Does political corruption put people off voting? (Not if it’s really bad)

If you think the politicians in your country are corrupt, are you less likely to turn out to vote? Some studies suggest you are. Others find the opposite – perhaps because corrupt politicians will say anything to get re-elected, and their promises motivate voters. Stefan Dahlberg and Maria Solevid found that perceived corruption does indeed deter voters – unless they live in countries where corruption is endemic. Turnout is still lower in these places, but not because voters are put off by corruption

Voices from the Welfare State. Dissatisfaction and Political Action in Sweden

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between citizens’ dissatisfaction with the welfare state and political action on welfare state issues, and to what extent institutional arrangements affects this relationship. The point of departure for this study is the policy feedback perspective, which acknowledges that the design of institutions shape and constrain citizens’ political preferences and behaviors. The theoretical foundation of the study is then formed by intersecting research on how citizens’ evaluations of government output affect political behavior, research on political participation and research on policy feedback effects. To reach the aim, two research questions are put forward asking whether the relationship between welfare state dissatisfaction and 1) the level of political action and 2) form of political action vary depending on the institutional design of welfare state institutions? To capture the design features of welfare state institutions that potentially give rise to feedback effects, the concept institutionalized citizen empowerment is used. Institutionalized citizen empowerment should be understood as a power balance between the institution and the individual encountering the institution. To measure institutionalized citizen empowerment, the degree of universalism, bureaucratic discretion, exit options, voice opportunities, and legal rights is compared across four public service institutions: public schools, hospital care, primary care and elderly care. The results of the comparison show that public school is a highly empowering institution while elderly care is a low empower-ing institution. Hospital care and primary care take an intermediate position and are labeled medium degree of empowerment. Based on these results, a hypothesis is formed: The higher degree of institutionalized citizen empowerment, the stronger the positive relationship between public service dissatisfaction and political action. To specify, it is hypothesized to find the strongest dissatisfaction effect on political action about public school issues and weakest effect of dissatisfaction on political action about elderly care issues. Moreover, it is hypothesized that the higher degree of empowerment, the higher the degree of contact political action when expressing dissatisfaction. The testing of the hypothesis is carried out using data from the 2004 and 2006 Swedish national survey on Society, Opinion, and Mass media. The results of the statistical analyses confirm the hypotheses on a general level, that is, the strongest effect of dissatisfaction on political action is found on public school issues and weakest effect on elderly care issues. Thus, the higher degree of empowerment, the stronger the relationship be-tween dissatisfaction and political action in general and through contacting in particular. Still, some specifications of the hypotheses show results deviating from the expected pattern which raises further questions about the conditions for policy feedback effects

Does Party Politicization of Corruption Affect Voter Turnout?

In this paper, we argue that the effects of corruption on voter turnout not necessarily have to be negative. We argue that voters’ willingness to participate in elections will increase when parties po-liticize the issue of corruption in electoral campaigns, as it indicates party responsiveness to voter concerns. We test this claim by using individual-level data from CSES coupled with unique context data on party politicization of corruption in campaigns. Our findings show that higher perceived levels of corruption are associated with lower voter turnout but that the negative effect of perceiv-ing high corruption on turnout is reduced in an electoral context where corruption is politicized. The results thus show that if corruption is not politicized, individuals’ corruption perceptions exert a significant negative impact on turnout. By politicizing anti-corruption measures, political parties are acting policy responsive and by that they are also affecting voters’ decision whether to vote or not

Does corruption suppress voter turnout?^*

<p>This paper investigates to what extent voters’ perceptions of political corruption affect turnout. In previous research, two opposing views are put forward with regards to the relationship between corruption and turnout. On the one hand, corruption increases turnout because voters either are bought off to participate or because they are mobilized on clean government issues. On the other hand, corruption decreases turnout because presence of corruption corrodes the political system which leads to general cynicism, distrust and voter apathy. In this paper, we contribute to the existing research by adopting a multi-level approach to the relationship between corruption and turnout. We test the hypothesis that voters’ perceptions of corruption dampens turnout but that the effect is conditional upon the corruption context. We test our hypothesis by combining individual-level data and country-level data from 26 countries from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and country-level data from the Quality of Government Data Set. The findings show that perceiving corruption negatively affects turnout, but only in countries with low to medium levels of system corruption.</p