TY  - JOUR
ID  - publications41757
UR  - http://tse-fr.eu/pub/124635
A1  - Van Der Straeten, Karine
A1  - Cañete, Rumilda
A1  - Straub, Stéphane
A1  - Miquel-Florensa, Josepa
Y1  - 2020/11//
N2  - 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 incumbent parties, which in many countries happen to be the most corrupt. We design a survey experiment to test these predictions in Paraguay and find strong supporting evidence. We do not find 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.
PB  - Elsevier
JF  - Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization
VL  - vol. 179
KW  - Corruption
KW  - Electoral systems
KW  - Information
SN  - 1879-1751
TI  - Voting Corrupt Politicians Out of Office? Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Paraguay
SP  - 223
AV  - none
EP  - 239
ER  -