Same scandal, different interpretations: politics of corruption, anger, and partisan bias in Mexico

ABSTRACT

Instead of focusing on “why voters appear to tolerate rather than punish” as most previous literature, this paper advances an alternative explanation: it seeks to explain how voters process information about corruption. Consistent with research on public opinion formation, this paper argues that voters can perceive the same event and make different interpretation about its meaning. Based on an original survey experiment conducted during the 2018 presidential election in Mexico, this study finds that citizens hold partisan attitudes and are motivated to protect these partisan predispositions, which make them interpret common events in different way. In particular, when this study informed voters that an unnamed candidate engaged in corruption, respondents unequivocally considered such actions as corrupt. However, when the name of their co-partisan candidate was explicitly mentioned as engaging in the same activities, voters rejected to qualify them as corrupt. Partisans are not “tolerating” or “condoning” corruption; partisans tend to choose interpretations that rationalize their partisan priors and justify their co-partisans’ behavior.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In fact, in the same original survey that this study is based on, around two thirds of MORENA partisans declared that they had previously self-identified with the PRD 19% of respondents declared that they had previously identified with the PRI and 16% with the PAN.

2 Three hundred sixteen respondents were part of the second wave of a panel survey. Four hundred sixty six respondents were contacted for the first time.

3 2% of respondents did not reply to the question and 9% replied “did not know.”

4 Lopez Obrador’s feeling thermometer was located in the first part of the questionnaire (before the experiment). Therefore, the information provided by the experiment did not influence the responses to the feeling thermometer questions.

5 The fact that the experiment is based on an event that actually happened in Mexico seventeen years ago means that some respondents might have remembered the scandal, potentially driving the results of the survey experiment. Table A5 in the Appendix reports that levels of information do not moderate respondents’ reaction to the experiment.