumilda Cañete & Josepa Miquel-Florensa & Stéphane Straub & Karine van Der Straeten, 2022. "Voting Corrupt Politicians Out of Office? Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Paraguay," Working Papers hal-03629643, HAL.
  • Handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-03629643
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-03629643
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    Keywords

    Corruption; Electoral systems; Information;
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