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Abstract
Although in theory elections are supposed to prevent criminal or venal candidates from winning or retaining office, in practice voters frequently elect and reelect such candidates. This surprising pattern is sometimes explained by reference to voters’ underlying preferences, which are thought to favor criminal or corrupt candidates because of the patronage they provide. This article tests this hypothesis using 2010 data from the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, where one in four representatives in the state legislature have a serious criminal record and where political corruption is widespread. Contrary to the voter preference hypothesis, voters presented with vignettes that randomly vary the attributes of competing legislative candidates for local, state, and national office become much less likely to express a preference for candidates who are alleged to be criminal or corrupt. Moreover, voters’ education status, ethnicity, and political knowledge are unrelated to their distaste for criminal and venal candidates. The results imply that the electoral performance of candidates who face serious allegations likely reflects factors other than voters’ preferences for patronage, such as limited information about candidate characteristics or the absence of credible alternative candidates with clean records.
Notes
1. Incumbents belonging to the ruling party BSP saw their asset value increase on average almost $500,000, whereas incumbents belonging to the opposition party SP saw their asset value increase less than $300,000. The chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and the head of BSP, Kumari Mayawati, saw her wealth increase $6.2 million over her 5-year term. Data were downloaded from National Election Watch (http://myneta.info), which compiles information from affidavits submitted by candidates during the nomination process. Calculations are our own. For a more comprehensive analysis of Indian candidates’ assets, see Fisman, Schulz, and Vig (Citation2012).
2. See Adida, Davenport, and McClendon (Citation2013) for recent evidence about the effects of ethnic primes on vote choice in the United States.
3. The two hypotheses are interrelated. Voters of a given caste may surmise that candidates and parties affiliated with their caste may, if elected, be more likely to provide material benefits. This pattern is thought to be especially likely when voters have little information about the political process (Chandra, Citation2004).
4. Caste is traditionally associated with Hinduism, and our study will focus on Hindu voters, who comprise roughly 80% of the electorate. As noted in footnote 6, we obtain similar results when experimental vignettes are presented to non-Hindu voters.
5. We omitted women from our sample due to cost. During piloting, we found that women were much harder to identify using e-rolls and took approximately twice as long to survey. Additionally, husbands or other males in the household insisted on being present during the survey and oftentimes on answering for the respondent. Since cultural norms prevented our male surveyors from requesting privacy, we found that it was only feasible to administer our survey to an all-male sample.
6. We obtain similar results for the 622 non-Hindu respondents when we assume that their ethnically dispreferred party is the BJP, given the widespread view that “Muslims will never vote for the BJP” (Dnaindia, 2013). Approximately 60% of these respondents prefer the non-BJP candidate in the absence of allegations; this figure falls below 18% when the non-BJP candidate is alleged to be criminal or corrupt and rises above 85% when allegations are directed against BJP candidates.
7. Each respondent faced one vignette (out of three) that did not feature a caste-preferred candidate. In two-thirds of these vignettes, one of the candidates was either criminal or corrupt. A comparison of the set of respondents who chose the criminal/corrupt candidate in these vignettes with the set of respondents who chose the honest candidate reveals that the only social predictor for preferring criminal/corrupt candidates is belonging to a Scheduled Caste. SC respondents were less likely to prefer the criminal/corrupt candidate than respondents from other castes (OBC or Upper Castes).
8. Analogous studies in countries such as Brazil (Ferraz & Finan, Citation2008), Mexico (Chong et al., Citation2012), and Uganda (Humphreys & Weinstein, Citation2012) have produced mixed support for the hypothesis that public information campaigns lead voters to withdraw support from candidates tainted by allegations of corruption. Ferraz and Finan (Citation2008) find that official audits improve electoral accountability when publicized via mass media. de Figueiredo, Hidalgo, and Kasahara (Citation2013) find that leaflets from a reputable interest group publicizing the corrupt behavior of leading mayoral candidates diminished their vote support. On the other hand, Chong et al. (Citation2012) find no effect for public information campaigns that question the administrative competence of local officials in Mexico, and Humphreys and Weinstein (Citation2012) find little effect of a campaign that informed Ugandan voters of the legislative effort expended by their representatives.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Abhijit Banerjee
Abhijit Banerjee is Professor, Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Donald P. Green is Professor, Department of Political Science, Columbia University. Jeffery McManus is Senior Manager, IDinsight. Rohini Pande is Professor, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.