Electoral Rules and Corruption

by

Torsten Persson, Guido Tabellini and Francesco Trebbi

Abstract

Is corruption systematically related to electoral rules? Recent theoretical work suggests a positive answer. But little is known about the data. We try to address this lacuna by relating corruption to different features of the electoral system in a sample of about 80 democracies in the 1990s. We exploit the cross-country variation in the data, as well as the time variation arising from recent episodes of electoral reform. The evidence is consistent with the theoretical priors. Larger voting districts -- and thus lower barriers to entry -- are associated with less corruption, whereas larger shares of candidates elected from party lists -- and thus less individual accountability -- are associated with more corruption. Individual accountability appears to be most strongly tied to personal ballots in plurality-rule elections, even though open party lists also seem to have some effect. Beacuse different aspects roughly offset each other, a switch from strictly proportional to strictly majoritarian elections only has a small negative effect on corruption.