Confounding the Voter: Political Corruption in Late Democratizers
Confounding the Voter: Political Corruption in Late Democratizers

Summary/Abstract: 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.

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